I live in Maine, in the city of Biddeford. The person who owns the building I rent in recently hired a property management company to take over responsibility of the building. Ever since then, it's been hell.

When I first moved into this apartment, I had a close call where one of the electrical outlets in my bedroom started shooting white sparks and smoke out of it, and melted the housing of the plug that was plugged into it. The outlet hasn't worked since. It's been 2 years, and it hasn't been fixed.

Our stove randomly stopped working last summer, and it took them a MONTH to get someone over here with a replacement. I can't run the microwave and a space heater in my room simultaneously, because it will trip a breaker and kill the power. They've taken to locking the basement now (where the fuse panels are located), and have told us we have to pay $50 to have someone come out and flip the breaker for us.

The only source of heat in the entire 3 bedroom unit is a small natural gas monitor in the kitchen, hooked to a 75 gallon tank. It does not keep the entire unit warm. Only the common areas. They're now telling us we cannot use space heaters in this unit, and we HAVE to use the inefficient monitor heating. Electricity isn't included in the rent.

And now - our shower has been broken for a week...and we're still waiting. I saw the maintenance man today, and he told me he hasn't gotten a work order yet, though the company sent us an email last Thursday stating they had put in a work order, and someone would be over the following day to take care of it.

And to top it off - they're raising my rent by $700 starting next month.

Do I have any legal options available to me to compel these incompetent people to actually provide the services they've been hired to provide?