Run for cover or run to win

[sovay]

The building inspector came this afternoon. About ten minutes before he arrived, so did the landlord and one of his contractors.

Questions of temperature and security were properly a matter for the health inspector, the building inspector said after looking at the situation, but he got our landlord to agree to replace all sixteen necessary windows in the apartment in order to bring it up to code—if not, he would have no choice but to write our landlord up for code violation. The contractor roughed out a timeline and told us what he'd need to do and everybody went home.

adrian_turtle and I wrote and mailed that afternoon a letter to our landlord thanking him for agreeing to replace the sixteen windows on the timeline we were given to understand by the contractor. We mailed a copy to the City of Somerville as well. I don't trust handshakes.

I went to see Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, and Gary Cooper in Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living (1933) at the Brattle with derspatchel. It was marvelous. I didn't think you could make jokes about first base even in pre-Code films, especially to Edward Everett Horton's face. Or say the word sex and mean it. I wanted to come home and write about it.

I got out of the movie to find a set of texts from Adrian: the landlord had called her twice. Refusing to replace the windows. He was offering to fix them. It had been previously established that there was no acceptable, i.e., code-compliant fix but to replace them. He couldn't afford it, he said. Didn't we know it got cold in winter? Didn't we understand how paying for heat worked? We were being unreasonable. This was Somerville. If we didn't like it, we could go somewhere else. Either way, he wouldn't do it.

I have left a message for Inspectional Services. I am done with handshakes. I want paper and ink and I want it on record that it is not naïveté on our part to expect the apartment we are paying nearly two thousand dollars a month for to retain the temperature we set the thermostat to, not bleed it all out the windows. We may no longer have a salvageable relationship with our landlord. (He seems to regard me as the unreasonable one. I am fine with that.) We may not have an apartment when this is done, or at least not this apartment that we were beginning to make a home. That is a source of great anger for me. I had come to love it already, stupid cater-corner closet and all. But the landlord is not invested in letting it be our home, nor perhaps a home for anyone, if he really believes the cold is not his problem and the nice paint and the new floors are all we should content ourselves with—surfaces, not substance. And I will not settle for surfaces. And Adrian is calling a lawyer. And I hate all of this.

Comments

[aedifica]

I'm so sorry to hear that your landlord is being such a jerk! Argh. I'm glad you guys are standing up to him, but I wish it weren't necessary.

[thistleingrey]

ach. I so wish that this house-moving had gone smoothly. Good thoughts for you and adrian_turtle.

[sovay]

I so wish that this house-moving had gone smoothly. Good thoughts for you and adrian_turtle.

Thank you. We really weren't expecting this.

[kate_nepveu]

That is indeed hateful. Very sorry to hear it.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG
HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG
HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG

I am very sorry to hear about the landlord. Let me know if I can help in any way.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

He is being a scumbag. Having a weatherproof house in a cold climate is a necessity, not an optional luxury. If he can't afford to do the repairs then I guess he can't rent out the house! He certainly can't charge $2000 a month for an uninhabitable place, that's for sure.

[sovay]

He certainly can't charge $2000 a month for an uninhabitable place, that's for sure.

The worst part is that it is otherwise a very beautiful apartment. The light is good, the space is good. adrian_turtle's friend who came by last night to help tarp up the windows remarked on it as soon as she came up the stairs. It's not a firetrap or a roach motel. But it is still not an apartment that can be more than sublet for the summer if it doesn't hold heat.

[kraada.livejournal.com]

I think the really worst part is that 16 windows would run him (on average) less than three month's rent. (Source: http://www.homewyse.com/services/cost_to_install_window.html) - and if he can't even do maintenance to an apartment equivalent to that cost, he's really not cut out to be a landlord.

I sincerely hope he gets his ass handed to him by the town and pays well more than that in fines.

[weirdquark]

When I had to deal with replacing windows in a Cambridge condo to make them be up-to-code and match the windows required by the building the windows cost ~$700 each and that doesn't include installation cost. But that was in an apartment building; if the landlord has a house type apartment he might not have to get that particular kind of window; depends if the building requirements were based on the city or if it was just what they did when replacing the windows in the units that were rentals instead of condos and it was wanting everything to match.

