My roof has a hole in it and I might drown

I've been living in my current apartment for 4 and a half years now.  Its reasonably priced but the landlords haven't been great with fixing things.  My dishwasher has never worked, for example.  The day I moved in I had just finished bringing all my crap in and had just gotten out of the shower when I heard the sound of running water.  Imagine my horror when I discovered the water was coming from the middle of my kitchen ceiling!  There was a crack that had formed in the middle of the ceiling and water was pouring down from it.

I didn't have my phone set up yet so I found a neighbor on the 3rd floor with a phone and asked if they could call the landlord for me.  Turns out they had just used their garbage disposal.  They told me they weren't supposed to use it, because when they did?  My ceiling leaked water.  Fucking great.

So that crack remained from that point on.  Periodically it would leak.  I always let my landlord know when it was leaking, and they acted like I was a pain in the ass for contacting them about it.  About 5 weeks ago it started leaking again.  Then one night at 2am I was awoken by the sound of rushing water.  The crack was leaking bigtime, and while it normally would only last a minute or 2 this went on for about 10.  I called my landlord (actually his wife, he's out of the country) to let her know.  She was pissed off I called her at 2 in the morning.  Gee, I'm sorry...I figured you'd want to know that the ceiling in my kitchen was about to collapse.  By all means go back to bed and don't let this disturb you at all!

So the next afternoon it started leaking again.  This time it went on for 45 minutes and the ceiling damn near did come down.  I captured it on my phone, so behold my leaky ceiling:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDzsQlEpTI[/youtube]

Yep, good stuff.  That was about or just over a month ago.  It still hasn't been fixed, and the damage is even worse than what you can see in the video because it kept running for half an hour after I took that video.  The ceiling itself has actually dropped lower and you can see the imprint of nails busting out of the wood.  I talked to my landlord's brother (who's an asshole) about 3 weeks ago.  He is supposed to be dealing with this stuff.  He told me I needed to "give him time" to get it fixed.  Guess what?  Time's up.  It stinks in there, like mildew and mold.  I pay rent every month, I want this shit fixed.

They have a guy who does general repairs for the building and he was up working on the 3rd floor yesterday.  Landlord's wife told me he was coming by to fix my ceiling later that afternoon.  Cool.  So I ran up to the 3rd floor to find out when he'd be by to make sure I was home.  He decided to at least come take a look at it so he knew what he was dealing with, and he about swallowed his tongue when he saw the damage.  I've talked to this guy before, he's a decent guy.  He told me that the landlord's wife had told him to just "paint over the crack".  He told me there was no fucking way he was doing that.  He said the entire ceiling section needed to be cut away, the pipes steam cleaned and the repair was going to be massive.  I knew this.  He also pointed out that I run the risk of the ceiling falling in on my head pretty much at any moment.  Yep, I knew this too.  He also told me I needed to go to the village and report this, because he knew damn well this woman wouldn't want to pay to get this fixed.

So this morning?  Went to the village.  I explained the situation and requested an inspector come look at my apartment.  They were horrified when I told them about what was happening.  And oh yeah, there's also some mold in my bedroom closet from what the repair guy said looks to be water damage from between this building and the one its attached to.  Thats been there about 4 years and the landlord knows about that too.  And its only gotten worse over time.

So I got to thinking about this "sinus infection" I've had over the last month.  I'm slow on the uptake I guess, but I'm wondering if my respiratory problems aren't related to the mold.  Probably are.

So this is a big mess right now.  And I didn't even talk about the big argument I got into with the landlord's wife because I shorted the rent check over something she screwed me on last month.  Hint: It has to do with bedbugs, but thats a blog for another time.