Lawyer explains your rights as a renter amid rising threat of winter weather damage

With the snow and freezing cold temperatures, comes the potential for problems to pop up in your home.

Is it up to the tenant or the landlord when issues arise?

“You can live there in essentially any weather condition, your landlord has the responsibility of making sure that their residence is reasonably weather-tight,” said Patrick Trivett, who is a Landlord / Tenant lawyer in Marysville.

Trivett explains what your rights are as a renter.

If there are problems, he says the first thing you need to do is check your lease!

“Look at your lease first, and make sure that you know what your responsibilities are and your obligations,” Trivett said.

It gets tricky when it comes to certain issues, for example, frozen pipes in the winter.

“If it comes to the pipes within the wall, that’s going to be your landlord’s duty,” Trivett explained. “Call your landlord, immediately send them a text, send them a written notice that says, get over here and fix this before it gets to be a problem.”

Trivett says it’s usually up to the renter to maintain it and report it.

“If you don’t ask your landlord to remedy that defective condition [in a timely manner] additional damage can be put on you the tenant.”

But let’s say you’re on vacation-- if you didn’t wrap the pipes and they freeze over, that responsibility could fall on you.

“You might arise in a situation where you do create your defective condition in the sense that your lack of attention to the fact it’s getting cold has created that problem in and of itself,” Trivett explained.

He says it ultimately comes down to communication and making sure a tenant and landlord work through issues together.

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