However much windows cost, however, it is unreasonable to not replace them; it does get cold in winter and that is why we invented not only a way for heat to make the rooms warm but the technology to have windows with a working seal to keep the heat in.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

*hugs* for you
whacks upside the head for the landlord.
His actions are completely unacceptable - the place has to be habitable and up to code. I guess he's going to get written up for a code violation. And hopefully have karma bite him in the ass, too. When Adrian talks to the lawyer, make sure she asks about the legalities of withholding rent, because you should not be paying anything for this if at all possible.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for a happy ending.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Unprintable scuzzbucket! He's been ordered to comply.

I hope Inspectional Services takes off its mild-mannered suit and changes into Implacable Nemesis, Foe of Landlords: who will rip the bastard into bleeding shreds.

*hugs*

*hugs*

for you and Adrian.

Let me know if I can help.

Nine

[sovay]

He's been ordered to comply.

He was not ordered; he was strongly suggested. (I don't want to write you up, it'll be a headache for me; you don't want me to write you up, it'll take you to court; why don't you head this off by just replacing the windows, it will make everybody happier including your tenants who called me out here and then we can all get back to our lives.) It did not take.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

This is old boys' network talk. Find another apartment. I am dead serious.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I am so sorry to hear this. The landlord is vermin, and makes the most obnoxious and unreasonable publican of my acquaintence sound like a near-saint.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

If you really want to entertain yourselves, you can use city hall records to figure out when he bought the building, at the very least, and in some cities you can figure out the mortgage and whether it's paid, and nail him when he starts with the crocodile tears about going broke. Although I have to tell you, top of the line replacement windows run $2000 each. That is insulated sash windows pop-in type. I assume that there is not so much rot that a window guy can't pop a new window and frame in. Screens extra. Andersons are cheaper and they fog.

The inspector should have cited him. He may have given the impression he is doing you a favor by not doing so---would you be allowed to continue living in a building deemed uninhabitable?---but the landlord is probably well known to the office already, this kind of behavior does not come from nowhere.

Arrange to have someplace to go if the landlord shows up and vindictively removes windows or something. Seriously.

I advise you not to be angry, but to remember that the landlord has been in the community for a long time, and he is embedded there like a tick. He is their tick. You have to keep in mind that these guys have webs of buddies and networks of vague obligations and Catholic schools and old friends of the family kind of like the Mafia, and you only are regarded as a human if you are in those networks. It is sad but true. Students and tenants are meat.

Everyone has a shithole apartment story. (Many of them involve Somerville or Brookline, isn't that odd.) You have learned a lot about how to rent an apartment from this. You have learned to look at everything carefully, tediously, open and close every door and window and check that every outlet works and the water and plumbing are functional. Better to do that now, believe it or not, than later; and it's better you found out about this place now rather than taking possession in mild weather (when you'd be all, "Wow, place is noisy, huh?"), getting really settled and then having the situation become clear next autumn.

[kraada.livejournal.com]

From what's been stated, I think it's pretty clear this guy is not going to install top of the line windows or anywhere close to it. He'll install the cheapest crap he can get away with.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. He'll either find other used windows and put them in, or possibly if the windows could be made to work by, say, screwing the top sash to the jamb and screwing some wood across the bottom sill so that the bottom one technically "closes." Something really good like that. I am wondering if there was some kind of rot problem. The gut remodel is concerning, especially moving walls around.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Thank you for describing the bad apartment situations of your experience. We are in a bad apartment situation, but it seems to be quite different.

On another note, I try not to pre-judge people as untrustworthy simply because they are Catholic, or belong to a cohesive ethnic groups.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I am sorry you think I am pre-judging him for whatever reason. He is a typical New England landlord who has been working and living in that town for a long time and has no reason to want to please a transient tenant. My citation of church membership was simply an example of the kind of community tie and network he has, which would also include friends he went to school with, in-laws, family, longtime associates of his associates, etc. I have that same kind of thing going on sometimes myself, I know how it works. It is great when it is on your side. If you can't get it to work for you, you just have to respect its power.

Looking back through your collective remarks about this, the weird questions about your personal habits were a red flag. Unless you're living in the same house as the landlord (you know, a multi-family apartment situation), on a septic system, that was really inappropriate and weird.

