Help us break the lease at our unsafe apartment

Hey guys,

we moved to Philadelphia in July because Natalie was accepted to temple medical school. We only had one weekend to actually look at apartments and we chose our current place because it advertised being the safest building in the safest area and all of these great amenities. We decided to stretch our budget a little to make sure we were in a safe spot with an elevator mostly because I have ongoing and worsening cardiac issues. We made a huge mistake. I’ll try to keep it brief because it is truly overwhelming. The elevators have dropped us and other residents on multiple occasions (not great when your heart doesn’t work in the first place), the elevators are not inspected and do not have cameras in them. We had to report the elevator issue several times before they sent someone to fix it and it’s still happening. they have a club on the eleventh floor that they do not tell you about and is not in the lease and the people who go to the club do not wear masks(again, immunocompromised so not great), become belligerent and use any elevator not the one designated for the club and we have been harassed and sexually harassed on multiple occasions. The door man who had worked here for a year has sexually harassed every woman in the building that I have talked to and even put his hands on another female employee and cornered another resident in the elevator. He has made multiple comments to both nat and I including one time while I was on the phone with my dad. They finally fired him after over a year of working here (5 months after we got here and dealt with him) but he still lives in the building on our floor. They also have numerous fire code violations, as well as rats, mice, and roaches. All of this again in a building that advertises itself as the best living in Philly. The leasing agent lied to us about almost everything and refuses to correspond through writing so that there is no paper trail. He had promised us that we could transfer our lease and move to a cheaper unit, went radio silent, then told us the unit wasn’t available, then said it was, and now it’s promised to someone else but at this point we don’t want to be anywhere near here. We have truly tried everything and have been trying to get out since we got in and we can’t take it anymore. Our best option right now is to buy ourselves out of our lease and move. If we tried to do that ourselves we would empty our accounts and not have any money to go anywhere. We are both in school and we both work and this has been such unnecessary stress on us. We were told by the leasing agent in order to break the lease we pay back what they call a “concession” which was their word for two free months of rent which we had told could be averaged out over the entire lease to make monthly rent cheaper and they took it all right away and refused to adjust it to what was agreed upon when the lease was signed. This would be $7,500 and then we would also be responsible for the rent which is $3700 a month until someone else rents the unit so I am hoping that $12,000 is the right figure. I want to thank everyone for supporting us and hopefully you can visit us at our new place!!