A house rented cannot stand.
I know that landlords -- whether it's one person or a property management company -- generally don't fall all over themselves to make any needed repairs, no matter how much damage their property may incur as a result of not making said repairs in a timely fashion, or how wide open to lawsuit(s) they may leave themselves if any injuries occur as a result of their negligence.
I know this.
I can chuckle (now....) at the fact that we -- and the families immediately adjacent to us in our building -- were nearly blown sky-high when one of the complex's more imbecilic handymen came to our house a couple of years ago to diagnose the faulty pilot light on our gas oven, and flicked his Bic inside the oven with the gas turned on. Fortunately his boss was with him at the time, and thus was able to dope-slap him and hand him a flashlight.
I can philosophically shrug at the fact that it took the management of the townhouse complex where we've lived for the last eleven years some four or five years to replace our central air conditioning unit. I can even give come to terms with the fact that, almost a week after we finally had air, our basement flooded because the numbnuts who installed the new unit didn't bother to clean out the condensation pipe, and the water backed up and leaked into our basement. (This makes the second flood in less than a year's time; the previous one was due to the valve on the hot water heater giving way -- all at once.)
I can almost understand that the complex hasn't swiftly sent handymen (or, better, carpenters) to repair the basement staircase: this past week, one of the basement stairs finally gave way entirely, causing my wife to fall to the bottom, with a hugely obese handyman ("hugely obese" in this instance meaning: "fatter than my wife or me;" ha-HA!) right behind her on a stair that remained firm. I see the reasoning why said "brawny lad" proceeded to jump up and down on each remaining step to test their strength, and why he found it necessary to remove the braces that my wife and eldest son had hammered in some months ago, thereby allowing the entire staircase to shimmy like a drunken hoochie-koochie dancer: he had to prep it for repair-work. I can almost forgive this maintenance man's failure to report my wife's fall to the office, as he promised to do, and fill out an "incident report," in case my wife suffers any injuries from it.
Sidebar time: Anyone who has even a nodding acquaintance with my wife, if only through this LJ, knows that she suffers from a bewildering welter of confusing, sometimes contradictory ailments, injuries and surgeries, as well as a still-undiagnosed systemic, apparently auto-immune, illness (take your pick: she's been diagnosed with borderline Crohn's disease, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis); last Saturday (9 July), she dislocated her shoulder, and has been undergoing physical therapy that has made it worse. You don't have to be Dr. Kildare to guess that falling down four or five steps with a dislocated shoulder isn't going to do your shoulder (or your neck...) any favors.
The limits of my understanding have been surpassed, however, by the fact that the management and maintenance staff of our complex is totally unconcerned with the fact that several sections of our upstairs ceiling began leaking water due to the heavy rainstorms we experienced today, including two sizeable patches in the master bedroom.
Now, I can understand why most landlords, even landlords of tenants who've never been late in their rental payments or had any of their various neighbors complain about them (though gods know we've gotten along with precious few of them) in over eleven years, may not toss and turn at night due to worry over their tenants' weal.
But I fail to comprehend why a landlord doesn't even fucking care that their own claptrap, cheap-jack, shit-ass rental property is about to collapse around their tenants' fucking ears; at minimum, one would think that the landlord would evince a modest concern about (a) having a property to rent and (b) not getting their conniving, money-grubbing asses sued for all they're worth in court.
The cynic in me whispers that (a) rental income is nice, but a healthy tax write-off ain't chopped liver, and (b) they have piles more money to throw at shysters than we do: having a judge and/or jury rule in your favor may provide a certain amount of moral satisfaction, but you can't take moral satisfaction to the bank. In other words, it can be a long and dusty road between being ordered by a court to pay and actually making said payment.
So, what do you prefer? Renting, and thus not having any equity in your domicile and being obliged, perforce, to constantly fight, wheedle, nag, and threaten to get your landlord to make any repairs? Or owning (or, given the niceties of the American mortgage industry, "owning"), and thereby having all repairs be on your nickel, having less leverage if your neighbors turn out to be total fuckholes, and, depending on the type of mortgage you have, being utterly at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the economy and the whims of the Federal Reserve?
Shit. I think I may have to order some books from Loompanics; Build a Yurt is sounding better and better these days. If I can find some place to build a yurt that's not a "brownfield" (i.e., former toxic waste dump), occupied by a meth lab (and, hence, in the process of being turned into a brownfield, ha-HA!), or overrun by survivalist nutjobs.
