Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Let's Lynch The Landlord


In the immortal words of Tyrone Green:

Dark and lonely on a summer's night
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Watchdog barking
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Slip in his window
Break his neck
Then his house
I start to wreck
Got no reason
What the heck
Kill my Landlord
Kill my landlord
C-I-L-L
my l a n d l o r d

My apartment is basically a squat now. Not long after my girlfriend Crystal moved in, she heard from the management company that the owner of the apartment was trying to sell the apartment building because he couldn’t afford the mortgage. I moved out of my beloved Casa De Chaos and into her apartment to save money for tour in June 2008. The apartment, which was built for one person to live in, is extremely cramped for two people and a dog all sharing the same space.

We eventually became friends with a lot of the neighbors in the complex and would occasionally have porch parties and drink late into the night. It was not the fanciest place in town, but the people were friendly and always had an extra beer or smoke when you came home from a hard day. It was nice.

About a month ago we came home to find a notice taped on the mailbox that the two side-by-side apartment buildings were going into foreclosure. The notice said that we were to pay money to a Mr. Christian Chelli who worked for a company called BLR management based out of Stockton CA. BLR management was the receiver for the property, which basically meant they collected the rent for the bank, and didn’t really do much else.

Last Monday, I came home to find that some asshole had drilled out my deadbolt and left it lying on my front doorstep. There were metal filings everywhere. They didn’t even bother to clean it up. My first thought was, “Shit, we’ve been robbed.”

Then I noticed that another deadbolt had been installed. One that could not be unlocked by my key.

Shit.

Luckily (or unluckily depending on how you look at it) our apartment was built in the 1960s and featured crappy crank-operated windows that I was able to pry open with my fingers. Yeah, real secure. I hopped in through the window and unlocked the door. Turns out assholes had left a key on the coffee table, INSIDE the locked house. Genius. I called Crystal and told her what happened and she was pissed. She said “We’re moving out immediately.” I wasn’t going to argue. Things could only get worse from here if this was our introduction to our new management. And they did.

We attempted to call Mr. Chelli, but surprise, he wasn’t answering the phone or returning calls. Dick move. Crystal called him 16 times between Monday and Friday with no answer and no response. Crystal even called the main office, where she talked to a receptionist who was wholly uninterested in our difficulties.

Luckily Crystal was apartment hunting like mad and found a gorgeous two bedroom second story apartment in a Victorian style house three blocks away for not too much more. We somehow got approved for it pretty much immediately. We were packing last night when our friend Matt-O-Matic came over to bring us some boxes that he had left over from his recent move. I went out to help him bring them in from the car when I noticed a PG&E technician with a flashlight and a wrench. I approached him.

“What are you doing?” I asked matter of factly. “I’m shutting off the gas for the building’s water heater because the owner hasn’t paid it in several months,” he told me.

Great. I’m so glad we’re moving. I had no hot shower this morning before work, and shaving was pretty uncomfortable with no hot water. We were going to move on Wednesday, but we’ve decided to move the bed and basic necessities over to the new place tonight so we can have hot showers again.

I plan to at least try to sue my landlord, since I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to kill him, even if I spelled it with a “C.” If he’s filing for bankruptcy though, it will cost me more than I’ll get to hire a lawyer and figure it out, so I’ll be screwed if that happens.

I just feel really bad for my friends who still live there and have very few options. I don’t know what I would do if I had to face that shitty situation. There are so few rights for tenants here in California, the laws all favor the property owners, like they have for the last 2000 years.

Some things never change. The poor will always be fucked, pretty much.