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Re: Attack of the Landladies

Posted by noa on April 28, 2003, at 17:21:24

In reply to Re: Rules for life according to the cheshire cat » whiterabbit, posted by fayeroe on April 27, 2003, at 22:07:12

I had a psychotic landlady once. I mean that literally. Only it turned out she wasn't even the real landlady!!

It was actually owned by her mom, who set her up in a condo, where she recieved her social security check and, I'm sure, other financial support from her mother.

The mother lived in another state.

I was desparately seeking a place to live. The place I was renting was being sold and I was being evicted. I was quite poor then, and therefore very limited in what I could afford. And, typically you had to pay--up front--first and last months' rent plus a security deposit equal to one month's rent AND very often a "finder's fee" (a real racket!!) equal to one month's rent. I searched high and low. Part of the strategy was getting up really early on Sunday mornings to look in the ads and then calling right away and bouncing over to look at the place, hoping to be the very first person to see it.

So I call, and a realtor tells me about the place. Like the place I was being evicted from, it was rent controlled, but it was way cheaper than what I had been paying (the rent control rules about rent levels were based on a frozen moment in time in 1970 and had nothing to do with the apartment itself). It was, in fact, cheaper than dirt-cheap. It was so absurdly cheap, I was beside myself. So, she takes me to see it. It was a mess, but the market was tight, and, of course, it was cheap, so I took it. The next day, I met the "owner" and signed the lease, set up day to move, get keys, etc.

Well, when I got there to move in the mess was 1000 times worse. She had left no working telephone number to reach her at, and I paid the rent via the realtor, who forwarded it to her. I called the realtor about the junk left in the apt. and she agreed with me that I should leave anything of any value in the building basement, and just throw the rest away. So I did. And I cleaned and cleaned, etc.e tc. and made it decent. It was still roach-infested and drab but I was working on that stuff. It was in a great neighborhood, a safe building, and oh, yeah, did I mention that it was cheap?

A few days after I moved in, the craziness began. The "landlady" showed up at the front door. She wanted me to collect her SS checks for her and forward them to an adress clear across the country. I asked why she couldn't have them forwarded herself (I suspected more or less why, but still thought she owned the place). I refused anyway.

I promptly changed the locks on my apartment door.

Then, she came back and wanted to know what I had done with her "stuff". By "stuff" she means the mess she left when she supposedly moved out and I moved in. I told her that I had moved anything salvagable to the basement and she could retrieve them there (a mattress and a radio I think were the main things). The rest I had thrown out (trash and literally a three foot high stack of dirty dishes, etc.--ain't that ironic now?!).

Then, she started calling me to harass me about her "stuff". I stopped taking her calls, so she started calling my workplace and telling my boss I had stolen her radio.

Then it would be quiet for a while until she began calling in the middle of the night from accross the country, COLLECT!! Calling collect and thinking that I'd accept the charges really speaks to how crazy she was.

I was beginning to get spooked about all this when I got a call from the actual owner of the condo, her mother, who notified me that I needed to leave in 30 days. When I said I had a year's lease she told me it was invalid because her daughter had no legal right to lease the place because she was not the owner. She also told me that her daughter was schizophrenic. I guess I could have sued the realtor for leasing me a place without the owner's knowledge or consent, but it never even occurred to me back then. I wonder if the owner sued them.

Luckily, I did manage to find another place to live, just by sheer luck, although it again involved the first, last, security and finder's fee, which was especially a racket because the "finder" did not FIND the place for me, I found him and even worse, he was really the OWNER in every way except for the legal loophole created by his family by putting the building "in trust".

The whole thing was rather traumatic, but frankly, my whole housing situation in those years was crisis ridden due to my financial situation and the tight housing market.


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