Payoffs and Ripoffs

I cooked most of the day Saturday. Found some good meat deals at Sam's Friday and wanted to make sure it all went to good use. I was beat by the end of the day, but it was worth it because now I don't have to spend every evening cooking. I can just pop the meat and the potatoes on a baking sheet into the oven for thirty minutes and put veggies in the nuker for five minutes and supper is ready.

Yes, that's the top of my washer -- I have a weirdly set up kitchen.

Yummy!

 

 

That was the payoff part. Now for the ripoff.

A friend of my family was evicted yesterday. She was renting from a local slum lord because that is what her family can afford. The landlord tried to say she hadn't paid her rent, but my friend had kept her money order receipts, so that didn't work. She said that my friend's family had destroyed her property and, unfortunately, that did work.

The judge did not take into consideration what the property looked like before they moved in. He did not care that they had to use space heaters for three months in the winter because their land lord did not return their calls telling her their furnace was not working. He did not care that the reason the bathroom looked nasty in the pictures was that the toilet had been backing up for months and after trying and trying to get her to repair the toilet, they finally pulled it up and tried to fix it themselves. He did not care.

After my friend's family gets moved out, I will be going over with my digital camera and a copy of the local newspaper to document the conditions of the apartment in an effort to help limit the damages the slum lord will be able to collect from them. I hope it will work.

This is not the first time I've known this kind of thing to happen. I don't know how it is anywhere else, but around here, it's pretty darn common. The judge does not identify with the poor tenants, he identifies with the middle class property owner. The property owner has probably evicted people several times and knows how the system works -- they know what to say and do to get what they want. The tenant has little experience with such things and is already struggling or likely wouldn't be there. The landlord, no matter how heinous, is generally going to win.

All that to say, if you are moving to a new rental, protect yourself. Take pictures of everything that even remotely looks damaged - dings on the wall, chips on the sink, spots on the carpet, etc. Pay your rent in a way that makes it easy for you to prove that you paid it and hang onto your receipts until you get your security deposit back after moving out. Document interactions with your landlord. If you have to call about a repair, write it down in a journal, along with the date. Write down when the problem is fixed or if not, when you have called to repeat your request. Even if they are nice. Even if you know them. Just to be on the safe side because people can get really stupid over this kind of stuff and its hard enough to get by without being ripped off.