Please bear with me, this will take a bit of time to explain.
After breaking up wth my boyfriend, I moved into the almost perfect apartment. Granted, it was tiny- my whole apartment was the size of our old living room. But it was cute, cheap, and within walking distance of work and school. And it was a flat rate- all utilities included. I dealt with the fact that it took all my ingenuity to get the furniture to fit, and there was still barely room to move. But whatever.
When I looked at it, it had no stove. The landlord told me he was replacing all the stoves in the building, but in the meantime they would take a stove out of one of the vacant units (the building was never, and as far as I can tell, still isn’t, full. but more about that later). And I’d get a brand new stove as soon as it came in. Well, weeks went by, and no mention of my stove. But I noticed as soon as I moved in that the stove they gave me didn’t work. So I called the landlord and left a message (he NEVER answered the phone- it took me 3 weeks to get my mail key after repeated phone calls and messages). Don’t worry, he said, you’ll get your new stove in no time.
Well, about a month and a half after I moved in, I saw the maintenance guy. He told me the stoves were in. Good, I said, because mine doesn’t work. Well then, he said, I’ll install yours first. 2 more weeks go by, no stove. So I call the landlord to inquire, and he tells me the maintenance guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he only ordered the stoves last week. WHAT!?! I’m thinking- You know I’ve been without a stove for more than a month. You made it sound like you already ordered the stoves when I was moving in, and that they were on their way. But whatever, I don’t want to make waves, and he says the stoves are coming in, so hopefully I won’t have any more problems. And they eventually came in a few weeks later, and I got my new stove.
So that’s problem #1. Now, I live on the gulf coast of Florida. In the summer, it’s in the 90s, and the humidity is upwards of 80%. It’s miserable, basically. The apartment was equipped with a small window AC, in the kitchen (because the living room and bedroom windows faced the front porch, and I suppose having water dripping on the front porch would be a bit of a hazard). I moved in in May, which is a pretty warm month. But the AC running at full blast kept it cool during the day, and I actually had to turn it down at night, because I don’t like it super cold. 76-78 degrees is just fine for me. But as June goes by I notice it gets pretty warm in there in the middle of the afternoon, even with the AC. I figure it’s because the air flow between the kitchen and living room is constricted (it’s only a small doorway after all) and buy a fan. It helps a little.
But by July (the hottest month in Florida) my apartment is so hot that even in the middle of the night I am sweating. The moment I walk in the door I strip down to my underwear, and can’t do anything more active than lay on my bed spread-eagled without sweating profusely. My dad’s an AC contractor, and I know quite a bit about them myself, so I check the filter and see if the coils need cleaning. It’s in perfect working order. I check the BTUs (a unit of measurement denoting its cooling capacity) and see that it only has the cooling capacity to cool UP TO 150 sq. ft., and during a Florida summer it probably only has the capacity to cool half that. My apartment, I should mention, is more than twice that- around 350 sq. ft.
Eventually the only room in the house even remotely bearable is the kitchen, and I start sleeping on the kitchen floor. Apparently one of my neighbors moved the fridge into the living room and put his bed in the kitchen so he could be comfortable enough to sleep too, so it wasn’t just me. So I bought myself another AC (identical to the one already in my apt) and am able to sleep in my bed again. About a month later the landlord tells me if I am going to have a second AC I have to pay him an extra $30 a month, which is ridiculous. I tell him how f-ing hot it is in my apartment, and he basically says big deal, we pay the electric, give me extra money. I tell him no way, I read and re-read my lease and I signed NOTHING which could compell me to pay extra money for an extra AC. (At this point let me say I don’t think this is an unreasonable request for a REASONABLE landlord, but I spent 2 months without a stove and this guy is a jerk. AND I paid the same rent as the family of 3 next door, even though they HAVE to be using more water than me) I checked the laws, and landlords aren’t required to provide adequate AC, only heat. Which is stupid in Florida, but I digress.
