Three Bermudian families, including a three-month-old baby, are being threatened with eviction by their landlord in Sandys after complaining about the state of the house, which only has electricity in two rooms and is missing several windows.

Four adults and four children live in the three-bedroom house on Scott?s Hill Road including Charlita Campbell and her six-year-old daughter.

Ms Campbell and the other tenants recently contacted the Environment Ministry after sewerage started oozing out of drains.

?When they left they described the house as deplorable and took a lot of photos,? she said.

She said following this visit the landlord threatened to evict them, saying he needed to fix up the house and couldn?t have any tenants living there.

?We?ve met with him since and he agreed that we could stay, but on the condition that we pay him rent in advance each month,? she said.

Ms Campbell said they had no rental agreement since moving into the upstairs apartment last August and added that despite the visit by the Department of Health, the landlord would not fix up the house, of which the overflowing sewage is just one of many problems.

?Only the kitchen and one of the three bedrooms has electricity and when we moved in all the windows were boarded up with nails. When we removed the boards the window panes fell out so we had no choice but to put the wood back,? she said.

She added that the window in her bedroom only had half a pane of glass in and it rained into her room unless she taped up the window with plastic.

Ms Campbell said she shared the house with a family for four who lived in one bedroom, a mother and her three-month-old baby in another room, while she and her daughter lived in the third bedroom.

?There is only electricity in two of the rooms and we have extension cords running around the house from the kitchen and even in the bathroom. Outside the electrical wires are also just stuck to the outside of the wall and run up to our apartment,? she said.

She said the rent was $1,500 a month which was divided up among the three families and they couldn?t afford to live anywhere else.

?Rents are so expensive that none of us can afford to live in our own places, so we share,? she said.

Despite the cramped conditions she said they were all friends and lived quite happily together and even had plans to fix up the apartment themselves if they had the money.

?We were going to spend our own money fixing up the house, just to make it more liveable, but now that we have to pay the rent in advance, we won?t have any money to spare,? she said.

Ministry of Works, Engineering and Housing?s public affairs officer, Valerie Pethen, said there was no reason for tenants to be living under these conditions, especially in a property that was rent controlled.

She encouraged all tenants in these situation to contact the Rent Commissioner?s office at 297-7700 to find out what their rights are in this situation.

?Once they have established what their rights are, I suggest they contact their Members of Parliament for the Sandys constituency,? she said.

MPs in the area are Terry Lister, Walter Lister, Dennis Lister and Michael Scott.

?MPs are there to help the people in their constituencies and this is something that residents seem to have forgotten,? she said. Ms Campbell said they had approached the Rent Commissioner who had suggested they write a letter to the landlord threatening to withhold their rent until he fixed all the problems in the apartment.

?But we?re afraid if we do that he?ll kick us out so we?d rather not,? she said. She added that they had no other choice but to live under these conditions unless someone helped them find another place.