When I took my current job, it involved a major move on almost no notice. When I came for my interview, I took it as a good sign that the department had put together a packet (read: binder) of information for me…guidelines for all of the majors at my university that require chemistry…information about benefits…a folder from the local chamber of commerce with information about the school system, things to do, etc…and a flyer tucked in the back advertising a house for rent.
I inquired about said house, and the landlady sent me pictures. The place was ADORABLE. It looks small, but is a 4-bedroom house with a recently remodeled kitchen, a finished basement, and a garage. Two of the bedrooms are upstairs, and thus could easily be closed off and/or used for storage, while I use the ground floor and basement as a perfectly me-sized house. And it was…<drumroll>…$700/month!!!
Of course… “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Did I mention I was hired a mere two weeks before classes started?
And I was moving from Toronto. A place where the rental market is HIGHLY competitive (my absolute unwillingness to compete for a shitty downtown apartment is precisely why I wound up living for 4 years in a tiny-but-marginally-less-shitty apartment in the suburbs), and thus one must act fast to lock down a good place. At this point, I want the house. I am doing everything I can to try to get deposit money to this woman so that I can guarantee I have it. My stuff was already packed…I just wanted to find a home and move into it and get on with my life.
Even though she explains that the utilities bills will stay in her name, and be sent to her in Colorado. So I will be expected to mail my checks to her in time for her to mail checks to the utility companies by the due date.
Oh, and she had talked to someone else about renting, but determined it wouldn’t be a “good relationship.” She always rents by word-of-mouth, to temporary faculty and such, she doesn’t rent to “just anybody.”
O…K…
Still, I want the house. So I explain that I live in Canada, and all of my funds are Canadian, so I’ll need to figure out how to get a deposit/first and last month’s rent/etc. to her. IN COLORADO. I ask if she has a PayPal account…
"No. And I refuse to get one.”
O…K…
And she launches into an e-mail tirade about how she needs to know my move-in and move-out dates so she can draft a lease to send me, and all she gets from me is all of this information she doesn’t need to know about my finances, and yadda yadda yadda. She also leaves not one, but SEVERAL messages to this effect on the machine of the friends with whom I am staying.
Also, one of the stipulations of the lease agreement will be that the neighbor kids are not allowed to play in her yard. She has the biggest yard in the neighborhood, and the kids all want to play there, but the neighbor mom has sued her once already when one of the kids got hurt on her property.
Oh, and a previous tenant had been told he couldn’t paint one of the bedrooms. She had done it in some sort of (horrible sounding –ed.) denim finish for her son. She still hopes to come back to, at the very least, retire to this home and wants nothing changed. In fact, there will be a clause in the lease that prohibits me from making any changes. Former Tenant apparently mentioned to a neighbor that he was going to paint this bedroom anyway. But, “word got back to me that he was going to do it and I put a stop to it.”
So…you’re saying that your neighbors will be spying on me and/or suing me. At all times. Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.
Um…what. The fuck?
This is about the time that I say, “I don’t think this is going to work out. Perhaps we should go our separate ways.”
“I agree.”
End of story, right?
Nope.
A few days later, I have another e-mail from her. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I have been looking at the real estate listings, and all of the apartments are either in bad areas or too far from campus. I feel for you…you are young, and I am willing to try to work this out. We just need to work on better communication.”
Um, bitch? You crazy. I don’t think so.
“Thanks but no thanks. I’ll take my chances finding a place on my own.”
We finally go our separate ways.
I move to my town, and set up shop in a hotel so I can start work and house-hunt. There is a complex that I have been told, multiple times, only rents to faculty, staff, and professional students. The sign in front of said complex says, “Now Renting”
So I give them a call. They say that there is one apartment that just became available.
Again, coming from a competitive housing market and now literally homeless, I ask when I can come see it.
This is the point where I feel it is relevant to point out that this is the only apartment complex I have found that I am ELIGIBLE to live in. Everything in this town falls into one of the following categories:
1. Student housing (too old for that shit)
2. Retirement housing (too young for that shit)
3. Low-income housing (too rich for that shit)
4. Home ownership (too smart for that shit)
So basically, if I don’t want to get stuck owning property in a small, dying Michigan town…I NEED THIS APARTMENT. So I look at it. It smells bad and the cabinets are older than my mother, but it has a nice layout, a dishwasher, and a nice big deck out back. The property manager assures me the previous occupant has JUST moved out, and they haven’t had a chance to clean it. It will not smell like Pet when I move in.
I say I will think about it.
But by the next day, I’m pretty sure there is nothing else for me in this Godforsaken town.
I call back and say I will take it. Again, I am used to a MUCH more competitive housing market…the manager seems taken a bit aback by my desperation. She does not understand that I AM LIVING IN THE HOLIDAY INN, Y’ALL.
