my landlord might possibly be the biggest jerk on the planet

Now, can I take just a moment to complain about cheap landlords? If you have never dealt with one, then lucky you. However, if you've had the misfortune of dealing with a scum-of-the-earth property owner, then you will probably feel my pain more acutely than those who haven't had to deal.

My landlord is notoriously bad. When I say notorious I mean really just among my roommate and the lady next door (who is a freak show herself and a totally different story), but I'm assuming if I spoke with anyone else in the building they'd all agree -- our landlord is the pits.

To start with, he never repairs anything. I only got a mailbox fixed after I threatened to file a police report about mail theft from my box. If anything does magically get 'fixed', the work is so shoddily done that whatever has just been repaired will be sure to break again within a few days. We didn't have running water for 4 days our first summer here -- it took him that long to fix it, and that was after we got the Health Department on his case.

This landlord has verbally abused me over the phone (and my dad!), hires a drunk for a super who lives in New Jersey and is therefore never around when you need him, and is trying to up our rent by $25 ... just because we called about him painting the place.

The latest fiasco is our heating situation. Well folks, it's getting cold out. It's November. Heat would be nice. But we didn't have a working thermostat for over a week, and when it did get fixed the landlord's wife made sure that the heat is timed to shut off at 10pm. Yes, that's right, we get NO heat after 10pm.

I'm working on rectifying this situation, but getting anyone to respond to me is like pulling teeth. I literally have to rip a response out of someone around here to get anything (shoddily/poorly/horribly) done.

I suspect this is illegal, as well. Shutting the heat off after 10pm? Hmm.