Some friends of mine live in a house they really like. There is an illegal studio apartment upstairs. Last Thanksgiving the upstairs tenant moved in his entire family. (Ex-wife and two teenage children). The landlord specifically asked that there be one tenant. After a couple months my friends asked what was up and the landlord didnt know! He asked the tenants and he said it was temporary with the economy and all. However a family of four is very loud especially this teenage boy. They alwas wake up my friends who like to sleep in pretty much every morning. They play video games when the parents are out really loud. Several months later my friends complained again. The landlord offered the family of four another place for $250 a month more that was a two bedroom house. The guy said he didn`t want to take it cause he didnt know if he really could deal with living with his ex-wife (after this has been going on 7-8 months). The landlord basically said to my friends that they were fine cause they said their kids were going away for two months. The kids left just under 3 weeks and were back. Now they have a puppy. A family of four and a puppy living in an illigal studio apartment and the landlord hasn't done anything. My friends really dont want to leave. They were considering going to the city, but don't want to get evicted, as one is unemployed and the other just had her hour cut 20% and one is a baby and moving is hard and expensive. Plus they really love the space they have.

So this family has been living up there since November 2008. They are not poor, the have a huge truck and SUV that are both practically new. They order pizza all the time and have the delivery boy bring it from accross the street. The problem is probably that the tenant has done a lot of improvements to the apartment and the landlord likes this (it is hard for my friends to get him to fix anything) What do you think they should do. What is the likelyhood of eviction if the city becomes involved?

This comes after they had a crazy alcoholic upstairs that the landlord didnt believe was harassing them until several police interactions had to happen.

Maybe they should have a meeting w/ the mother and children or the landlord and explain the situation and the possible consequences and the need to rectify the problems. If that doesn't work and the tenant decides to contact the city I think the addition will be ruled uninhabitable until it is deemed up to code, which could take quite some time.