Grounds For Breaking Lease?

Location: Seattle, WA

This past week, our water heater leaked and caused severe water damage (standing water in our floors/walls, water dripping through our ceiling and through the bottom of our apartment). Our neighbors contacted their property management company. Our neighbors also helped us get in contact with an HOA representative and our property manager, who sent maintenance specialized in water mitigation the next day since this was an emergency situation that was affecting the exterior of our condo. Our landlord sent her husband to fix our water heater, who began fixing it on the 4th day, but she ignored the rest of the water damage.

Maintenance tore up our floors and walls and used dehumidifiers and heaters for mitigation. They also found mold and cleaned it. Our property manager told us that our landlord will be fully responsible for covering the costs related to the damages in her unit.

However, our landlord is asking us to prepay rent to cover restoration services (reinstalling our washer/dryer, bathroom door, vanity in the upstairs bathroom, and walls/floors).

We also found out from our HOA that our landlord is only allowed to rent to her family. Apparently, she has claimed that me and my roommates are her children in order to rent to us. She’s not registered with the Seattle RRIO. She doesn’t accept check— she only takes rent payments via Zelle. The electricity bill is under her name because she said she had a bad experience with prior tenants. We prepay electricity as a part of rent and overpayments are adjusted in the next month’s rent.

Since we are not her family, does this mean we can break our lease without paying the early termination fee ($2200)? We don’t wish to live here any longer.