Turn the landlady in. Glad you learned a few things, but still, that old lady needs a better place to live.
About moving: in the SF Bay area no-one can afford to leave if they have a place because the market is so tight and everyplace is going to be more expensive than the one you left. Section 8 just adds to that difficulty since so few landlords take it.
It sounds like the old lady is able to live in her own place (albeit rented) with assistance. Is anyone surprised that she so greatly prefers that to the tender mercies of an assisted living facility? Have you ever been to one of those places? If you’re lucky they treat you like a child and your agency is close to zero. If you’re not so lucky, they steal from you and beat you if you look at them cross-eyed. Believe me, when my time comes, I will be clinging to my independence with every ounce of strength and every fingernail I have.
The landlady is an asshole, it sounds like, and there is nothing the OP can do about it. Came here to vent, and got slapped around by you cold-hearted fixers.
Brujaja, congratulations on your mad skillz, and you’re doing good work. I’m sorry that lady’s situation isn’t better, but I can see from your posts that you are doing your very best to keep her comfortable and in her home. I hope, when I need in-home care, I find someone as nice as you.
brujaja - here’s the thing. You are stuck with a choice between two things, but you’re refusing to admit that that’s the case. You’re valiantly demanding choice number 3 - there isn’t a choice number 3.
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Turn the landlady in.
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Don’t turn her in, and put up with the conditions.
That’s it. Which will it be?
I don’t think that’s good, and I agree with you that it’s bad and unfair and there ought to be a better way. But there isn’t.
Right on.
I agree that the landlady is bullying because she wants your client out, brujaja. Like it’s not hard enough being her age and not able to walk.
You’re assuming there IS a better place for her… give the housing constraints of the area and her own limitations there might not be.
I am not assuming, I hope/wish there would be better places for the elderly. But I don’t know the area. So I really can’t say what the OP should do. It’s a sad situation for the old lady. I, to, hope I have it better in my old age. It’s too bad we can’t do more for our aging population. OP, I am sorry if I dismissed you, I truly didn’t intend to. Good luck to you and your client. Keep that mean old landlady in line.
If the old landlord maintained the building, how long did it take to fall into such disrepair once the landlady took over? The problems you describe here (rotting interior walls, for example) are not the sorts of things that develop overnight. I suspect the landlord also neglected building maintenance, but was pleasant enough to deal with that people forgave him for it.
I’m sure it’s hard to find section 8 housing in the Bay Area that your client can afford. It doesn’t cost anything to look, though. I Googled “bay area section 8 housing list” and found a Craigslist page devoted to it. There are places there for less than $1000 a month. Please check it out. Your client’s living conditions are actually hazardous.
Where did Brujaja say anything of the kind?
Multiple other people have jumped in and declared that there’s an option 3, Brujaja is the one saying that option 2 is the only practical option, as option 1 is going to screw over their client more than it screws over the landlady, and they’ve said that, in that area, there is no option 3. I’ve not seen any posts from Brujaja asking for suggestions, or ‘defending’ an option 3, just bitching about the shitty situation their client is in.
Which is indeed shitty. I’m glad your client has someone like you around.
Roderick Femm: I seem to have got something in my eye…
Thank you so much for your insight and your lovely sentiment. And I, too, absolutely do not wish to end up in a nursing home.
Filbert: Yes. Thank you!
I think some of you are sort of missing the point – had I been seeking ideas to extricate my client from the situation, I would have posted in IMHO.
I posted in The Pit because the landlady yelled at me this afternoon because the recycle bin didn’t go out for collection today. I mean, if it didn’t go out today, it’ll go out next week. It’s not like it smells or anything --it’s only got rinsed-out milk jugs, bottled water jugs, and plastic strawberry baskets in it. The household doesn’t generate recycling all that quickly.
And what is she doing looking in my client’s recycle bin, anyway? She’s not her mother.
I just take exception to someone ***who has probably eaten cat meat in her life *** talking to me like I’m the scum of the earth.
For someone who never before had a visceral reaction to Chinese women you sure jumped to that pretty quickly. You’ve earnestly endeavored all your life not to be the ugly thing that is a racist but you may have to admit that you’ve not been successful.
