Tenant laws and rights within MI, what do I do?

  • another update: Insurance was no help, we lapses in March without receiving any mail or notification. So when we reinstated it on the day the event happened they said they can’t do anything. Cannot take out a hardship withdrawal from 401k as it doesn’t apply to loss of use. Basically we’re fucked.

-For a small update, they have offered to release us from our lease if our insurance isn’t willing to give us temporary housing. We’ve decided to contact our lawyer to see if there’s more we can do in regards to rent paid for May plus the hardship this places on us financially and mentally. We’re hoping for good news with a lawyer. - Our apartment is directly next to a utility room, we’ve had 4 small floods in the corner of our office they’ve had to fan out We’ve had a leak in our ceiling that required having an open ceiling and repairs for 4 days Now we’ve had a 5th leak that burst and has caused mold on the baseboards, potentially behind the walls, and flooded the underneath of our vinyl/wood floors of the living room, dining room and kitchen. This is all in the time frame of 1 year, we also went a whole winter without heat despite multiple requests saying it still wasn’t working(new maintenance fixed it this year, was just the pilot light!) We are currently displaced for an unknown amount of time, and staying at a families place with 2 kids and 2 pets in the living room. We do have renters insurance but were told to not file a claim for a place to stay yet until the property manager talks to their insurance and figures out a repair time frame. We do have access to a lawyer, but have not contacted yet since I’m not sure if we would even get compensation or need them yet. So I’m mostly asking for advice and what we should do. If they don’t provide us a place to stay until repairs and mold remediation is done we don’t have to pay rent right? Would we be able to get half of May rent back for not living there? We’ve looked at other places to stay but they’re running $1,600-2,400 a month vs our $1,300 and all but 2 don’t even allow pets :/ We’re already feeling at a loss and so stressed out, my poor cat is in distress due to sudden moving and being around unfamiliar cats, she’s stuck in a small room for safety.