So our landlord & agent are a cliche

The Real Estate Agent turns up and tries to intimidate us every time we complain about major stuff. Smoke alarms not working (there are 6) the owner of the agency turns up and complains that because we complained in writing they had to get an electrician out. The electrician popped the one in the living room, dead. I pointed out they had stickers saying they should be replaced after 10 years and were marked 199[]. He went and got replacements but the agent insisted on replacing only one. Same went for replacing washers, they waffled until one failed completely, by the look of the withered rubber corpse it hadn't been replaced in 10 years.

The hot water system backflows into the cold line, so intermittently the cold taps flow hot until they clear. Because it doesn't do it every time and he hasn't witnessed it, he insists that we have an "alleged" problem. We've already had to have them replace the toilet. When we moved in there was a 1970s pan, with a modern low flush cistern that took an hour to fill and two flushes to scour. That went to 3 hours to fill after a flow limiter was fitted.

The water hammer is also frightening, like whacking the front door with a sledge hammer at 2:00am when someone elsewhere in the complex flushes. One evening after a particularly violent rendition of pipework percussion's greatest hits, the hot water system was making a weird buzz louder than the TV, I "fixed" it by running the purge/fill valve for an hour.

The shower is dangerous, water flow often stops when someone in another flat uses the water. Which wouldn't be too bad, except that it sometimes comes back full hot, and there is no tempering valve. Which means I need to help my GF shower because she can't dodge the flow due to her physical disability. They can't just turn down the hot water system, because it is a tiny storage unit (although not on off peak, so at least  it heats up in about an hour).

To give an idea of how far down the slumlord path they are, we can't use the kitchen cupboards for non-canned food because they smell of rot. In the case of the draws and 1/4 of the cupboard space we can't use them at all. Have a nice pic of the active mould in the cupboards we can't use.

That's what it looked like when we moved in, we filed a complaint to get it fixed, they said the owner was looking into it, hasn't got back to us several months later. Don't know what it looks like now, I stuck a humidity sucker in there and closed the door.

Want the punch line, they say because his costs have gone up our rent rises from $200/week to $210 a week.

(We're looking into lodging an appeal against the rise.)