This looks familiar. We've may have some similar questions to this in the past. You might find some good info here : apartment search. I don't always get it right though, cuz I'm just a simple bot.

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Call the health department first thing tomorrow morning. Your landlord is required to provide heat by law. The Health Department will help you.

Allegheny County Health Department - Housing Division (412) 350-4046

I've already called them. So far no results. I encouraged several other neighbors to call them tonight before I left.

Fuck, sorry. Good idea getting your neighbors to call too though. Hopefully that will do something.

I’d suggest also reaching out to your city councilperson (if you’re in Bloomfield it’s probably Deb Gross) and county councilperson, at least to let them know the Health Department shit the bed if nothing else.

Highly recommend Neighborhood Legal Services and hopefully someone else can chime in with more legal recs.

It will be warm this weekend. Walk around the neighborhoods you’re interested in living in and see if there are any For Rent signs. Obviously look online in all the usual places. I’m sorry about your crappy landlord.

Also call 311, building inspectors will atleast stop by to cite for other issues

Neighborhood Legal Services

Look on Craigslist. Plenty of local ma and pop landlords post there.

too many scammers

Agreed. Zillow is better, more legit rentals

What is the issue with your heating exactly? What kind of heat do you have? Any frozen pipes or water issues? Has the landlord tried fixing the issue at all or called any companies? The problem is a lot of companies had emergencies calls due to the crazy weather. However, someone should be able to come out if you call enough people. Unfortunately that should be up to the landlord.

Personally, after exhausting my resources calling The Health Dept, etc. I'd be buying space heaters, saving the receipts, and saving my electric bills for the month (or propane purchases if you go that route). Bill them back to the LL when it's all done.

Our LL was super cool about this when ours went out. He was on top of it, but said the HVAC guys were swamped when it happened last year. Asked if we had space heaters and if not, he'd bring one over. We were good, but he offered to cover our propane costs. I actually declined because it was only for 2 days.

My landlord expects me to bill my renters insurance for any outlays. They also continuously lie about the situation; I've been told it's been fixed every day since the 26th. They also are going with a preposterous lie that a tenant caused this by leaving their windows open.

I'm done. I was hoping someone reading this had a cool landlord with an available unit, because really my next step is getting an attorney and breaking the lease.

You get good LLs and bad ones. Our one before in Millvale was terrible. Came in and broke our dryer trying to clean out the heavily blocked vent when we moved in. We had really bad water/flooding problems and he never fixed them. It was common to come down to the basement/garage with literally 1/2" or more of water on the floor. The mold was nuts over time.

Only stayed there a year and got the fuck out. Ended up not even getting our security deposit back because he claimed the entire place was "infested" with fleas because we had a cat.

There are no cool landlords.

Costello management is a great landlord. Anything I raised a ticket about was addressed in less than 24 hours and the owner gave me his card and was like if my team doesn’t address it you call me directly. Even minor things like I noticed the refrigerator handle was missing. Next day I get home from work and its there. I reported a minor rust/hole on the stove the next day I had a whole new stove. Really a great experience.

Thank you, I appreciate this tip!

I don’t have any good advice for helping get the heat back on, but I will give you a warning with renters; Don’t do Arkham Realty. We had a slumlord apartment in lower Lawrenceville with several issues (sewage backup, floorboards so gapped you could see into the apt below, leaking roof) that they never helped with. They also never responded to us giving notice moving out, then tried to charge us $3k at the end of our lease for those repairs (but the charges never came/were dropped when we said hey what’s this). I know ours hasn’t been rented out since we left it a year ago and for good reason, so if you see it, RUN.

Thank you for the heads-up!

You’re welcome! You deserve better than a place like that, hahah

I liked Steiner Realty. They were good about fixing things. Rented from them for 5 years in 3 different apartments because I liked them so much I just kept moving to bigger/better apartments when something opened up.

I would look at Edgewood, East Liberty area honestly for more honest landlords and better prices for rentals. I have lived in a Victorian house turned duplex and absolutely loved my landlord and how quick they were to handle things.