What is complaint management?

Where do I file a complaint against my apartment management here in Oregon?

• I found an apartment for rent and my boyfriend took care of expenses. Rent, deposit and application fee were paid for. I scheduled an appointment to get keys for March 3rd, came to the appointment and keys had not been made. No house key, mail key, laundry key, NOTHING. So she said they'd get made... well Friday comes along and I call and get no answer... Saturday comes and no call back. Monday finally comes and she calls and lets me know they're closed Friday/ Saturday... Sunday I guess was her free day to not do anything. I NEVER got to do the walk through on the apartment... they day I finally got keys, was the first night I slept in the apartments. My first ? when I asked about the apartments was how was the MOLD, the management girl said she was unaware of mold. The day I moved in I found a giant spot of mold in the master bedroom closet!!! I then asked for a maintenance order. I was then informed they didn't have a maintenance guy working, that they were in the process of finding one to hire. The next day of finding mold, I went through and did my own walk through; I found a ton of huge errors, blinds were missing, holes in the walls, the mold, dishwasher wasn't installed, HOT water didn't work and so on. Well days later I have a ton of bites on my body... there are fleas in the apartment as well. I was unaware she was scheduling an appointment to get fleas cleared out, so when the guy came I was clueless. I didn't get a 24 hour notice. I then called her office today and she didn't answer. Today is Thursday which is her Friday... so I knew she was in the office she just didn't take my call. I walked to the office and to my NOT suprise she was sitting in the office BS-ing with her kids and friends... which tells me two things: She knew I had called and she didn't bother to contact me. When I asked when the Flea guy was coming, she said she still had to call and make an appointment. I asked when she was calling, she said Monday... honestly she sat there doing nothing but BS-ing with her kids and didn't have time to make a call all day???? I think not. The lady in that office is beyond LAZY!!! When I told her I just wanted to know what was going on & wanted better communication she runs her mouth and says "this would have been done last week" HAHAHA last week she was unaware of the fleas and all of a sudden she's on top of things? I think not! I've called her manager as well & she's just as lazy as the girl in the apartment office. All I want is for the woman in the office to COMMUNICATE & not be LAZY. She never answers the phone, nor is she in the office ever & she just lies and puts things off... how do I go about making a complaint against her, the apartments and so on? I have Asthma & Allergies and with the mold that is a concern to me, not to mention I have a ton of bug bites on my body from the fleas... Any advice or help is much appreciated. & again I'm in Clackamas, Oregon. [email protected]

• Answer:

  There is no place to officially complain unless you sue her. The place does sound uninhabitable but it is illegal for you to make that choice. If you just walk out she CAN legally sue you for any lease break fees stated in your lease. You need to call your local health department for an inspection to officially document the condition of the unit. Then you need to sue her to legally break the lease with out penalty. You have to go about this in the right way to protect yourself & not put the law on a bad landlord's side. EDIT: It is also illegal to withhold ANY part of the rent without a court order. You are certainly free to go to a hotel but you cannot take that cost off of the rent without going through the proper procedure first.