New Apartment Has A Roach Infestation. We Want To Break Our Lease And Move Elsewhere.

Location: Connecticut, USA

We (22M and 22F) moved into our new apartment yesterday. Upon touring the fully furnished apartment, nothing was visibly wrong.

Upon moving in to the now-empty unit, we saw two dead roaches in the apartment and found a live one later in the day. Neighbors informed us that the building has a roach infestation that we weren’t told about.

Neighbors told us the landlord has sprayed the building several times, but the problem persists.

The problem is the thousands of unsealed entrances in the run-down building. Gaps in all of the siding between the floors and walls, gaps in windows, gaps in the floorboards. Spraying without sealing will obviously not solve the problem, the roaches will just come back.

We were advised by my dad to document the infestation thoroughly, and write a letter to the landlord demanding that the infestation be dealt with in a reasonable amount of time (1-2 weeks) by sealing entrances in our unit and spraying the building.

He said that if they fail to do this, we can ask to break the lease, and if they refuse, we can sue them to break it and move somewhere else.

Is this true? Can anyone give us any guidance, whether it be on how we can deal with roaches, how we should address this with mgmt, or how we can break our lease with or without taking legal action? Would we have recourse?

Any help or advice would be enormously appreciated. We are young and inexperienced, this is our second time renting and we have only lived in NY before.