Good Fences, Part 1: The Building Next Door

Everyone who owns real estate sometimes has to deal with bad neighbors, and there’s not much you can do about it, because you don’t own their house.  In the past, we’d had some iffy neighbors, but this one was the worst.

I was looking longingly at the Building Next Door (BND) to another building that we owned. It wasn’t just megalomania, although I’m sure that entered into it, somewhat.  The BND had a gangway that went from the sidewalk, through the backyard, and into the parking alley.  The tenants in our building couldn't throw out their garbage without either using that neighbor’s gangway or walking around the block.  So the BND started looking mighty attractive, despite it being a crack house.  Well, actually, because it was a crack house, and we wanted to control the problem. 

However, two years earlier, when we were renovating our building, the owner of the BND came to us.  He had recently inherited it, and would sell for $8000.  It was a four family in need of some work, but The Man and our partner must have been having brain farts, because they decided to "talk him down" to $7500.   When he held firm to $8000, we "walked". He sold the BND to someone else, and we all lived to kick ourselves & each other firmly in our collective butt.

It was the ‘80s, a time of insanity in Hudson.  Crack had come to town with a vengeance.  People who were previously sober, dependable residents went crazy.  And, under new ownership, the BND, its yard, and the alley behind it became so infiltrated with crackheads that it was locally dubbed “Crack Alley”.  This naturally caused us a lot of problems.  It was hard to get or keep good tenants at our building because of all the adjacent drama.  And, in keeping with the fine old tradition of other retail districts (i.e., the Diamond district, the Flower district, Wall Street) we were now developing a following in the Crack district. So, a lot of applicants for our apartments were crackheads.  (It’s too bad the Section 8 program didn’t allow landlords to charge for applications.  We would’ve made more money rejecting applicants than we did renting apartments during that blitz.) Crackheads were taking shortcuts from the street to the alley through the gangway.  The BND became a thoroughfare, and, adding to the problem, the building on the other side of it was vacant and unsecured, and became a shooting & smoking gallery. 

I mentioned to the new owner of the BND that the police would get tired of coming to his building with all the fights, drugs, etc., and that he should clean out those tenants.  And one day the city did come and close his building for violations. At the same time, the police took the landlord into custody for questioning.  He was so unnerved by that experience he asked if we would buy it.  It was 2 years after we’d rejected it, and he now wanted $24,000 for a building in worse shape than when we could’ve bought it for $8000.

We bought it.

Building Inspectors from Hell: Revenge of Mr. Colonoscopy

Lady living in a garden apartment (see 9/20/10 post on euphemisms).  Hottest summer on record.  Complains that her apartment is so damp that her kitchen cabinet shelves warped.  And there’s mold on all her stuff.    

“Do you use your air-conditioner?”

“I don’t have one.  It stays pretty cool if I keep the windows closed.” (!!!)

I give her an air-conditioner.  I pass by her window often, doing yard work.  No hum from the unit.  Seems she’s saving electricity by turning it on only when she’s home.  She also doesn't use the kitchen, dining room, or bathroom fans.  Same reason.  Saving money.  

Few weeks later I get another call:  she was gone for a week, came home and is still wiping mold off the kitchen cabinets. 

“I need a dehumidifier.”  I explain an air-conditioner is a dehumidifier, but better, because it doesn't fill up with water, then shut down until you empty it.  But if she doesn’t keep the a/c on, it can’t work.  And it would be a big help if you moved air around by using the fans in your apartment.  

No, she checked with “people” and they all said a dehumidifier works better.  How?  With pixie dust?

