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drabbiticus 2 hours ago

Most likely the (legally) correct thing to do in the US is to first report the landlord to the relevant agency, possibly named something like Licensing and Inspections or Fair Housing or somesuch. Each local jurisdiction will have it's own agencies for this, so do research. Failure to respond to that would next involve a landlord-tenant lawyer.

Whether or not it's worth all the trouble and time is a different matter. For most people, I'd say reporting to relevant authorities to make the landlord's life harder without needing much continuing effort is probably worth doing, but the lawsuit side is likely to be a huge time and money sink and it's almost always easier to just move. Let the city sue them for continuing to accrue complaints of unsafe living conditions.

In the same way, a landlord cannot evict you themself if you just fail to pay rent, but there are multiple legal mechanisms to eventually get the sheriff to do it for them. Basically, if landlord-tenant negotiation fails, I think the only legal recourse is to involve governmental third parties unless you technically open yourself up to legal reprisal.