Yeah. Sure. Piece'a cake.
I know this.
I can chuckle (now....) at the fact that we -- and the families immediately adjacent to us in our building -- were nearly blown sky-high when one of the complex's more imbecilic handymen came to our house a couple of years ago to diagnose the faulty pilot light on our gas oven, and flicked his Bic inside the oven with the gas turned on. Fortunately his boss was with him at the time, and thus was able to dope-slap him and hand him a flashlight.
I can philosophically shrug at the fact that it took the management of the townhouse complex where we've lived for the last eleven years some four or five years to replace our central air conditioning unit. I can even give come to terms with the fact that, almost a week after we finally had air, our basement flooded because the numbnuts who installed the new unit didn't bother to clean out the condensation pipe, and the water backed up and leaked into our basement. (This makes the second flood in less than a year's time; the previous one was due to the valve on the hot water heater giving way -- all at once.)
I can almost understand that the complex hasn't swiftly sent handymen (or, better, carpenters) to repair the basement staircase: this past week, one of the basement stairs finally gave way entirely, causing my wife to fall to the bottom, with a hugely obese handyman ("hugely obese" in this instance meaning: "fatter than my wife or me;" ha-HA!) right behind her on a stair that remained firm. I see the reasoning why said "brawny lad" proceeded to jump up and down on each remaining step to test their strength, and why he found it necessary to remove the braces that my wife and eldest son had hammered in some months ago, thereby allowing the entire staircase to shimmy like a drunken hoochie-koochie dancer: he had to prep it for repair-work. I can almost forgive this maintenance man's failure to report my wife's fall to the office, as he promised to do, and fill out an "incident report," in case my wife suffers any injuries from it.
Sidebar time: Anyone who has even a nodding acquaintance with my wife, if only through this LJ, knows that she suffers from a bewildering welter of confusing, sometimes contradictory ailments, injuries and surgeries, as well as a still-undiagnosed systemic, apparently auto-immune, illness (take your pick: she's been diagnosed with borderline Crohn's disease, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis); last Saturday (9 July), she dislocated her shoulder, and has been undergoing physical therapy that has made it worse. You don't have to be Dr. Kildare to guess that falling down four or five steps with a dislocated shoulder isn't going to do your shoulder (or your neck...) any favors.
The limits of my understanding have been surpassed, however, by the fact that the management and maintenance staff of our complex is totally unconcerned with the fact that several sections of our upstairs ceiling began leaking water due to the heavy rainstorms we experienced today, including two sizeable patches in the master bedroom.
Now, I can understand why most landlords, even landlords of tenants who've never been late in their rental payments or had any of their various neighbors complain about them (though gods know we've gotten along with precious few of them) in over eleven years, may not toss and turn at night due to worry over their tenants' weal.
But I fail to comprehend why a landlord doesn't even fucking care that their own claptrap, cheap-jack, shit-ass rental property is about to collapse around their tenants' fucking ears; at minimum, one would think that the landlord would evince a modest concern about (a) having a property to rent and (b) not getting their conniving, money-grubbing asses sued for all they're worth in court.
The cynic in me whispers that (a) rental income is nice, but a healthy tax write-off ain't chopped liver, and (b) they have piles more money to throw at shysters than we do: having a judge and/or jury rule in your favor may provide a certain amount of moral satisfaction, but you can't take moral satisfaction to the bank. In other words, it can be a long and dusty road between being ordered by a court to pay and actually making said payment.
So, what do you prefer? Renting, and thus not having any equity in your domicile and being obliged, perforce, to constantly fight, wheedle, nag, and threaten to get your landlord to make any repairs? Or owning (or, given the niceties of the American mortgage industry, "owning"), and thereby having all repairs be on your nickel, having less leverage if your neighbors turn out to be total fuckholes, and, depending on the type of mortgage you have, being utterly at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the economy and the whims of the Federal Reserve?
Shit. I think I may have to order some books from Loompanics; Build a Yurt is sounding better and better these days. If I can find some place to build a yurt that's not a "brownfield" (i.e., former toxic waste dump), occupied by a meth lab (and, hence, in the process of being turned into a brownfield, ha-HA!), or overrun by survivalist nutjobs.
Yeah. Sure. Piece'a cake.