One day in December I get a letter from the building inspector, Mr. Colonoscopy.  He's condemning the apartment for mold.  She apparently got the bright idea to call the Health Department, which called the building inspector.  In a comedy of errors, the Health Dept. guy said he'd notify us of 30 days to remedy, but never did.  (Yes, I have his apology in writing.)  Since we weren't aware of the wheels turning, 30 days later (to the minute), Mr. Colonoscopy fires off a condemnation letter, and mails it to me at home, at my office, and at the property.  Two copies each:  certified and regular mail.  6 letter in all.   It was like the owl mail delivery in Harry Potter.  Those letters were coming in the doors, coming down the chimney...and it was the first inkling we had about the problem. 

What the tenant didn't realize was, once that apartment was condemned, she had to move out.  Immediately.  She cried that she liked the apartment and didn't want to move, but, Oh, Well.

In any case, Mr. Colonoscopy wouldn't extend us more time to remedy, accused us of cleaning up the apartment (no, the tenant just moved all her crap out:  the only mold was on the soft goods and her clothes, not on the walls or floors.)  and called me a liar when I said we didn't do anything, and to look over the pictures he took to see where the mold actually was.  He said he'd only be satisfied if we installed a very expensive air exchanger ( which wouldn't solve anything if the tenant didn't turn it on, just like the air-conditioner and fans).  We were so frustrated at his idiocy that we just left the apartment vacant.  For years. Until he retired.  I would've been in jail if I had to keep dealing with him. 

In the end, we cut holes in the walls, pulled out all the kitchen and bath cabinets, removed the carpeting and replaced it with vinyl flooring, all in search of the elusive mold.  Four years later, still no mold.   But lots of lost rent. 

So, Mr. Colonoscopy, if you're still alive and reading this, you should be happy.  You got your revenge.   

Units

When did apartments become units?  You hear it all the time, from public housing, to condos, to large high end multi-family buildings.  At some point, "unit" replaced "apartment".  Now, admittedly, apartment is not personal enough, either.  Not like house, definitely not like home, and not even like multi-family building. Yet all of those convey, to some degree, the idea that people live there.  Unit removes all human connotation.  I don’t know if it started to make developers sound more important, or just to remove the human component from the business aspect of rental housing.  But when you think about all the history, all the families, all the lives lived in an apartment through the years, "unit" just doesn’t do it justice.

Might as well be storage units.

The Three Tenants, Part 2: Tangled Webs

So, yes, the truth was out there, but questions, answers, & stories remained:

1.  The boy admitted leaving the garbage.  So why did the white woman blame the black man, when she clearly didn’t see him doing it?  (a) Was it racism?  No, because she’d dated black men herself.  (b) Was a flirtation spurned? (She was a bit of a dog.) Or (c) was she just a pathological liar and troublemaker?

The answer is “c”, and maybe “b”.  I know that because my attorney was apparently also hers.  She went to see him for something, and during the course of their conversation, was complaining about her landlord.  She told him she was moving as soon as her lease was up.  He called to give me a heads-up about an unhappy tenant, in case I wanted to try to resolve her complaints. Problem was, she had no lease.  All she had to do was give me the usual 30-days’ notice, and she could go.  So why bother to lie about it? And why was she still here?

2.  My secretary, who was in the office the day the man stormed in, asked me why I would apologize to a tenant.  She thought I should never apologize to a tenant.  I thought she had grown another head, and it went a long way towards explaining her lack of people skills.

3.  The guy in the house had presented himself as a writer.  He was really an unemployed, lying and b.s.’ing slob.  He left owing rent, and the house was trashed (which also helps explain the son).  He was also delusional.  

One day my son, who was an impressionable 18-year-old at the time, told me he met a guy in Burger King who started talking to him about his writing, blah, blah.  My son was really impressed -- impressed enough to relate this story to his mother, who he usually managed to ignore.  I told him not to be so awe-struck, because I recognized the guy by my son's description.  This was the same slob who lived in the house that my son helped clean out recently.  The hot-shot eating at BK should’ve been a clue.


"O, what tangled webs we weave..."

