The Coffee Shop

When I was much younger, we had a building on the worst corner in town.  It had been a hangout since time immemorial, but in addition to all the people hanging on the corner every night, there was tons of litter – plastic cups, wrappers, etc. from the coffee shop next door. So one day, on the spur of the moment, I decided to pop into the coffee shop and ask the owner if he could put a trash can outside his store to help with the litter problem. 

What I walked into took a few moments for me to process.  There, in a space no larger than the average bathroom, it seemed like fifty black men were standing cheek to jowl, shouting and passing dollar bills across the counter to the coffee shop’s owner.  Without missing a beat, with one hand still taking money and shouting orders, and every eye on me, I saw the owner apprise the situation:  who was this crazy white girl in his shop just before post time?  Surely the cops wouldn’t have sent her. 

Just then a man’s booming voice laughed “M, what you doin’ here?” It was Mr. J, one of my tenants!  With that, the tension in the room dissipated.  I quickly stammered that I could see the owner was busy, but I just wanted to ask if he could put a trash can outside his door. I’ll stop by another time when it’s quieter...  I then beat a hasty retreat.

He never stopped taking bets, and never acknowledged me, but the next day there was a trash can outside the door of the "coffee shop". 

Over the Moon

Sometimes you get to know more of your tenants than you want.   There was Mr. B, elderly but tall and burly, who’d fallen and couldn’t get up.  His sparrow of a wife frantically called the rental office. “Please help me get my husband up”.  She neglected to mention that he was on his hands and knees, half in and half out of the bathtub, stark naked & stuck.  Couldn’t get in, couldn’t get out, couldn’t get up.  

I didn’t get the whole picture over the phone, so I sent my assistant, S, to help the man up.  S, who only weighed 100 pounds herself, now found herself jostling for position in the tiny bathroom, trying, with Mrs. B, to get the Mister up while not touching any personal parts.  Which was quite a trick, since a really big butt was filling up the doorway. And try as they might, he wouldn’t budge. S finally called the police for help, which is probably what the wife should’ve done to start with, and we should’ve done once we realized the (ahem) enormity of the situation. 

Can you imagine how S felt when the cops came in and got the picture?  Kind of like I felt when the police came and saw the deceased Master B. That must’ve been another fun day around the police department water cooler.

Y Don't U Call?

In the last few years I’ve noticed an unprecedented amount of no-shows.  It’s always been that people who make appointments on Friday for Monday would only have a 50% chance of showing up.  But now it’s gotten down to those who make appointments on Monday for Tuesday.  Heck, I even lost a few going from one building to another, when they were supposed to look at more than one apartment!  I’d be standing at the second location like a jerk.  15 minutes later, and a No Show.  

I’ve thought about it.  Our apartments are in good shape (really!), so it’s not like I’m some slumlord whose apartments  turn people off. 

I’ve thought it’s just me, burned out and cynical after all these years, and sending off a “bad landlord” smell, so bad they can smell it over the phone. So I’ve gone out of my way to be extra-nice to the ones who sound decent.  So sleekly treacly I make myself sick.  Ick!  So I’ve semi-ruled that one out.

It’s mostly the under-30 crowd.  So I have a theory.  I think it has a lot to do with the internet and cell phones.  On the net, nobody’s real, you can say anything, and you don’t have to face anyone.  With cell phones, hey, you don’t even have to be on-time for something important.  You can just make a call (or, better yet, text) make up some lie, and get there late.  Can’t be checked up on, because nobody knows you’re really still home cleaning your toenails when you say you’re in traffic.  But, you know, just because we can’t prove you’re lying, it doesn’t mean we believe you. 

Recently I was at a restaurant with a friend, and she was only halfway through her lunch when she offered to pack the rest of it so I would be on time for an appointment.  I told her not to bother, that they weren’t going to show.  But she did anyway.  And they didn’t. 

So I've made a new appointment rule:  I tell the applicant that I won't be there unless they call me 15 minutes prior to our appointment to confirm it.  As expected, quite a few never make that call.  But the new rule keeps my blood pressure under control.

I bet restaurants have the same problem.  

J the Fix-It Man

J could fix anything.  He was the last of a dying breed of tinkerers.  Whenever a tenant would leave behind something that was broken, but fixable, D, our maintenance man, would say “Let me bring it over to J.  He can fix it.”  I have no idea what became of that stuff after J tinkered with it, but I think D brought most of it just to give J something useful to do in his retirement.

J was, in a way, a father-figure to D.  They both fixed things, and D would often stop in on his days off to check on J, or do his food shopping when he couldn’t get around. 

So it was sad, yet fitting, that D was the one who found J dead one morning, still in his bed.  But sadder still were his children, who I never saw or heard from in the 15 years J was a tenant.  Two of them showed up in my office and accused D of stealing from their father. 