He actually had the nerve to serve me with a 3 day notice if I didn’t pay him $70 for the 2 months of AC. Which I freaking paid, because while I might not legally have had to (I went over the lease with a fine-tooth comb) by the time the matter was resolved I’d be out on the street. I took the damn AC out and went back to sleeping in the f-ing kitchen. (Oh, and I checked the BTUs on other ACs in the building, and some were considerably bigger than mine. When I pointed this out in a letter to my landlord, he went and replaced all the other ACs with ones identical to mine)
Fast forward to December. I had 3 small recycling bins on my back porch. The maintenance guy (new MG who is a HUGE asshole) told me I couldn’t have them, they were a fire hazard. And I told him to bite me (in a polite way), other people had chairs and coolers and things on the back porch. And I didn’t block the whole back porch, not to mention there are 2 other means of egress in the building, so it was hardly a fire hazard. A piece of the building jutted out an extra foot on the back porch than my small bins, if anything was a fire hazard, that was. But he persisted, so I decided to move them to not be a bitch.
A couple days later I went to go move them, and they were gone. Conclusion: Asshole MG took them. So I called the landlord. Once again he didn’t answer, so I started to leave a message telling him his MG stole my property (these weren’t provided by the city, I actually paid about $10 for them) and I either wanted them replaced or to be compensated. Halfway through the message he picks up. And the conversation gets bit heated, to say the least. First, he tries to tell me asshole MG isn’t his employee and he doesn’t have to replace my bins, which I counter with “Gee, if he’s not your employee then why the hell does he have keys to all the apartments. Frankly, that’s a little frightening. And what, does he do the maintenance out of the kindness of his heart?”
And he starts YELLING at me, telling me it’s none of my damn business what the arrangement is, and by the way I still owe him $30 for the last month I had the AC in the apartment but he’s been nice and not made me pay it. And so I yell right back, “I signed NOTHING to that effect and you have NO LEGAL RIGHT to charge me extra money.” (And, though he was screaming and cursing at me, I yelled but refrained from swearing and name-calling because I am a lady). So that’s the last straw for him, and he tells me to get out. See, my lease was a 12-month month-to-month lease, which basically meant I could move out at any time and not forfeit my deposit, I just had to give 30 days notice. The only thing it did was prevent him from raising the rent for a year. But as he rightly pointed out, it worked the other way too, and he could tell me to leave whenever he wanted to. So I said, fine, good riddance to bad rubbish.
I moved out, into a much bigger, nicer apartment with the best landlord ever and awesome neighbors. It’s just a lot more expensive. And I’m not the only one who thinks this guy is a jerk, when looking for a new apartment I told the guy about my old landlord and how much he sucked (and not to expect a good reference) and he asked where I lived and told me he had just rented an apartment out to my old neighbor, who had similar complaints about the landlord.
This guy is a jerk, to be sure, and I am happy not to have to deal with him anymore. My problem lies in the fact that because the apartments are about the cheapest you can find, they’re filled with students and elderly people on SS and new immigrants who don’t have the option of moving because they can’t afford it. And that pisses me off to no end.
I want to complain to someone, code enforcement or the Better Business Bureau or someone who can, hopefully, fine the hell out of this guy and make him either clean up his act or put him out of business. Here are some of the things I can complain about:
-the lack of a stove for 2 months
-the smoke alarm is painted over so you can’t get the cover off to replace the batteries
-the wiring is so bad my electricity would shut off about once a week the whole time I lived there. And I went through more lightbulbs in that apartment in the 7 months I lived there than the 2 years I had spent in my old apartment
-some apartments don’t have heat- I know this because I saw asshole MG giving my neighbor a space heater when it was cold
-I have it on good authority from someone who is a landlord that in Florida, to be considered a bedroom the room has to have both a door and a closet. The “bedroom” there has neither, but the apartment is advertsed as a one bedroom
-at my friend’s place in the same building, asshole MG dumped chemicals that weren’t fit for plastic pipes down her backed up sink, whose fumes were so strong she had to come up to my place (at 8AM on a Sunday morning), which didn’t work so he proceded to scoop the chemical-filled nasty water out of the sink with one of her kitchen pots
-this same friend also walked out her back door and almost fell in a 4ftx2ft hole behind her back door that had been cut in the wooden planks. There were exposed nails and all sorts of pipes and wires she could have fallen 4 feet onto, and she had NO WARNING whatsoever- no note on her door, no phone call, the area wasn’t taped off or covered with a board or anything. we took pictures, but before we could call the city they had fixed it
There are probably numerous other code violations and such that I am unaware of. This friend is still living there so I could dig up a lot of dirt on this asshole if I wanted to.
So, who should I call? And should I do it anonymously? I don’t want this to bite me on the ass, I just don’t want this guy to continue to take advantage of people. And please, although I have thought about flaming bags of poo on his front door and bombing his office, I would prefer that your suggestions be legal.