Is there any legal recourse for renting a house that was not built to code or inspected? Safety was an issue.?

Question

I was renting a brand new house that was plagued with problems. There was no dryer vent cut in the laundry room, the furnace was not hooked up, the a/c condensate line was not hooked up causing water damage, though the clincher was that the stove was not converted to propane when it was installed, and if I had not invested in a CO detector I very well might not still be here. It took several months for it to build (and be in the winter when everything was sealed up tight), but clearly this house never had an inspection which i believe is required by California Law for any new building and was most definitely not built to code. I continued living there after the problems were fixed mostly because i did not want to get into a conflict with the landlord while i still needed the residence though I have since moved out. Is there any legal recourse I might be able to take for this situation?

Answer 1

"I continued living there after the problems were fixed..." You waived your right to cancel the lease and get out when the getting was good and you had all the leverage.

You have willingly continued to live there. What reason can you have to break a lease now that everything is fixed and perfect?

Answer 2

You lived there, you don't live there now, you didn't complain then, you can't complain now.

If you moved in not knowing and it never got fixed when you kept bugging and left early cuz of it and they did something like refuse to return your deposit- THEN you have a case.

Answer 3

You have no legal recourse.  Obviously the problems weren't bad enough for you to even make a single phone call to code enforcement to check out any of your claims.  All you have are suspicions and not a single shred of legal evidence.

It depends on why the landlord is keeping your security deposit...if he's keeping it because of damage to the walls, carpet, cleaning, etc, you are out of gas.

You can't argue that you were forced to live there.