Apartment / Landlord Stories

[thebigcheese]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/59147/

Story time! Everyone gather round...I don't really have any horror stories, but I have kind of a funny one.

Once upon a time, I lived in one of those 100 year-old, semi-ghetto houses in Provo. It was owned by a local family, and they all lived off the rent of several homes and small apartment complexes in the area. The guy in charge of our house lived in the basement and he was a pretty chill dude, but his sister was a witch. Unfortunately, she was the one who handled the cleaning checks. One day, she was in our house doing cleaning checks. We were pretty thorough, by my standards, but it sure wasn't good enough for her! She saw a couple of small gray scuffs on one of the walls, and she just about lost it.

"MOTHER WOULD JUST DIE IF SHE SAW THIS! SHE WOULD DIE, ALL OVER AGAIN!"

I thought that was hilarious (Who says that?). She then proceeded to give us a rather lengthy lecture about tape and dryer lint, telling us that we were trying to destroy her house and her livelihood. I don't exactly miss her...but the house was awesome.

Anybody else got stories?

[C is for]

My roommate campaigned to have our manager fired. I can't remember all the grievances (she ... was a difficult person) but here are a couple things that happened:

1. In my first year living in that complex, the plumbing blew up in #10. We were in #6, directly below them, and started flooding. #2, directly below us, started seriously flooding. It took them a while to fix it. In the meantime we used the kitchen sink and I think one of the showers was unaffected.

2. In my second year, maintenance came in to do something to the shower and completely broke it. We sent down maintenance requests every week for three months. When the real maintenance guy (as opposed to the fake ones she kept sending to "fix" it) came by, he was really mad that she'd never told him about this problem. And we only had one shower for 3 months.

Oh, and it appears that in my first summer there we lost hot water twice a week.

It also really bugged me the way she always left a note that said "Congradulations" when we passed our cleaning checks.

[Unit of Energy]

My current apartment did not have a doorknob for two weeks. The same thing happened when I lived in the apartment next door last year. Yeah, I have lots of stories I could tell about my current complex. But the ward is awesome, so I stay.

[Craig Jessop]

My landlord "lost" one of my roommates contracts and told him on Wednesday he had to move out by Friday. Strangely, they didn't seem to lose his payments, and he could prove he paid them. He still had to go.

Nobody moved into his spot. It's still empty.

[vorpal blade]

I lived in an apartment where we shared the kitchen, living room, and bathroom with a "family." Being young and naive I didn't realize for a month or so that the widow in the next bedroom was actually a street walker, and the living room was really a waiting room for customers. And the landlord was really more of a pimp. Actually, we weren't in our apartment much of the day, but the widow liked to...maybe I've said too much. My companion was unhappy when the mission president made us move, so I don't think I ever told my companion who it was that informed the mission president of the true nature of our apartment. Later he told me he knew what was going on there...he just didn't care, being French.

Does that count as an apartment/landlord story?

[NerdGirl]

Does that count as an apartment/landlord story?

I would say that counts as one of the craziest apartment stories I've ever heard!

[bobtheenchantedone]

Most of my roommates have peed on my bed.

[thebigcheese]

Most of my roommates have peed on my bed.

I hope your roommates are dogs...

[bobtheenchantedone]

Most of my roommates have peed on my bed.

I hope your roommates are dogs...

Nope. Two cats and a five-year-old (who is six now and doesn't wet the bed).

[Dragon Lady]

I was supposed to answer this question on request of Yellow, but I forgot until an hour or two after it posted. So I answer it here.

At BYU-Idaho I lived in an apartment that was ridiculously cheap on rent. So I guess I should have expected horror stories. There was mold growing on the bathroom ceilings. And it was textured, so if we tried to clean it off, the ceiling fell down upon us. It was gross. Late one Sunday night they came by and told us they were replacing our bedroom carpets at 8 am the next morning, so please have everything out of your bedroom and into the living room by then. Only two of us were home, so we did ours, then left a note for our roommates because we had 8 am classes and would be gone before they came and we'd be in bed before our roommates got home. They didn't see the note (or chose to ignore it, I don't quite remember) and I came home the next day to find that the carpet people moved everything out for them. There were piles of dirty laundry mixed with clean laundry EVERYWHERE. Furniture was spread throughout the apartment. To wash our hands in our bathroom sink (which was more a vanity in the hallway) we had to reach through the shelves on a desk. One roommate washed her hair in the sink, so that was really entertaining to watch her climb through the desk shelves. Then they didn't replace our carpets for another day or two. And took their sweet time doing it. So we got to live in those conditions for a few days. Oh, and the two of us that moved our stuff out ourselves? Well, our stuff was buried under everyone else's. So we couldn't get to it for a few days.

