<prompt> Human: Ill give you a little context here, I am a grad student living in a small studio apartment. I moved across the country to come to grad school in the South because I got a full scholarship to a school I am very excited about. Before I accepted their offer I came to visit for a couple days to check out the school and look for an apartment. I had to find an apartment fast because the next time I would be coming back would be on the day I was going to move there. Luckily I found a small studio apartment that had cheap rent and was in a good location.Unfortunately I have since discovered that the utility bills for the apartment, specifically the electric bill, are very very high. My electric bills for the last four moths have been 120,170, 270, and then 70 respectively. I dont spend a lot of time in the apartment, and I turn everything off when I leave. I leave most appliances unplugged when Im not using them, and only ever have one or two lights on when Im home. I have a computer I use pretty frequently that is hooked up to a power strip that I turn off if Im going to be gone for any extended period of time. The house that the apartment is in has central air, and it runs a lot during the hot Southern summer, which I assumed to be the culprit. The problem is that the air conditioner doesnt seem to be particularly effective. It struggles to keep the apartment cool and on hot days it cant seem to get the indoor temperature down to where the thermostat is set. Say its 99 outside, and I set the thermostat to 75, the actual temperature will hover around 85 all day while the air conditioner chugs away.I brought this up to my landlord, and he had his mechanic look at it, but supposedly theyve done all they could to improve the effectiveness of the air conditioner. Its winter now so it has cooled off a bit, but those bills crushed my meager grad student budget.As a student, I live off of student loans that are dispersed four times a year, and my budget is designed to get me from disbursement to disbursement. Im going to come up short on some bills before my next disbursement in large part because I hadnt budgeted for an electric bill in the hundreds. My peers in similar apartments and often much larger apartments pay 40 to keep their apartments cool in the same heat. Its clear that my landlord has no intention of replacing the air conditioner or doing anything more to improve my condition. So my main questions is, is this a reason to break my lease early and find a new place? If challenged, is this a legitimate grievance or am I opening myself up to a whole new world of hassles by trying to leave early?  <response>: You should check the state laws on habitability, but I highly doubt that an inefficient air conditioner would count the unit as uninhabitable. Sorry.ETA: Heres a summary of habitability laws by state: Many states just require any landlord-supplied air conditioner to operate, which yours does so I dont think youd have a case in those states. Some states only give you remedies if the defect affects your health and safety, you may have an argument there but in my lay opinion not a very strong one.A few states, such as South Carolina, require that the landlord-supplied air condition be in good condition, in which case you may have cause to terminate the lease but you need to be prepared to prove your case to a judge if the landlord pursues you for damages or you want to sue the landlord; depending on the state law your remedies may be limited to breaking the lease without penalty. A thorough reading of the statutes andor a lawyer may be able to provide more details on your options.In summary, you may have cause to break your lease but it is highly dependent on state laws and your ability to prove that the inefficient air conditioner violates them. 