if we lived in a slum, our landlord would be a slumlord. as it is, we don't live in a slum, but on a residential street apparently zoned in places for businesses as well. that part's good. it means i can walk a block and get vietnamese food and three kinds of pizza and two kinds of subs and rent movies and search for goodies at value village.
even the house itself is ok. it's newly remodelled, and it's really, really clean.
and that's the point where we get into my bitterness, the result of the things we weren't told. for instance, we were told the house was newly built. we were told the rent would be $895 a month.
we weren't told that our landlord has an illegal rental behind us, what used to be a garage. that the tenant living there has been there since the 20th, using our electricity, since because the two buildings are legally the same place, they share an electrical bill.
i'm pissed, because we've been screwed. he wants to put the electricity back into his name and charge us a flat fee of $60/month. he had the nerve to make it sound like he was giving us a break, and showed us a list of figures from the previous year, averaging $80/month. of course, those people had a washer and dryer, and the water heater runs on electricity. he didn't say shit about the other rental when we moved in.
when i started asking questions, he threatened to break the lease. he even went so far as to claim there was a line of people a mile long who applied for the house. that's bull, because i saw it languishing in the paper for a month. i was trying to get a washer and dryer out of the whole sordid affair. but i'd lost my ability to be charming (and thus persuasive) when he came in and tried to talk to my roommate (who is japanese but speaks fluent english) through me, while she was standing right there.
we thought about blackmail, but we don't want to deal with him that closely. we missed our chance to have him break the lease. the only alternative now is to kill him, but we're pretty sure the repercussions wouldn't be worth the trouble. i may try to get him to break the lease again, by getting a washer and dryer and refusing to pay more for electricity. but until then, i'll just hate him and wonder why it's so fucking difficult to find a good place to live. |