Sorry, I just noticed that I attributed the racist statement to Roderick Femm. I apologize. It was said by brujaja.
The only reason I said that is because a guy I knew went to China in the 80s, and brought back a film of cats in cages at the market, waiting to be slaughtered. He got a close-up of their faces, and their eyes. It hit me really hard.
She emigrated from China sometime in, say, the 60s? And the meat market was in a large city. So I figured it is more likely than not that she has probably eaten cat. I know they are trying to ban the eating of cats in China now, though it’s said that people still do in the countryside.
I’m not saying this because of some stupid stereotype/ urban myth. I literally saw film of cats in cages at the meat market.
And I did say it was a struggle.
Also, Bill Door, I do NOT recommend you look at this page, and I’m sorry I did, and I’m sorry that such a page must exist, but: Wikipedia has a page on “cat meat,” which has a section on China.
I think you’re a bit hasty to say unequivocally that mine was a racist comment when it is an actual fact that cats were/are eaten in China.
No, what made it a racist statement was that you somehow think that it’s what a person eats that diminishes them. Now me; if I think less of a person it’ll more likely be based on what comes out of their mouth rather than what goes into it.
On the one hand, nobody in this country gives a good goddamn about Section 8 tenants. Complaining, calling inspectors, reporting the owner… great suggestions except that no one cares. Standards are low, enforcement is shit, and wait lists are obscene. It should be better, but it ain’t. Even in San Francisco.
On the other hand, the cat meat thing was pretty fucking racist, yo.
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Wasn’t it KRON that had a consumer affairs hotline and would investigate things such as people scamming the elderly, and even report on landlords pulling nasty stunts? Check with your local news stations. They might see fit to investigate. “All publicity is good publicity”, after all, isn’t really true.
Dogs and cats are still eaten in parts of China, but thankfully that’s a diminishing thing. In other words, it’s not all, nor even a majority, of Chinese who eat dogs and cats. So, yes, it is racist to comment that “Chinese eat cats/dogs” because the comment is a stereotype brought up based on a person’s ethnicity.
p.s. I once saw a photo of a cock fight held in Atlanta, Georgia. The fight was held in 2013. So, OP, you’re American, right? What do you think of the idea that since you’re American and I saw that photo, that means that you have probably been to a cockfight in your life?
Look, this isn’t rocket science. Yes, your client (what is your profession, by the way?) is in Section 8 housing, but that definitely doesn’t absolve the landlord from her statutory and contractual obligations. California might get maligned a lot from people not familiar with the Golden State, but the state, including San Francisco, does have some nifty programs for the elderly and the disabled. Oh, and the ethnic origin of anyone involved in the situation has fuck all to do with it, unless, of course, the person providing the service (the housing) is singling out people of a particular ethnic group or groups for maltreatment.
It also really doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, meat is meat. I’d avoid eating cats because I’d expect they’d taste terrible as obligate carnivores. I might try dog if I thought it had been humanely slaughtered and I could work myself up to get over my prejudices. Either would make me wince a bit, because I grew up in the west and have that irrational attachment to “pet animals” that most of us do. But people occasionally keep pet chickens, pigs, goats, cows - all of which are happily consumed in the west. So I’d wince, but I recognize that carving out some special exception for cats and dogs is illogical. Different cultures eat different things. Nobody should be denigrated for that.
That said…
This is for the most part absolutely correct and I sympathize with Brujaja’s client. Section 8 means inspections and some people on it have issues that makes them poor tenants. So few people are willing to rent to them and thus you end up often with lcd landlords who can be awful. Making it a nightmare for decent Section 8 tenants to find places, especially since Section 8 caps rents and in the Bay Area the market rate has mostly wandered far north of those caps. People find themselves stuck and unable to make a complaint for fear of landlords yanking scarce affordable housing out of the minuscule Section 8 housing stock. Particularly in the Bay Area where competition for semi-affordable rentals is intense.
You’d think so, but in reality it tends not to be that cut and dried. Frankly in places with high market rates and shrinking rental stock, the landlords really do hold the whip hand.
Well, now I want to be vegan.