Our landlord has been so negligent that gas line construction outside will result in us being without heat as early as the 22nd because the basement has sewage backing up into it - I have been advised to sue

Tl;dr our gas is going to be shut off soon due to mainline replacement coinciding with our septic tank backing up into our basement because our absent landlord doesn’t know the state of his own buildings. This would be several tens of thousands out of pocket to fix potentially.

Hello everyone -

I’ll keep this concise so I don’t forget the pertinent details I was just told. Myself and my best friend live in a duplex in PA and we unfortunately have the least aware landlord of all time. *Months have gone by without any sort of response from him, the last interaction we had is when he suddenly appeared without warning at our place after a seemingly inebriated call out of the blue, asking if we “still lived at the place” and if we had “paid rent.” He seemed to think we had had noise complaints filed against us, when it had literally been me mentioning that about our skunk weed duo next door that play indecipherable noise at 11 PM. So, not great. Recently, there has been construction along our road. We learned at pretty much December 2nd that there was septic pooling up in our gross unfinished basement (we never go down there or store anything because, gross, unfinished.) After accidentally tracking sewage through the kitchen and apologizing to my friend profusely, I have just tonight learned from another member of that gas service system that they will not be able to turn the gas back on once it is turned off as early as the 22nd coming up. Our landlord has not replied to our calls or texts beginning on the 2nd.

We were advised to stop paying rent, which would have been useful a few days earlier in this situation, and that we have the means to sue our landlord, potentially for our full year of rent up until this point if not more. I wouldn’t know where to begin suing someone, and neither my friend nor I have the funds to just pick up and find somewhere to be, if there are even any rentals available right now.

Some Bonuses!

Our bathroom is a “failed bathroom” - it has no means of ventilation, and our kitchen ceiling remains unfinished, and has since before we moved in (it was meant to be finished before signing, the material sat sadly in our living room until just recently.)

All of this has been told repeatedly to our landlord and even now as the 22nd gets closer, total silence.

Thoughts?

Thank you so much,

-S

*edited for spacing*