I am 53 and have been on SSDI for over a decade. My landlord of eight years was informed of my disabilities prior to my moving into a 10 unit complex for seniors, handicap, and disabled tenants.
Despite they're knowledge of my suffering with a major depressive disorder, social anxiety, PTSD, and a rotating sleeping disorder THEY have repeatedly violated my Constitutional and Civil rights, breached the lease contract, failed to protect me from foreseeable harm from 3rd party's (people off the street committing crimes in this complex), 2nd party's (neighbors who repeatedly get drunk/drugged up, calling me vulgar names, threatening me with bodily harm, causing both mental and physical harm to my person, vandalizing my vehicle, stealing property intrusted to me, throwing trash in my yard, placing pornographic pictures by my front door, having prostitutes and drug transactions occur in the complex, indecent exposure, not leashing pets who have attempted to bite me, and much more), and 1st party's - THEY themselves with maintenance crews, contractors, and sub contractors stealing my electricity, threatening me with arrest if I interfere with them (as they violate Penal Code Section 498 - theft of utility services), accosting me on the property, leaving huge messes for me to clean up after THEIR upgrades and improvements of my dwelling unit (i.e., fine sheet rock dust over everything inside my entire apartment, nails, screws, staples, and tons of assorted debris), made slanderous false allegations that I had prevented another tenant(s) from use of the common area of the complex and threatened me with eviction, retaliatory action by charging me a late fee and serving me with a 14 day pay rent or quit - despite the fact I mailed my rent off and it was post marked on the 5th of that month, yet there's still more!
When I call the police, they tell me its an issue for the landlord or in a civil action .... the landlord tells me that its a police matter - and here I am stuck in the middle with NO LEGAL HELP thus far! I have video recordings, eye witnesses, notes, police incident reports, grievances, and my own personal accounts of most everything that's happened. I've been a major thorn in the landlord's side - and you can begin to understand why. I refused to just take it anymore. I have nowhere else to go other than the streets - they know this too.
Thus far all attempts to get legal help, assistance from elderly, handicap, patient rights organizations, new papers, and tv stations news reporting, etc., have failed. No lawyers have been willing to take this on as a pro bono case or on a contingency basis. The story isn't big enough for the media outlets, and all of the origination I've contacted politely decline help because it simply isn't part of what they are able to do. The ACLU requires that the matter effect a large portion of the public - which is surprising because there are many cases across the nation about horror stories involving my landlord (which is a non profit organization who's mission statement is to help low income, handicap, disabled, and elderly folks with "safe" and "affordable" housing!).
At least I get to coin a new disorder though - Battered Tenant Syndrome.