Rental property maintenance & aggressive landlord

Questioner

My landlord is not responding to my emails regarding house maintenance. I have been sending emails for over a month and he is not responding at all. I called the real estate agency where he works. It was a Sunday but there was nothing on their website that they would not be open or anything. No one answered. I thought they were just closed and thought I could always try again later. An hour later I received a call from a very angry and aggressive man who started yelling at me for calling on a Sunday, instead of looking at the problem. He could have ignored my phone call but he deliberately chose to intimidate me by being so aggressive. He did not even give me a chance to explain what I wanted. He hung up. I have been emailing him for months and he is not responding. What can I do?

Lawyer

If the property is social housing, you can submit a request to the rent assessment committee for a (temporary) reduction in the rent due to the (maintenance) defects. If it is not social housing, you can give the landlord a reasonable period to carry out the repairs or maintenance, and if the landlord does nothing within that period, you can announce to him that you are giving him another period and if he does not carry out the work within that period, you will have the work carried out yourself afterwards and that you will deduct the costs of this from the rent to be paid. Of course, the necessity of the work must be evident and the repair costs must be reasonable.