I moved into an apartment in fall 2022; it was advertised as having central air conditioning, which is part of why I picked it. The central A/C worked when I moved in, but when things warmed up the following April and I tried turning it on, it was broken.

Landlord sent a technician who said it would be cheaper to just replace it than fix it. Landlord decided to put in a window unit instead of fixing or replacing my central air. I should have resisted harder at this point, but I thought it would be okay and I don’t want to be a difficult tenant since she’s otherwise a great landlord.

There are many problems with the window unit - it’s loud, poorly installed, and doesn’t cool my long studio apartment evenly at all (it’s at the far end of the apartment inside the only window). I’m ground floor facing a backyard with a bright security light that’s on all night, and having the A/C in the window prevents me from having a blackout curtain for the bottom of the window, which makes my apartment bright even at night, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The way it’s installed causes insulation issues that let in cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer. The kicker is that the A/C is right next to my face while I sleep and because of the way my unit is configured, I can’t rearrange my bed to avoid this. That means it’s always blowing cold air in my face and the noise keeps me up at night, not to mention the light from the backyard.

I know I’m complaining a lot and that window units are usually fine, but I’ve dealt with this for 1.5 years now and I’m getting tired of it. I chose an apartment with central air for a reason!!!

I asked my landlord recently about replacing the central air and she said she’d look into it and then ghosted me.

TLDR: - Do I have any rights here? If the listing said it had central air, does she have to replace it? To me this is like an apartment coming with an oven and the landlord replacing it with an induction burner - it’s not what I signed up for. - How should I approach this with my landlord? I want to stay on her good side because my rent is below market value. - If she refuses to replace it, can/should I replace the central air myself? I can’t keep living like this 😭

Thank you in advance.