I cannot and will not comment on the specific situation of the original poster, but I will post some general information about Oregon law that may be of interest.
Under the law of Oregon, a tenant can generally recover damages against a landlord if the premises are uninhabitable.
ORS 90.360(2). A dwelling unit is considered uninhabitable "if it substantially lacks ... adequate heating facilities that conform to applicable law at the time of installation and maintained in good working order".
ORS 90.320(1)(d). This statutory cause of action is analytically distinct from a claim of negligence. See
Waldner v. Stephens,
200 P 3d 556, 562 (OR Supreme Ct 2008). Under a special statutory cause of action such as this one, "[n]egligence is irrelevant" and the only issue is whether the elements in the statute are satisfied.
Doyle v. City of Medford,
337 P 3d 797, 825 (OR Supreme Ct 2014) (Walters, J, concurring) (quoting
Chartrand v. Coos Bay Tavern,
696 P 2d 513, 517 (OR Supreme Ct 1985)). Furthermore, the courts may not supplement the statute by adding requirements not found in the text. See
ORS 174.010 ("[T]he office of the judge is ... not to insert what has been omitted").
In 1998, the Supreme Court of Oregon took the above principles to their logical conclusion and held that a residential landlord is liable for uninhabitable premises even if the landlord was not aware of, and was never told about, the problems.
Davis v. Campbell,
965 P 2d 1017. The Legislature of Oregon was displeased with that holding and overruled it by amending the statute to specifically state that a landlord is not liable if "[t]he tenant knew or reasonably should have known of the condition and failed to give actual notice to the landlord".
ORS 90.360(2)(a). However, the Legislature did not overrule the more general principle behind the
Davis ruling, which is that, as discussed above, for the purpose of the statutory cause of action, it does not matter whether the landlord is negligent; it only matters whether the dwelling is uninhabitable as defined in the statute.
Court decisions from other states are not binding on Oregon judges, but it is still instructive to observe that California has a similar statutory scheme and, under that scheme, the California Supreme Court has expressly held that "where ... a landlord has notice of alleged uninhabitable conditions not caused by the tenants themselves, a landlord's breach of the implied warranty of habitability exists
whether or not he has had a 'reasonable' time to repair".
Knight v. Hallsthammar,
29 Cal 3d 46, 55 (1981) (emphasis added). See also
City of La Grande v. Public Employees Retirement Board,
586 P 2d 765, 782 (OR Supreme Court 1978) (Tongue, J, dissenting) (noting the value in Oregon decisions being "consistent ... with decisions by the courts of other states", where possible).
From the above principles, we see that "What is a reasonable length of time to go without heat?" is the wrong question. The right question is: Are the premises uninhabitable as defined in
ORS 90.320(1)(d)? If the premises are uninhabitable, the landlord is generally already liable for damages, regardless of whether the landlord has been negligent in resolving the problem.
As mentioned above, a dwelling unit is considered uninhabitable if the heating facilities are not continued in "good working order" as defined by "applicable law".
ORS 90.320(1)(d). The "applicable law" presumably includes residential and building codes governing the provision of heat in residential buildings. At the moment, I don't have time to delve into those codes to figure out what the "applicable law" governing adequate heating facilities might be in this case, but hopefully the above information is nonetheless of some assistance.
Make sure you read https://www.osbar.org/public/legalinfo/1256_GettingRepairsMade.htm
It specifies 7 days for various things, and 48 hours for emergencies ...
The part of the page that you are looking at is describing the conditions under which a tenant is entitled to end the tenancy prematurely (commonly referred to as "breaking the lease"). The requirements for
that are more stringent than the conditions for the landlord being required to compensate the tenant financially, as described above.