You do not have a lot of pull here. You can be nice and he will ignore you and do nothing. You can fight for your "home," but it will always belong to him and he will be a hostile and unpleasant landlord.

Why do you want to rent from someone who treats you like this?

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

All sympathies about the apartment.

On a lighter note:
I didn't think you could make jokes about first base even in pre-Code films, especially to Edward Everett Horton's face.

There's a movie called King of Jazz (1930), an early-sound, early-colour, plotless revue of musical numbers and blackout routines. Edward Everett Horton appears in one of the latter, asking his girlfriend's father for permission to marry her:

Father: Can you afford to support a family? After all, two can well become three, or more.
EEH: (pauses) Well -- we've been lucky so far.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I believe the only applicable response would be: Jesus, what the fuckitty fuck.

Man, I am so sorry. "This is Somerville"...where people are just tougher? Where people don't need heat to survive in winter? Wow, the things you learn!/obvious sarcasm.

Uggggh, I wish I could do something.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Is there some centralized website where people can name slumlords and apartments and warn people what they're in for (with photo evidence if available) if they ever rent from so-and-so? (Granted, there's always the risk of libel, but there ought to be some way to do it.) It seems like in a community like Somerville it might go some way toward redressing the imbalance of power.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

There were once rumors about a blacklist of tenants.

A landlord-rating website would be pretty hilarious, especially if landlords were encouraged to post rebuttals. It could also totally blow up in everybody's face, of course!

I believe there are ways to look up code citations and stuff, but whether it's publicly cross-referenced by owner, I don't know. The building departments always, already, know who the worst offenders are.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Also, maybe it's just that I lack the special something that would make me a good slumlord, but I still can't see how this is an intelligent financial decision on your landlord's part. Expensive as new windows may be, surely it must be more profitable to actually rent the apartment than to have a constant stream of hopeful tenants withholding rent and then running for the hills. Not to mention less time-consuming.

I mean, it's one thing to cut corners, and another to make the apartment actually uninhabitable.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Calling a lawyer sounds like the exact right thing to do. My sympathies!

[zdenka]

*facepalm* Sorry to hear it. That is clearly not okay.

[beowabbit]

That’s appalling!

You should absolutely check with your attorney before acting on this, and I’m sure there are all sorts of is that need to be dotted and ts that need to be crossed, but I have a notion that in Massachusetts, if your apartment is not habitable for long enough, you can (1) put rent in escrow until you are provided with what your contract and (more importantly) Massachusetts housing law say you are due, and/or (2) find other housing and charge your landlord for it. (If you try anything that confrontational, I’d recommend documenting carefully the state of the apartment and your stuff in it, since your landlord is an scumball and he has a key to your home.)

If adrian_turtle hadn’t already found somebody, I’d have a lawyer or two to suggest.

(And if I weren’t halfway through a slow house reorganization of my place, I'd have a warm place for one or the other of you to stay for a few days now and then as needed, albeit in Quincy. But if things get desperate, ping me.)

[sovay]

If adrian_turtle hadn’t already found somebody, I’d have a lawyer or two to suggest.

We will take suggestions anyway.

Thank you.

Tenant's rights attorney's point of view

[phippslaw.livejournal.com]

Hi, I stumbled upon your conversation and let me preface this with you should follow the advice of your attorney (if you have one)and discuss with him/her any information I present that may conflict with any advice.

A landlord's ability to afford to keep a unit they are renting in compliance with the code, is not the court's concern. If the landlord can not afford to fix a code violation, the unit shouldn't be on the market, its really that simple.

Tenant's have many rights, many of which the tenants are not aware of and do not know where to turn. Landlords get away with sidestepping the laws regarding conditions and security deposits simply because tenants do not know they are entitled to damages.

I like many landlord tenant lawyers will talk to you initially without charge or for a minor charge to discuss your rights.

I have handled a few cases in Somerville and don't let the landlord fool you, they know the law, they just try to intimidate you into not pursuing a claim.

Adam Phipps, ESQ.
http://www.attorneyadamphipps.com/

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

$#17.

[gwynnega]

How horrible. That landlord is an absolute creep.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Massachusetts Guide to Tenant Rights.

Nine