No one should have to pay seventy bucks a night for a roof over their heads. I don’t care if they do clean it, make your bed, and leave you wee lotions while you’re at work.
So it’ll be at least a week before my apartment is ready. <sigh>
Finally, I sign my lease and take possession of my new home.
And it smells like fucking Pet.
At first, I thought I could get used to it. But I spent about an hour in my new home before I started to get an asthmatic reaction to the lingering allergens. <sigh>
So I dash off an e-mail to my property manager:
Me: Dude, I can’t live like this. Like, asthma. Seriously. Can you clean the carpets again, or maybe get them replaced?
PM: We will have the carpets replaced on Monday.
Can I get a whoop whoop for good customer service???
So I spend one night sleeping on an air mattress on the exposed carpet padding in my dining room. Then go out of town for the Labor Day weekend…and come home to fresh carpet.
A year later, my apartment still smells weird, but it is the weird chemically goodness of brand-spankin’-new, heavily StainMastered carpet. Meanwhile, I have settled in. I swabbed down the linoleum in the kitchen and the bathroom with vinegar (to remove the last ammonia-riffic traces of what I have to hope were Pet accidents). I have bought under-cabinet lighting and a kitchen cart to make my ugly kitchen functional. I have hung pictures and posters on my walls…put up window treatments for privacy and hominess…changed the window treatments and sheets in the bedroom because I realized I couldn’t hang my favorite poster with the ones I had…cleaned out and actually started to furnish and decorate my back bedroom/office/sewing room.
Then the neighbors changed.
Over the course of the last few months, I have had to deal with:
1) Screaming matches downstairs, followed by slammed doors as both of them leave to presumably tell their friends what an asshole the other person is. 48 hours of continuous howling by their neglected dog ensues.
2) Perfectly nice-seeming downstairs neighbor knocking on my door when I was home sick and unloading a sob story about his cheating girlfriend with WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION…all as a prelude to asking if he could borrow my phone. Dude, KEEP THE PHONE FOR ALL I CARE…JUST STOP TELLING ME THINGS I DON’T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR HORRIBLE LIFE. A few days later, watched the guy she was cheating with move into the apartment…when the ex had just moved into the building next door. Bitch, have some class.
3) Unnecessarily loud comings and goings, often around 4am when I am trying to sleep with my windows open. A typical conversation proceeds as follows:
“Please don’t pee on my car.”
“I’m not going to.”
<sound of peeing on what one can only assume is the maple tree right outside my window>
IF YOU ARE IN MY PARKING LOT, SURELY YOU HAVE A FRIEND THAT LIVES HERE. AND SURELY THAT FRIEND HAS A FUCKING TOILET.
Oh…my bad. You might have to climb TWO AND A HALF STORIES to get to a toilet that flushes, and you just have to pee. The tree is certainly the best option.
4) The morning symphony of birds singing…breeze rustling the leaves of the trees…and wretching somewhere in the distance, presumably in my parking lot. Because indoor wretching should not carry through my open windows.
5) My next-door neighbors (also faculty, and lovely, quiet neighbors, expecting their first baby) moving out because the people living upstairs from them appear to be the source of 3) and 4). Apparently, there has been wretching on our stairwell, but on stairs I (blissfully) never need to ascend or look at. Said neighbors are apparently not limited to peeing on trees and (not) cars…they also like to pee off of their balcony. ON THE THIRD FLOOR.
6) Unusually large numbers of unusually large flies in my apartment. Specifically, around my patio door and kitchen window. I go outside and look down…to find an entire box of dirty diapers stored just outside Downstairs Bitch’s patio. WHO STORES DIRTY DIAPERS IN A CARDBOARD BOX??? OUTSIDE??? WHEN THERE IS A DUMPSTER LESS THAN 50 YARDS AWAY???
7) Two cinderblocks, carefully stacked just below my fire escape. Because this is apparently an acceptable alternative to remembering to take your keys.
8) A completely random, approximately 19-year-old drunk kid opening my front door this afternoon because he thought it was his buddy’s.
“Um, HELLO??? GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
<door closes>
I deadbolt it.
<door knock>
I open door. Nobody there. I slam door shut and deadbolt it.
<door knock>
I open door (honestly expecting an apology, if not from Random, from one of his friends). Nobody there. I call upstairs, “Are you guys having fun?” as one of Random’s friends says, “you are a retard.” Slam door. Repeat.
<door knock>
FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.
What I REALLY want to yell is, “I hope you’re in my class this fall, asshole.”
Today I started doing three things: writing angry letters to my landlords, and deadbolting my door, no matter how full my hands are when I come home from Meijer.
And thinking seriously about getting the hell out of this town. Damn 2-year contract…
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