Several really great managements later, I moved into a house with Heartless Siren. Oh boy. Those were some fun times. Great house. That's where we had all the Board parties. Crazy landlady. One time our electricity went out. On a Sunday, so of course she couldn't do anything about it. (Also she lived in California, so she had to call people to do things.) But it only went out in half of our house. So we had extension cords running all over the place. We even had ward prayer there that night. So we had lamps with extension cords running throughout the house. So, that wasn't management's fault at all. But not getting it fixed for a week was funtimes. They finally fixed it (which included a $1,000 labor charge because of all the things they had to do to bring the electricity up to code. Which made us feel bad for Landlady because that was all the rent she got from us for the entire summer) and all was well. For another few months until it went out again. She took another week or so to finally get someone out there only to find out that the last guys had installed a new breaker box OUTSIDE and didn't tell us. So it was simply that a breaker was flipped. We felt really stupid. Ok, but that wasn't management's fault either. (Well, the making us wait for a week or two was.)

One day I accidentally dropped my toothpaste tube lid down my bathroom sink. (There was no plug.) It still drained just fine, so I didn't do anything about it. Months later it started to clog, so I enlisted Yellow's help. The only thing to do was to take off the drain pipe and fish the lid out. The drain pipe was so old and rusted that Yellow twisted it apart with his bare hands! (And a wrench.) Six weeks later she finally got a plumber out there to fix it. Yes, I was without a bathroom sink for six weeks.

In order to get a repair done, we always had to call at least 3 times. Typically Heartless Siren would call and tell her (because she was home during the day where I was not) and Landlady would say she'd take care of it. Several days later Heartless would call again and typically leave a message. Then I would call a few days later and Landlady would say something like, "Oh. I didn't realize it was that big of a problem!" And then it'd get taken care of. When we left her voicemails, we would wait several days before she called us back, then at least a week before the problem got fixed. (It was an old house. There were lots of problems.)

Once we were almost evicted without our knowledge because we weren't students. She had mentioned to us once that it might be a problem, but she'd submitted something to BYU and hopefully it wouldn't be a problem. So I assumed she'd let us know if there were any problems. Months later our local contact (a girl in our ward) mentioned something about us moving at the end of the semester, which I was completely shocked by. When she realized I didn't know what she was talking about, she clammed up until I finally dug it out of her. Turns out Landlady had asked her to post contracts for Summer because we weren't students and thus would be leaving. We had one month of notice that we found out about quite by accident. I had to be the one to call Landlady and let her know that so long as we were attending institute, we were allowed to live in student housing. So she let us stay. A little warning would have been nice, though.

Then there was an incident with cats. I won't go into details lest I get worked up, but we had kittens inside one bedroom (it was an emergency They-Need-A-Home-Now and I tried calling Landlady for a week, leaving voicemails every day telling her I had an urgent question for her and she didn't call back for a few weeks) for awhile. We were in the wrong in that after Landlady said we could keep them, so long as they were outside cats, we kept them inside the bedroom for a few more weeks. (It was freezing outside and Heartless was afraid they'd freeze to death.) But we took them out and left them out there for the rest of the time. We had a friend who was allergic to cats, so we vacuumed thoroughly, then we got a roommate allergic to cats (she was another friend and knew we had cats before she moved in) and she had no problems at all with any remaining cat dander.

I moved (cuz I got married) and Landlady came to Utah to visit her kids and came by. She called and cheerfully told me (or maybe Heartless?) she was cleaning the carpets. We were thrilled. It had been years since they had been cleaned. Then when she left, she handed an envelope to another roommate (who replaced me when I moved out) which turned out to be the bill for the carpets that she wanted Heartless and I to pay for because of "an overwhelming smell of cats." No warning at all. We thought it was ridiculous because the cats stayed in Heartless' room the entire time, they hadn't been in the house for months, two allergic people had spent time in the house with no problems and no one had ever complained of a cat smell.

I was also irritated that we had to pay for the carpet cleaning because a) I have a brother that is a carpet cleaner and would have done it for cheaper and b) only the two of us were required to pay for it. I'm ok for having a carpet cleaning fee, many apartments state that they'll keep $X for carpet cleaning, but she didn't, written nor verbally, nor were any of the other roommates ever charged a carpet cleaning fee.

Oh, and let's not even talk about how it took her 3 months to get us parking permits (that we ended up paying for) when the city imposed parking regulations for overnight in my neighborhood. 3 months of having three cars in a single-car wide driveway was funtimes. "Ok, who is leaving first tomorrow morning? Let's go play musical cars!"

[sigh] I really, really loved that house despite it all. It was the home of my first garden away from home. It was the first place I bought and planted flowers and mowed the lawn (away from home). It inspired a board question ("Where I can I buy a doorbell?") that inspired the Board to reject yellow page questions. It had the most awesome lair (a hidden cellar in the living room floor). It's where I first met Yellow (and many other Board writers). Someday I should write up an equally long something about all the good things about that place (and yes, even the good things about Landlady) just to remind me of how much I loved it.