The Three Tenants

I know.  It sounds like the start of a borsch-belt joke.  Or they should be singing.  But there really were these 3 tenants: a middle-aged white woman, a middle-aged black man, and a divorced guy and his son.  They all lived on The Mountain, as we dubbed a complex with an 8-apartment building and 2 houses. 

Recently, bags of garbage began appearing on the porch of the apartment building.  That was weird on a couple of levels, because the dumpster was on the way to the parking lot, and people there were usually pretty respectful of each other.  So why would someone drop his funky trash where everyone else would have to step over it and smell it?  We picked up the first bag.  We picked up the second bag.  By the third bag, we were getting pretty ticked off.    

We started asking around.  The white woman told me that she saw the black man doing it.  OK, I thought, that seems out of character, but by now I have a whole bunch of weird tenant experiences. I wrote him the usual “landlord” letter, it has to stop, could be grounds for eviction, etc., blah, etc.  And one very angry black man appeared at my office door, barely containing himself.  

He asked me straight out:  “Look at me!  Do you think I am the kind of person who would do such a thing?” 

"Well, actually, no.  That’s why I was so confused.  But another tenant said you did, and she saw it." 

I didn’t dare identify the tenant.  They still had to live near each other.

No, he said.  The son of the guy in the house does it.  He’s too lazy to walk to the dumpster, so when his father sends him to throw the garbage, he drops it on the nearest porch.

Now that made perfect sense.  I apologized profusely.  Should’ve known better, trusted my own gut, and verified before accusing. 

So there were these 3 tenants, and 1 landlord who didn’t think before she inserted her foot in her mouth…

Not Married, with Children

Somewhere in the mid-80s, I started having people call who were looking for apartments for themselves and their fiancées.  At first I would naively ask when the wedding date was.  It took a while for me to figure out that “fiancée” was a euphemism for “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” 

I started saying “if I had a nickel for every 'affianced' couple who calls here…”, and shortly thereafter got a coffee can, cut a slit in the top, and set up a Fiancee Jar. Every time someone would come in and use that meaningless phrase, I’d drop a nickel into the jar.  After about a year, we donated the jar of cash to the Red Cross. 

There was about 20 bucks in it.  How deeply do you want to think about that?

Oldtimer's Disease

C kept locking herself out.  Sometimes it was just outside the self-locking main building door.  When that happened, she’d ring neighbors’ bells until someone let her in.  But when she locked her keys in her apartment, she had to call me.  I only found out about all the other half-lockouts when I commented to a neighbor that I was worried, because it seemed to be happening more often.

By the time I realized how frequent it was, I was starting to worry about her faculties. C and I go way back, but neither of us is getting any younger, and our memories – see, I just had to go back and re-read this to remember what I was writing. 

Anyway, I suggested she leave a key with her sister who lives a few blocks away, but her sister was developing Alzheimer’s, so that wasn’t a good idea.  My other solution was to hide a spare key somewhere in the hall, so once she got in the building via a neighbor, she could use it to unlock her apartment door. 

A few months later, I checked under the hall pot I remembered hiding it in, and it wasn’t there.  And inevitably I got another call.  As I unlocked her door, I reminded C that she must’ve used and never replaced the spare I had hidden.  She, on the other hand, was congratulating herself because she didn’t lock herself out as usual.  Her purse overturned in a friend’s car, and she apparently didn’t see her keys when she was putting all her belongings back into it. Her friend found the keys, and she was happy that, even though the end result was the same, i.e. she was once again locked out, it wasn’t because she forgot them this time. Still, I was annoyed that the spare was removed from its hiding place, and made her promise to make and hide another.

While I was still self-righteously harrumphing around about it, it dawned on me that the hall closet might be a better hiding place for the future key.  I went to check the closet for something to hang a key on, and there, already hanging from a nail, with an accusatory glint, was the key I’d accused C of removing from the other location that I thought we used. 

Apparently neither of us remembered that, in the all-too-recent past, the hall closet was already our agreed-upon hiding place.  Oldtimers Disease.