No Heat In Apartment Building For Weeks Now And Potentially Several More Weeks Ahead.

Hey all, this may be a long post so as I try to provide all the details I can, so thanks for sticking around and reading. I rent a unit in an old building in metro Denver and have gone without heat for over 3 weeks already in the dead of winter.

For some context:

This is an old building and is heated by a boiler and steam radiators. The boiler for the building went out on January 2nd and it took maintenance a little over a week to get it repaired and back on. The boiler was then working fine until January 23rd when we all started smelling a strange rotten almost gas like smell in the building so we called 911 and when the fire dept. showed up they shut off the boiler and informed us that it was in "runaway" state meaning that it was malfunctioning and running in overload causing the smell. Obviously this is a safety issue so the boiler remained off and the building was contacted for repairs. After a few weeks with little to no updates we found out that the boiler was being repaired. However, after maintenance finally got the parts needed for the repairs in the turned the boiler on they noticed it was leaking water and then determined to be unfit for repair and needing to be replaced.

We were updated a few days ago that in order to get the boiler replaced we would need to get approval from the city as Denver is trying to phase out steam heating in buildings, however since our building is historical building it's allowed to still have a boiler and steam heat. Unfortunately we were informed from the HOA that this process may make take several weeks and to be prepared to not have any heat for that time. This is terribly concerning as that would mean I won't have heat in the apartment for potentially the rest of winter here.

The HOA has said that we should all be using space heaters to heat our units in the meantime and has offered to reimburse the cost of one space heater per unit. This is the only action so far the HOA has taken to mitigate the issue.

Now some context in regards to my situation. This building is all condos that are mostly owned and then moderated by the HOA. I among a few other tenants are renters that go through independent land lords. I assume that all the unit owners are just out of luck in this situation and must deal with it. However as I renter I have been working with my land lady on this issue. She has agreed to reimburse me for the purchase of 2 space heaters and also acquiesced to my request of a 25% discount on rent for the month of January. She has been fairly friendly and communicative about this issue however I feel like this won't be sustainable for me when it gets much colder again here in the near future. I was forced to stay at my partners place for 2 weeks already as I got very sick and even with 2 space heaters I couldn't get the 650 square foot apartment above 60 degrees.

I expressed concern that I wasn't sure I would be able to stay here as I don't want to get sick again trying to tough it out in a cold apartment in the dead of winter. She said to please be patient and work with her and await for details in the coming days and reimbursed me for an expensive and 1500 btu oil filled heater to try and make a difference. I have the new heater and I'm running that in conjunction with my other space heater and I'm still only able to get the apartment to about 64 degrees with it being in the 30s outside right now.

So now I'm considering perhaps breaking my lease or asking for further rent reimbursement for the issue as I'm really concerned I can't sustain this with just space heaters. Not to mention some other concerns I have around leaving my dog alone here when I can't be home to run space heaters and the fact that I am terrified of potential fires happening with every single tenant in this 30 unit building using space heaters to heat their units.

I know Denver law states that the land lord must provide heat to the building to maintain it's status as livable. So my question is, what legal grounds do I have to either break my lease or perhaps ask for discount rent or even NOT pay my rent until this is fixed?

Sorry for the novel and thanks for reading if you stuck around. I appreciate any advice and feedback. Thanks Reddit!