Landlord Asking Us To Vacate For Calling Board Of Health

Location: Massachusetts

Title is pretty straightforward. To give some context, our (gf and I) landlord failed to repair the lock to our front door for 7 months. During this time we documented everything, made sure to get all of our requests and his responses in writing, etc. We live in the middle of nowhere in a very safe area so we kind of just put up with it. We are new renters and did not know our rights. He continued to make excuses for why he hadn’t fixed it yet, and this really bothered me because I work late nights on the weekends so even though we live in a safe area, my gf was often home alone and unable to lock our door.

Eventually, I ended up calling the board of health to do an inspection so that’d he’d be forced to repair the lock. The day that he received the letter from the BOH detailing all the issues (which ended up being a lot more than just the lock) he asked us to vacate. I actually have proof of this as we saw exactly when the letter was delivered via tracking number, and it is delivered in person and must be received and signed by landlord. So we have pretty much blatant proof that he texted us to kick us out directly after receiving letter, which is illegal retaliation. For some reason I can’t attach a photo on this post, but I’ve documented pretty much every interaction with our landlord that has been in text or email. Basically in his text he tells my girlfriend that he’s sorry but he has to ask us to vacate because his relationship with me has become “toxic”. I’m not sure what this means. He refuses to speak to me, which I find a bit odd and manipulative. Beyond me asking our landlord to make repairs, I have had absolutely zero interactions with him so I’m not sure where this claim of toxicity came from.

FYI, the repairs regarding the lock and other issues were on items that were damaged before we even moved in, and the landlord’s maintenance man even acknowledged this to us. So we are in no way responsible for any of the things wrong with our apartment. We live in Massachusetts and we cannot afford an attorney. Legal help hasn’t been much help so far and neither has the board of health. What can we do? We obviously do not want to live here anymore because we don’t like or trust our landlord to do the bare minimum to keep our living space safe. However, I am wondering if there’s any legal route I can take against my landlord or if it’s possible to be awarded damages by the housing court because he violated our rights in a few different ways. There have been other instances with the LL that we’ve documented, such as our apartment being entered without our permission or knowledge. If we had known our rights beforehand we would’ve just withheld rent earlier on. This comes at a particularly difficult time because I am about to ship out to basic + job training for the army but I cannot do this until we move because I obviously can’t let my girlfriend move alone, but I’m also nervous to move and then leave my girlfriend alone in a new place for almost 6 months.

sorry this is super long, TLDR landlord retaliating against us for calling board of health, we haven’t been able to get legal help