From what I’ve been able to find in my short time researching this, many states allow tenets to withhold rent from their landlord if the landlord fails to make a rental habitable.

There are a couple options here.

1. You simply stop paying rent entirely. In some states, a failure to make a home habitable is grounds for a tenet to prematurely terminate their lease. The landlord can still try to evict you, but this is often a drawn out process, and the entire time the property will be burning a hole in their pocket. This is ultimately a gamble that the property owner will choose to repair the property as the most cost-effective solution, and to avoid potentially being sued for uninhabitable conditions (but that assumes the tenants can collectively afford to sue them). Also, the tenets could appeal the eviction, citing the uninhabitable conditions to a judge, and hope that the Judge sides with them and negates the eviction despite the lack of paid rent.

2. You and your fellow tenets continue to make rent payments to a court, a neutral third party, or an escrow account set up by a local court or housing agency, which withholds payment from the landlord until the repairs are accomplished.. This is legal in many states, which would make the rent strike legally protected, and make an eviction attempt null (as far as I can tell, I’m not a lawyer!)