It's INCREDIBLY unlikely there's anything in your lease that would allow that (if there is, the owner/manager/whoever handles new tenants isn't doing their job)
How is your relationship with whoever it is that has the say on this? (is it a property management co., or is it the owner of the property / someone who works directly for him?)
I'm unsure whether a legal argument can be made to protect yourself if you just left and refused to pay, but I highly doubt it. This is a scenario where your options are very likely limited to:
- just leave and deal with fine(s) and/or credit damage,
- stay and deal with it (perhaps try and 'fix' things a bit - not necessarily as hard as you may think), and, your best hope at a happy resolution,
- work it out with the manager/shot caller involved (they are almost certainly holding all the cards, legally - they will need to want to help you because it's very unlikely they have to. They'll want to if they're sympathetic to you, or if they just want you gone as a tenant - and that can be achieved w/o breaking the law <unethically, some would argue, but legal nonetheless AND probably ethical to you considering how you feel right now. whether you should've figured this out b4 signing a lease and what that implies wrt responsibility is clearly not so cut and dry ethically ;P )
PM me if you'd like - I have experience setting up (and eliminating) tenants in gang neighborhoods, and have worked with plenty of these scenarios.
Not wanting to sound harsh here but you knew the area before moving in and you willingly signed a contract for the year. As nothing has happened to you personally and you therefore have no proof (police report etc) that the area is dangerous then I would say your stuck. Your best bet is to be completely honest to your landlord and see what they offer.
even if something happened and reports were filed, that's not some ticket to break the lease. The only possible way that'd go down would be: incident happens, they leave, landlord files against them, then it tons of court back/forth. Nobody (including/especially the landlord/owner) wants that. In bad neighborhoods these scenarios are quite common, and the owner - if he's not a moron - has ways of dealing with this (NOT because he's a good guy, necessarily, but simply because he doesn't want to have people stop paying and have to take them to court, nor does he want pissed off tenants living in his property and fucking the place up because they hate him. Hell there are plenty of scenarios where it's best to PAY people to move out!! Trust me the owner cares about his business <and, perhaps, about you>, and that's the way this is best resolved)
