Fridge broke, landlord dragging feet

January 13, 2023 7:58 PM

The fridge in my San Francisco apartment stopped working two weeks ago and my landlord hasn't fixed it yet. How can I encourage them to hurry?

I live in an apartment in San Francisco that is owned by a property management company and furnished with a refrigerator in the kitchen. Two weeks ago, the fridge started beeping (the sort of beep it made when I would leave the door open for too long) and wouldn't stop; I couldn't leave it on and retain my sanity. I turned it off, threw all my food out, and filed a maintenance request with the owner.

Two days ago, the owner sent an appliance technician to come by and took a look; he concluded that the beeping indicated inadequate cooling due to a failing compressor or freon leak, and the fridge needed to be either repaired or replaced (probably the latter). Since then I haven't heard anything from either the technician's company or the owner.

I've been without the use of a fridge for two weeks now and it's getting to be a drag — I live alone but don't have any place to keep fresh ingredients or leftovers aside from a small picnic cooler, so it's hard to cook without wasting food. My lease (the standard San Francisco Apartment Association lease) says "The appliances provided at inception of the tenancy are described as: REFRIGERATOR, …" but doesn't say anything about the owner's responsibility for keeping the refrigerator in good repair.

What steps should I take to get this fridge repaired soon? Is the owner obligated to repair the fridge quickly, or is it considered a non-essential facility of the apartment that they can fix at their leisure?

posted by pmdboi to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

SF has extensive tenant protections, particularly if the apartment is rent controlled. Going 2 days without a fridge is beyond acceptable, imo, let alone two weeks. Here's some basic info from the SF Tenants Union.
posted by flamk at 8:22 PM on January 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

The bad news is that California law considers refrigerators an "amenity" rather than a necessity (wtf...who doesn't have/need a fridge?). The good news is that the apartment came with the fridge, so it belongs to the landlord and is their responsibility. The value of the apartment depends partly on its furnishings, so either the landlord repairs the fridge, or you should be entitled to a reduction in rent. (Naturally, you would prefer the former, as would any sane landlord.) Here is one take on how to approach this with a landlord in SF.

However, I might first spend a solid day just calling the landlord repeatedly. If you're gamely attempting to live without the fridge and being deferential about it, your shitty landlord does not have a fire under their ass. You need to make it clear that this is not okay and that you are done living without a functional fridge. It's not an acceptable situation, you need an update (and the update needs to be, like, "a new fridge is coming [at soonest possible date]"), landlord should call back ASAP, you will call back in two hours for an update. Rinse, repeat.
posted by desert outpost at 8:26 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Check with SFTU, for sure.

I have found that a call with "Hi. landlord, any updates on the fridge? Let me know-- if it's not fixed by the end of the month I'll just go ahead and order a new one and take it out of rent. Thanks!" will light a fire under them to EITHER let you handle it and take it out rent OR they'll actually do it in a timely fashion. But do check with SFTU to find out what your deadline and contact attempts need to look like to be legal.
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:39 PM on January 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

Calling the repair company might give some insight into what's going on if you can get ahold of them. When this happened to me there was a snafu between them and the landlord and calling both of them a couple times got the paperwork moved to get them to send out a new fridge.

(two weeks is nuts- my broken fridge took about a week for my very corporate landlord to get their act together and that felt like an age)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:23 PM on January 13, 2023

Literally the only excuse for this is not being able to get a fridge--some people I know with a new house told me they are still waiting for months to get one because of supply chain. That said, they at least got a LOANER fridge.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:54 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Your landlord is being a slacker and you should take action as flamk suggests. I see fridges on craigslist/free in my area fairly often. Post on your local Buy Nothing group as well; a dorm fridge would make life easier in the short run and people often have them.
posted by theora55 at 6:01 AM on January 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is not legal advice. You should try to talk to SFTU (or another legal services org) or arrange for a limited-scope consultation with a tenant attorney familiar with the local courts.

If it's the landlord's responsibility to repair under the lease/rental agreement (without clear language, that can arguably be separate from simply providing the appliance) then they're in breach (or are running out of reasonable time to cure the problem); but it's not as clear-cut a situation for repair-and-deduct on a habitability ("tenantability") basis as the factors actually set forth in the statute. Although the lack of a fridge, if it's the landlord's responsibility to maintain, is a pretty plain impairment of its habitability beyond the statutory factors.

So while there's no drawback to sending an intent to repair-and-deduct notice to start the clock running if it ultimately applies, it would be good to talk to someone local who can give you an idea how it will shake out under both CA law and SF regs. Now, if you can; but definitely before you actually do fix it and/or withhold rent. If the standard SF Apartment Association lease is actually silent on the issue (rather than it being accounted for by other generic language in the lease) then local tenant attorneys should know how it typically plays out.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:04 AM on January 14, 2023

I would be a little worried if it's possible there's a freon leak...that could be unsafe for you. Is your place well ventilated?
posted by pinochiette at 10:22 AM on January 14, 2023

I was very surprised when I loved to California that most apartments didn't come with a fridge. I am also surprised that your landlord doesn't just go to one of the many used appliance stores and get a new-to-him one. Likely cheaper than a repair. If they really drag their feet you should consider buying a used one and make sure they know it is your fridge and not theirs. The amount you may be spending on take out must be close to adding up to a used fridge by now.
posted by terrapin at 1:55 PM on January 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Recently spent a long time on hold at a fridge repair company and was then told it would be couple of weeks to get somebody out to look. This was in L. A. So maybe it is just another "staffing" problem that seems to be universal these days. Nothing works; everything is broken.
posted by charlesminus at 3:12 PM on January 14, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks for the advice to contact the SFTU! I dropped in on their counseling hours yesterday and they advised me that I could (1) file a building problem with the DBI, and (2) sue for damages in small claims court due to having to throw out food and spend more on food in the interim. I don't know if I want to go that far yet but it's good to know that those options are available to me. In the meantime I plan to call the landlord tomorrow when they're back in the office and try to get a commitment to a repair date.
posted by pmdboi at 2:57 PM on January 15, 2023