What a joke.

Fairy Tale or Miracle?

K was an 18-year old looking for a small apartment. She said she couldn’t live with her mother anymore – which rings my bell as “I refuse to live by my parents rules”.  But something about her was different.  There were no body piercings, no tattoos. She had a job. It didn’t pay much, but it was steady. She wasn’t pregnant, didn’t have a baby or a “fiancé” in the shadows. She was clean & spoke normally.  So I told her if she could get a strong co-signer, I’d rent her one of my rent-subsidized apartments. An aunt co-signed.

She told me she did have a boyfriend, that he was in the Navy, and she was a religious Christian, very involved in her church.  You can bet I’d heard the “religious” part before.  But she moved in, the neighbors didn’t complain about noise, traffic or dirt, and aside from her fairly regular phone calls about miscellany, it was going okay.

A few months later, K told me she was going to court to try to get custody of her 8 & 11-year-old siblings.  Did I have a bigger apartment, because the judge would want proof that she could house them.  Now starts a series of what, even now, I think of as amazing circumstances, miracles if you will.

First of all, what family circumstances are so dire that a judge would even consider, much less award, custody of two little kids to an 18 year old sister with an entry-level job? Second, I had not had a 3-bedroom vacancy in at least 10 years! But I had one now, and two prior applicants had failed the screenings, so it was available.  I wrote the judge that she had an apartment waiting, and to call me if he needed verification.

And you know what? This young girl, just a kid herself, came back with the court papers signed, and was absolutely thrilled to be able to take care of her brother and sister!  The kids came with only the clothes on their backs, no beds, winter coats, or change of underwear.  No responsible parent, but they did have this loving sister, a caring congregation, a landlord who knew where to get needed stuff, and a court system which was pulling for them. 

And they all lived happily ever after.  (Well, maybe just till the kids became teenagers.)

Master (S.O.)B.

Mr. B. was an arrogant s.o.b. He had such an imperious attitude that I nicknamed him “Master”, and pointedly  kept our conversations short.  He felt he was everyone’s intellectual superior, and would often try to bait me:  "Are you a college graduate?"  "Do you read the New York Times?"  Meanwhile, he was living alone and miserable, in a dirty, unkempt apartment, without any visitors. Oh, yeah, in one of my apartments, the one who didn't do the NY Times crossword in ink.

But one person appreciated Mr. B.  The Widow K. lived above him.  She was a retired factory worker, and now lived in an immaculate apartment.  She found opportunities to chat with him, and her face lit up when she spoke about him.  It reminded me of high school girls dreamily writing “Mrs. Thomas B”, or “Katherine B” on their notebooks, surrounded by little hearts. Watching her fluttering around him would really tick me off, because I knew what Mr. B. thought about her. About everybody, actually:  In his opinion, none of us, even Mrs. K., were his equal.  My opinion was that Mrs. K. was his superior, and he was a jerk.

One day, Mrs. K. came to my office.  "I'm really worried about Tom."  (She affectionately called him "Tom". Yuck.) His newspaper and milk have been outside his door since yesterday."  Never a good sign.

It was a late winter afternoon, and as I approached their building, I looked in Mr. B’s windows. His lights were off.  They should’ve been on by then. As I entered, a few of the other elderly tenants peeked out their doors.  I tried to be discreet, as I didn't want them upset at what I expected to find.

I used my passkey.  Light from the hall illuminated his living room.  I could see his outline in the dark apartment, sitting in his chair, immobile, with his pants around his ankles.  He was apparently enjoying a private moment at the time of his demise. 

Because I had to call the police, Master B's final indignity was undoubtedly shared by many around the police department's water cooler.  I’ll say no more.  But you know, his last name should've been "Bates".  ;D  

The Police Blotter

Back in the day, before there was instantaneous internet access to everyone’s personal data, before we had internet at all, our screening criteria included checking the newspaper’s police blotter.

We did have an applicant release form, which we brought to the applicant's local police department.  They would write in any criminal records they had.  But just as important was the blotter, because there were some quality-of-life issues that didn’t always show up on those forms.  Additionally, there was personal information in the blotter we could corroborate with the application we were considering, and being a matter of public record, it was legal for us to include it in our screening.  

In that pre-electronic age, we would literally cut each day’s blotter out of the newspaper and paste it in a scrapbook by date. We then made index cards with each person’s name mentioned, referencing the date(s) they made the blotter.  We alphabetized the index cards and when a person applied for one of our apartments, we’d look for his name on our index cards.  You could learn a lot about people from their blotter entries: repeated public drunkenness, fighting, domestic disputes, drug connections, not all of which resulted in an official record with the police department.

It seems like a lot of work today, but then it was just another part of our day and screening process, and saved us a lot of mis-steps in renting.