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

[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?