Non-Pet Friendly Landlords

The BBQ Pit
41

As an animal lover who has had both dogs and cats, I appreciate your predicament. But I do not understand how you think your desire to keep pets is something like a “right”. The default situation is the you and I have to get along in our building, complex, neighborhood, etc. Anything either of us brings into the arrangement has the potential to cause additional problems. That’s why fish tanks and cats aren’t usually a problem, because their existence is often invisible to others around you. On the other hand, that’s why most people would be opposed to living next to someone who has a rooster.

There are a couple of small dogs in my small building, and they are not a problem, a little yap every now and then. On the other hand, a neighbor whose backyard abuts ours has a beautiful German Shepard who starts barking EVERY FUCKING MORNING. It’s not the dog’s fault, the lazy-ass owner’s idea of walking the dog is opening the back door from his third-floor apartment and letting the dog out. And then, big surprise, he starts barking—EVERY FUCKING MORNING—and doesn’t stop until the owner brings him back in. Every so often one of the neighbors will yell out the window at theios inconsiderate bastard, but al he does is bring the dog in. And then it all stasrts again between 7:00 and 8:30 the next day.

So although I’ve owned dogs and have experience with with both good and bad dog owners, I say fuck everybody: NO DOGS! All you need is one asshole to ruin things.

But I have an idea. How about if renting with a dog means you are on “constant probation”? As long as your animals are quiet and don’t stink up the place for your neighbors, or cause the owner to suffer damaged property, enjoy! But if your neighbors get annoyed at your inability to keep your dog shut the fuck up, see ya.

Also, the owner should be able to require a SUBSTANTIAL security deposit for the pet(s), above and beyond the normal.

And could someone please explain something to me. How does someone (one of my neighbors) who is constantly travelling and spend less than half her time here, make the decision to get a dog? Even when she is here she’s at work from 7:30 to 8:00. Now she has this smallish bulldog who is alone every day except when the walker comes to take her out for an hour. Please explain how someone could be so selfish and clueless.

42

There’s multitudes of reasons why an apartment might get damaged. In every single one of them I am liable for the damage. I’m willing to take a lot of big steps on my behalf to assure the landlord that I will pay for whatever damage I have caused, that I will not disrupt the neighborhood, etc. etc.

I already consider the fact that laws/landlords require names of all adults in an apartment on the lease to be quite rude and nosy. The fact that so many people will go along with leases that list what you can and cannot do with a property in great detail saddens me. It’s the same type of people who believe checking ID at the airport must be a very good thing.

My only choice if I don’t want to put my personal life on a platter is to buy cars and houses instead of renting, to own my own plane instead of flying. Suppose that is also acceptable, but it used to be that you could still have dignity and not be ultra rich at the same time.

This thread just served to reinforce my distaste for my fellow human beings. Yeah, they are irresponsible dog owners that let their pets destroy the apartment and then don’t pay up. The fundamental issue here is that since these people promise to the landlord that they will pay for whatever damage they cause, and they break that promise. When enough people do that, my promises to pay become ever so worthless.

43

One of my neighbors decided to have a dog. It was small dog and didn’t make a lot of noise but dear God, the smell that this thing produced. They didn’t clean up after it and it must have peed all over that apartment because there was a stink. You could smell it in our living room as well as in the hall. We put something in all the outlets because that was where the smell was coming in from. We also put deodorizers which helped minimize the smell. It was still bad. The building was no-pets but they didn’t seem to enforce the rules on much so eventually we moved.

44

Not even on a bet. I look at moving the way I look at job-hunting. Only do it as a last resort, and only consider that which is available the day I ask about it.

And zweisamkeit, sorry if my post struck you as snarky. I intended no offense.

45

Small-time landlord checking in here. I rent out the downstairs of the house I own, and live upstairs.

Look, I love pets, I’m owned by two cats. But I don’t allow dogs.

The reason is that dogs are generally bigger than cats, and if kept indoors are capable of doing greater damage. The two times I was persuaded to allow a tenant to keep their dog I had noisy barking, scratches on the wallpaper, poop in the basement, and damage to venetian blinds the dogs had pawed at.

The tenants with cats have had better behaved animals, and I’ve not had significantly greater wear and tear with them.

So now, even though I hate to do it, I don’t let tenants have dogs. Fair? A truly representative sample? Probably not, but two bad experiences ruined it for the responsible dog owners in my place.

46

I have a cat, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t think twice about renting from a place with a no pets policy. Ideally, I could find a place that had a “No pets except mine” policy, and I wouldn’t have to worry about other people’s animals creating problems.

47

I normally wouldn’t say this, but this is the pit, so… are you proud of that or something?

48

You know what, I met one that did. We were looking to rent a townhouse in Foster City a few years ago, and had been very upfront about our three extremely well behaved cats. The landlord was okay with it and everything, and then just before we were about to sign the lease (like, the DAY before), she calls my real estate agent and says, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and three is just too many. Can you ask them to get rid of two of the cats before they move in?”

