Letting a baby play with a fly swatter is awesome, almost on par with a giant hole in your ceiling and piss and shit in your basement.

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Thank for showing those how to avoid paying rent through a cop-out.

JJ Follow up

Jersey City inspectors cited a landlord with more than a dozen violations when they visited a Greenville building where a resident says her family has been trying to have the building repaired for a decade.

"I have to take care of children and they have to realize that all this can harm them," said Pauline Roman, of 150 Pearsall Ave., who was in court in February pleading for a judge to order the building inspected and repairs be made.

Health department, fire department and city code inspectors visited the building yesterday after Roman spoke at a City Council meeting and council members Rolando Lavarro and Viola Richardson told inspectors to take a look, an official said.

Inspectors cited the owner of the five-unit building, Divindra Sewnarine, for raw sewage in the basement, exposed wires, no smoke alarm in the basement and inoperable smoke alarms in the building's common area, Fire Director Armando Roman said. Sewnarine was also ordered to remove debris at the rear of the building and have the fire escapes tested, the fire director said.

Regarding Pauline Roman's first-floor apartment, inspectors wrote citations for a hole in a bathroom ceiling and for having an improperly installed gas heater, the fire director said.

Pauline Roman and her husband, who live with 6-year-old twins and two grandchildren, also complained about apparent mold due to flooding and leaky plumbing.

"They can get burned by this," said Roman yesterday, referring to the children and pointing at the gas heater which is about two feet tall. Fire officials said they intend to have the heater turned off today.

Pauline Roman said her bathroom ceiling collapsed due to urine and feces leaking from an apartment above. The upstairs bathroom can been seen through the hole. The floor around her kitchen sink appears to be rotting due to leaking pipes and mold appears to be growing on the wall above the sink.

Roman said her grandchildren have asthma and get headaches and she thinks the mold and sewage stench from the basement aggravate it.

Inspectors reached out to Sewnarine yesterday and learned he is in Florida, but they ordered him to have a plumber go to the building right away. As of noon today, a plumber has not gone to the building.

Sewnarine will have about 10 days to abate the problems in the building or face possible fines. The landlord's lawyer could not be reached for comment last night or today.

"The landlord should be fixing his building rather then spending money to bring us to court," said Pauline Roman, adding that inspectors told her they will return on April 12 to follow-up.

report your own apartment to the authories and have it condemned - it will give you a way out of your lease and then find a better apartment

It's gone on for so long because rather than focusing on the issues and the best possible outcome, they have been focusing on how much they hate each other and on "winning" no matter how destructive it is.

These situations don't go on for 10 years unless there are psychological issues involved. Brewsterpretty much outlined the process.

P.S. The sewage isn't in their apartment. It floods into the basement when it backs up. They don't live in the basement.

When I lived downtown, during heavy rain, sometimes the sewer line in the basement backed up. Disgusting but it would drain back down. A bottle of bleach and a scrub broom would fix whatever was left afterwards. Everyone we brought in said there wasn't much we could do about it.

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I thought it was because the price of tea in China's been going up

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It's gone on this long because rent control exists.

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I agree, but the landlord is a M*therf*** its quite clear he wants them out, he just rented the top floor apt of the building for $1575 a month. I guess he figures you mofos are only paying $650 so why bother. smdh. I ride by this building sometimes when I ride my bike into Bayonne, its not a bad looking building. Hope they get some money back.

Wow, sounds like they deserve each other, landlord and tenants from hell. I don't get how this has gone on this long.

The timeline should be:

1-They notify landlord of placing rent in escrow and call complaint to buildings.

2-Landlord either ignores them or starts eviction for nonpayment, gets a court date within 6 weeks.

3-JC Buildings comes to inspect within days of complaint. (don't ask how I know)

So how did they go more than a year with neither them getting evicted nor the landlord racking up huge fines?

A court inspector will help decide if a Jersey City landlord is responsible for repairs to a decrepit apartment, a Hudson County judge said today.

Pauline and Morris Roman, of 150 Pearsall Ave., appeared before Hudson County Tenant/Landlord Court Judge Maybeth Rogers today because they say the building's owner, Divindra Sewnarine, has ignored their pleas to make repairs at the five-unit building.

The Romans say they have lived in "deplorable conditions" for 10 years. Among the problems at the apartment are an open pipe in the building's basement that leaks raw sewage and sometimes floods the basement, a gaping hole in their bathroom ceiling where they can see their upstairs neighbor's bathtub, no heat and exposed wires in the basement.

The husband and wife, who live in their first

floor apartment with 6-year-old twins and two grandchildren, say their family also has been exposed to mold because of repeated flooding and leaky plumbing.

This is not right," said Pauline. "This is

not fair."

The rent for the rent-controlled, three-bedroom apartment, which they have been paying into an escrowaccount, is $650 per month. Pauline, 43, was laid off from her nursing

assistant job and her husband Morris, 55, works at Toys 'R' Us. Pauline Roman say they haven't moved because they can't afford another place.
At the hearing, multiple outbursts from the couple prompted Rogers to stop the hearing until order could be restored. When the judge returned, she warned them that they could be held in contempt of court if they shouted out again in court.

The judge ordered a new inspection by a court employee before the case could continue. Frank Babcock, the couple's attorney, said that the court employee attempted to inspect the apartment just after Thanksgiving, but when a friend of the Romans refused to stop filming the inspection, he canceled it.

Today the judge ordered that only the parties involved would be allowed to be present at the inspection and that no photographs or videos are allowed. The tenants and Sewnarine are also barred from having contact with each other and must speak through their respective attorneys.

The judge also ordered that two months of the rent held in escrow, which has more than $8,000 in it, be released to Sewnarine so he could pay bills.

Pauline says her ultimate goal is to be reimbursed for all the rent she's had to pay while living in the apartment for 10 years.

"I think I deserve it," she said. "It's my landlord's responsibility to keep up the building."

Both Babcock and Michael Rubinstein, the landlord's attorney, refused to comment.

The hearing was delayed for 30 minutes when Rubinstein objected to a Jersey Journal reporter taking photos of the hearing. The Journal had earlier gotten permission to take photos at the hearing.

In the end, the judge allowed photos to be taken, but not of Rubenstein, Sewnarine or herself.