There’s your problem. You should have put it on your porch, not on the roof over the courtyard, which presumably is not your area.
You might want to look into home ownership (in a place without an HOA). You could just knock yourself out with tomato plants all over the goddamn place.
I agree. Removing some mangy plant wrapped in a plastic bag sitting on the roof of a common courtyard seems a lot more reasonable than removing a plant sitting on a tenant’s private porch. At first I felt that wanting it removed or not could go either way depending on the landlord and the lease agreement, but that physically removing it wasn’t appropriate.
But now that we know it was left on some roof I’d say it’s perfectly reasonable. When someone leave garbage laying around in the common area of my rental properties I don’t think twice about disposing of it personally.
Was it labeled with your name and/or apartment number? If not, what was she supposed to do? Leave a random plant growing out of a plastic bag on the roof?
I can’t f—ing understand why landlords think they need to perpetually have their panties in a snit over every little nit-picking thing like that, that they think they need to enforce strictly to the letter all the damn time.
Wait a minute. Yes I can. Landlords (mostly) are damn control freaks. Corporate landlords (and their apartment manager stooges) tend to be the worst. How’s it going to damage your property if your tenant hangs paisley curtains, for example?
Yes, the case in point here was a potted plant on a porch, with some concerns about water damage to the deck. Okay, suppose you tenant puts the potted plant up on a little table or otherwise raised up off the deck. You still gonna demand that it has to go, just because you have some stupid nit-pick rule that tenants can’t have a plant on the porch? Yeah, you do that, because you’re obsessed with forcing your tenants to follow every damn nitpicking rule you think you need to have. That’s just how a lot of landlords are.
You actually evict tenants and throw them out on the street for such petty crap as things like that? Yeah, you do, don’t you. Fuck (most) landlords.
(To be sure, I’ve had a few good ones who weren’t at all like that.)
You rent from them…it’s the equivalent of rent a room in someone’s house and getting angry when they asked you to turn the music down…:rolleyes:. Their space, their rules.
Bad example. Landlords are obsessed with visual appearances, because I suppose that has all to do with property values or rentability or something. Some years ago, there were lawsuits in San Francisco because landlords wouldn’t allow tenants to put signs in their windows – even obviously political ones. First Amendment issues.
But noise? Turn down the music? It is to laugh. (Most) Landlords don’t give a damn rat’s ass about their tenants’ “quiet enjoyment” the the property over things like that. Raucous parties at all hours? Tenants having yelling screaming raging arguments at all hours, sometimes in the parking lot? People driving through in their cars with the music literally (yes, literally) shaking the walls and rattling the windows? Or even sitting in their parked cars for a half hour or longer, listening to music like that? At three in the morning?
Landlords or apartment managers mostly couldn’t care less. (Unless maybe if they live on site, and maybe not even then if it’s a big apartment complex.)
But hang a floral printed curtain in your window? They’ll be all over your ass for that.
ETA: Just re-read your post, and noticed your “their space, their rules” remark. No, we’re not (mostly) talking about renting a room in a house. We’re (mostly) talking about renting an apartment, or even a whole house. “Their space, their rules” only goes so far. The tenant is the one who lives there, and the tenant is paying you for the use of that space. So as long as the tenant isn’t creating nuisance or physical damage, the tenant should get to live there.
I had a landlord try to tell me once that I couldn’t store personal possessions in cardboard boxes in my unit. I ignored that, and nothing ever came of it.
If you were an apartment owner, wouldn’t you want it to look as orderly as possible to so people won’t be discouraged to rent? Or would you rather it look any kind of way no matter how many “potential” renters you lose?
There are good renters and bad, just as there are good and bad landlords. BUT, I’ve found that most landlords become strict, “non-careing”, in some cases “slumlords”, because many (not necessarily most), but many renters just don’t care about property they don’t own. They feel they can trash a flat and the landlord has an unlimited amount of money to fix any damage they can cause. One bad renter can cancel out any meager profit that a landlord hopes to make in a given month. And being a landlord is all about making a profit for survival. It’s how they make a living.
The distinction others have made about your porch vs a common roof section is fairly critical. Your OP was a landlord coming into your apt, onto your porch and removing a plant on your porch, now it’s an (effectively) random plant on a common roof area adjacent to your porch. You might be pissed, but you really should have asked her before using that space.
We rented an apartment with a small porch, we hung our beach towels on chairs to dry, the landlord said, no laundry on the porch…ok. But during college football season I’d say 80% of the porches had college teams football pennants. What’s the diff. I say?
As a landlord, I care about how the property appears; about maintenance issues which might keep an empty unit off the market longer, including potential water damage problems; and I care about not setting a precedent of allowing things forbidden in a lease, lest people start saying “what’s the diff?”
Personally, I’d want neither banners nor laundry, but I certainly can see the difference, and laundry can start the ‘slippery slope’ to tenants hanging everything to dry. Bad tenants can eat into a landlord’s profit margin very, very quickly.
As for Senegoid’s issues with car music (or neighbors arguing or late, loud parties [thankfully only on weekends and not every weekend]), I have that problem in my private house. When you find a solution for that, let me know. I’m told that my proposed solution (a RPG) is currently illegal. I do care about frequent complaints, but I don’t always hear about them and I don’t live on or near my rental properties. It’s actually easier for a decent landlord to handle the problem in a rental than with private homeowners. My neighbors don’t worry about pissing off a landlord and facing eviction (or simply not having the lease renewed).
Not only would I remove the plant, but I’d salt the porch too! Muahahaha!
I’d wait until the tomatoes were fully grown, then I’d basil and mozzarella the shit out of them and lie in wait with a nice bottle of balsamic vinegar. Take that tenant (I’d say, handing them a crusty loaf of freshly baked bread).
I own my house, but you can be my honorary landlord. (We have tomatoes.)