I along with my 3 kids and my kids dad have been living at my grandma and her boyfriends house for a little over 3 years (January 2022) with them. We have been paying them rent since roughly February 2022. However the home had issues with it prior to us moving in and we were told by my grandmother that those issues would be fixed by her boyfriend (the bathroom floor had caved in right next to the toilet roughly 2 years prior to us moving in, the kitchen roof leaked in multiple spots, and there was a plumbing issue with one side of the kitchen sink and also with the bathroom sink).

Fast forward a year or so later and the bathroom progressively gets worse, there is roughly a 1 foot wide hole in the middle of the bathroom floor that one of my childrens foot actually ended up going through and my grandmother has fallen into this hole which they just covered with a board, the hole next to the toilet got worse and the toilet started to sink into the floor, the kitchen roof still leaked and the only 2 things that ever got fixed were the plumbing issues in the bathroom sink and in the kitchen sink despite us asking them to fix it and even offering to fix it ourselves multiple times but withholding rent money and using it torwards fixing the issues and that was a problem with her boyfriend. We stopped paying rent in early November due to our car breaking down and they both knew about it and agreed so that we could catch back up. We offered to pay any past due rent at tax time (which they said was fine).

Fast forward roughly January and they realised that the bathroom issues were causing sewage to leak down stairs into the basement and they also couldnt get the furnace to work all winter. So in February we started looking into other resources in our town to help us get into a low income place or on housing and we are still actively trying to get out. We have a caseworker that has been a tremendous help and has said flat out that she would do the same thing. We got our taxes back mid February or so and we planned on paying them what we owed which was $1200 for the months of June 2024 (he lost his previous job in January 2024 and we payed up untill May 2024 with his taxes from that year and then he found another job at the beginning of July 2024), and then we owed for November 2024 and December 2024 (we started paying again in January 2025). We asked that they hold off because we needed a new car so that he could continue to work and we're actively trying to find one and we didnt know how much it was going to cost so we would rather put the money towards a car and then what was left can be given to them and then we would pay the rest off over time if needed (also keep in mind that my kids father was planning to give them a little extra for being so leniant). Both my grandma and her boyfriend agreed with this and would come in and ask for an update every few days.

Well the end of February came and my grandmother came in to ask about the money and we let her know that we found a few cars in our price range that we had to go look at and that we would hopefully get one in just a few days so we asked her to give us a few more days and then if need be we could sit down and come up with some sort of plan. Somehow this got translated back to him as we just weren't gonna pay at all. He says she told him that we weren't gonna pay but she says that's not what she told him so who knows. Regardless he came in and started flipping out on us in front of my 3 kids and refused to talk to us like a grown up, he got mad when we told him that technically if we wanted to we could have legally withheld the rent from him alomg time ago due to him refusing to fix anything in the home but we didnt want it to be an issue and he said that we couldn't do that and if we did we could leave so we said f*ck this were done and refused to pay the rent further and he could either fix it and then we would pay or we would find somewhere else to go. He then tried to lie to my grandmother and say that he never got aggressive with us so we had to pull up camera footage and show my grandmother.

Then in mid march he waited till my grandmother, my mother (shes temporarily staying here) and my childrens father was gone and came in "to talk to me" he told me flat out that since we continued to not pay rent that any utilities in his name will be shut off so I said okay that's your choice (he never did do it but I do have the footage of him saying it). Fast forward again to yesterday. He came in and brought it up again saying that he still doesn't understand why we are chosing to withhold the rent money and that he will be having the utilities in his name disconnected. When my kids father brought up the stuff needing fixed (mind you my kids father was not rude about it in any way and I do have all of it on record) he got aggressive and started to yank on the baby gate to my bedroom and broke it with my youngest child standing not even a foot away from the gate. As he's yanking on the gate he is threatenig to beat up my kids father and is trying to get over to him but can't and when my kids father gets up to the gate my grandma's boyfriend swings on him and this ensues a huge fist fight. Her boyfriend shoved her down on the floor in the process because she jumped into the middle of it trying to stop it. This scared the crap out of my kids because when they heard the commotion they came running out of their room crying and seen that my grandma got hurt. We're being being told that we are in the wrong but I don't feel that we are. There's much more that this man has done that is just not okay but it's a whole lot of stuff and would take up too much of this post. However if anyone would like to know more about the other stuff I'd be happy to tell you but I just wanna know AITAH??