[vorpal blade]

Dragon Lady - your apartment stories sound really bad. I was an absentee landlord for a couple of years; it is hard to remember that when your tenant complains of a stove that is giving trouble that you don't have the leisure to think about it for a few days, or forget to do something about it. But your landlady seems exceptionally bad.

Bob - I think you need a sign up in your room that says "I don't sleep in your litter box...." Yeah, that ought ot help.

[Marduk]

Ok, this is technically a roommate story, but you guys might get a kick out of it anyways, so I'm posting it here. Suck it, rules of decorum!

So shortly after Christmas last year, our previous roommate having been evicted for deciding to move back to Texas and not telling the management, we got a new roommate. Despite my apprehension at meeting new people, when it is just one in an environment I'm already comfortable with, I really have no issue. So I was ready to meet him.

My first encounter with (uh, let's call him Marcus) was in our kitchen. He was standing in the entry way, staring absent-mindedly down the hallway. I came into the kitchen and extended my hand to him, with a greeting "Oh hey! The girl in the office said we were getting a new roommate. My name is (Marduk)."
He said and did nothing, not even acknowledging my extended hand. I thought, ok that's a little odd, maybe he's just having a bad day or something. So I went to my room to get ready for work.

He followed me shortly after, about 15 minutes or so. He knocked on the door, so I opened it, and he walked past me into my bedroom. I thought that was a little presumptuous, so I asked him, "Can I help you with something?" Pointing to my computer, he said "Can I use your laptop?" A little annoyed, I responded, "First, that's a desktop, not a laptop, and I don't really like other people using my computer (which is true)." "Oh, ok. Can you give me a ride to the airport?" "Uh...when?" "In like 5 minutes." "Um...I have work shortly, so no."

I then proceeded to go to work, after having to basically help him out of my room. Another roommate got home after I left. I'll relate his experience too. We'll call him James. James gets home, and Marcus immediately asks him to take him to the airport. James also has much to do, and hence declines. But, being the helpful sort, offers to help him arrange a ride. So he gives Marcus a number to a shuttle service. Marcus asks to borrow a phone. He calls the number, then says "I need a ride to the airport. Goodbye." So James grabs the phone and dials the number again, and actually gives the pertinent information this time. James says "it is gonna be thirty bucks. Do you have any money?" "Yes, I have credit card. (Pulls out an ATM card.)" "Uh, no, that's not gonna work. Let's go get you some cash."

They drive to an ATM that's just around the corner, which Marcus refuses to use. He only trusts Zion's bank ATM's. Frustrated, James drives him across town to Zions ATM. Marcus gets out, pulls open his account, withdraws $100, and then gets back into the car. James looks at the ATM, which is still open to Marcus' account, so that any random passerby could access it. James gets out and closes the account from the screen, noting that it has over $2000 in it.

The three of us (James, myself, and another roommate) continue to have unusual experiences with Marcus. These include: requesting help in registering for classes online, despite having no account, direct questions answered with only stares, disappearing for days at a time, having absolutely no bedding or clothing for winter (remember, it is January), etc.

This comes to a head one late night, around one A.M. James remembers seeing him leave around 8 A.M. that morning, with nothing but jeans and a t-shirt. 15 hours later, he still has not returned. We are trying to discuss what could possibly be wrong with him, brainstorming ideas and sharing stories about him. He enters, and we start pelting him with questions.

"So, how's the school registration going? Did you get registered for classes?" No response.

"Did you find a job? I know you said you were going to." No response.

"Where have you been man? We've been worried." No response.

We wander off to a different part of the apartment, leaving Marcus in the living room, staring at a wall. James calls the phone number he was given by Marcus, to see if he'll answer. (both of us with him are surprised that he even has a number) Rings through to a full voicemail, so James hangs up. We all head off to bed, as confused as ever.

The next morning, Marcus having disappeared again, James' phone rings. It is the number from Marcus. He answers. "Who is this?" "Uh, this is James. Do you know Marcus (last name)?" "Yeah, he's my brother." "So, uh, not sure how to ask this, but... is he, uh, ok? I mean, is there something wrong with him?" "Oh, he hasn't told you?" "He hasn't told us much of anything, to be honest." "He's a paranoid schizophrenic. He went off of his medication suddenly, and left town. We haven't heard from him in two weeks (which is about when he showed up)."

We never actually saw Marcus again, although about a month later, James recieved another call from his brother, and was told that Marcus was in jail and not to bail him out. To this day we still don't know exactly where he is or what finally happened.

[vorpal blade]

That's a strange story, Marduk. I'm sure The Black Sheep would have known what was wrong with Marcus, but I didn't. It would make you worry if you had a brother like that. Guys like Marcus are not prepared to cope with this world.