I replied to the agent that she should find the politest way to say shove it where the sun don’t shine.

49

Unfortunately so.

But, as I mentioned, damage to the property is only one issue—and I think the smaller one, as it can be fixed with a dollar figure. But why should your (as an example) choice to own a dog who barks supercede my desire (right?) to live in relative peace and quiet? It just seems so rude, particularly, as someone has pointed out, the barking occurs when you are not at home?

50

I’m just here to brag.

My landlord owns several apartment buildings in the neighborhood - most of them he had built himself. The building I live in was especially designated as the dog owner’s building. Out of five apartments three of us have dogs. The building was designed with a large grass area in the front for the dogs to do their business, complete with poop bag dispensers filled with bags supplied by the owner and refilled by the gardener when needed. Perhaps once a month I may see an unclaimed poop, and I usually just pick it up. Sometimes I look at our front yard and am in awe that three big dogs live there and you can’t even tell. We also have a cat in one of the apartments that has made all of our dogs his bitches. None of them will get near him. We don’t hear each other’s dogs, unless for example it’s dead quiet and someone walks up the stairs. It doesn’t smell. I count myself a very lucky dog owner.

51

Well, as a landlord, what I’m sick of are people who know we have a general ‘no pets’ policy, and a very strict ‘no dogs’ policy, agree to those terms and sign a lease that states that explicitly, then try to sneak cats and dogs in anyway. We have one right now that I just learned had a dog in the apartment because the damn thing barks so much that she left both the television in the living room and a radio in the bedroom on FULL BLAST to try to mask the barking, which could be heard throughout the entire building from one end of the hall to the other. She’s getting a 30-day notice to quit come monday.

52

I’m not sure what you mean. I was offering my opinion, counter to yours, about people not wanting to patronize a place that disallowed pets out of a sense of collective justice. I suppose I just don’t identify myself as a “pet owner” enough to feel outraged on behalf of fellow pet owners.

As has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, pets can be one more way of having annoying neighbors. I already know that my cat won’t destroy the place or piss on the floor, but I have no way of knowing if the neighbor’s cat won’t, or if their dog won’t bark all the time.

Part of the reason it can be such a problem is that it’s hard to get rid of a tenant with a dog who barks all the time. It can take months to evict. Tenant laws are great when you come up against a dishonest landlord, but they suck ass when you have bad neighbors. If it were easier to get rid of bad neighbors, then we wouldn’t need to take into account all kinds of risk factors, like pet ownership, that aren’t necessarily bad in and of themselves, but can lead to problems.

53

Depending on where you live, it may actually be pretty damned easy to solve, if you look at the noise bylaws. A couple of years ago I was plagued by a shitty little dog across the alley from me. It was totally neglected – left out on a bare patio all day. It was never trained in any way. And it barked – at everything that moved. Birds, cars, the train three blocks away, people passing, it’s own shadow. Whatever. It ran up and down that patio all day and let out it’s shitty little five-pound dog bark. And bay. Rrururururururururur! Rurururururururururrur! Hours at a time.

So I mailed 'em a short note and a copy of the city’s noise bylaw, which contains the glorious words:

And I waited a couple of weeks. No change.

So I sent 'em another letter, explaining why the noise was intolerable, how they were obligated to train their dog so as not to drive everyone in the neighborhood batshit crazy (and the yelling of other aggravated people and passers-by made it even more nerve-wracking), said that I didn’t want to cause any undue hardship to them and so would wait 30 days before filing a formal complaint, in order to give them time to do something about their dog’s lack of discipline, get rid of it, or keep it inside. (One of the most enraging things was waking up in the morning hearing the dog’s muffled barking coming from inside, which they reacted to by putting it outside and closing the door.) I explained how the fine structure worked. (Initial fine, and then continuing fines for every day they remained uncompliant. This is the main reason I didn’t want to just call and complain without giving them every opportunity to set things right.)

Anyway, still no change in behaviour-- so I started documenting the damned thing, with timestamped video, logging the incredible amount of barking that ratdog did every day. (Thank-you, automatic software solution.) If you stopped recording after five minutes of silence, that little bastard was logged at barking for an average of fourteen hours a day – and sometimes more. Rurururururur!

At the end of the thirty days, I called the city bylaw enforcement office. (I still remember her first words to me: “I hear you have an animal noise complaint.”) After I dropped the dime on the offenders, and was thankful that I had reams of documentation of what was the most extraordinarily disturbing animal noise I ever had to live with… …documentation that it turned out I didn’t need at all.

The next day, the dog was gone. Just gone. I like to think that they happened to have a nice home lined up for it, but given how much they ignored the damned thing the whole time it was there, I can’t help wondrering if they just found it easier to drown it in the tub or something.

Anyway, long story short: If the bylaws are on your side, it may take nothing more than a simple phone call to effect a solution. You don’t necessarily have to have someone evicted.

54

So in your small corner of reality a landlord advertising “No Jews” would be no worse than a landlord insisting on “no dogs”, on the basis that both Jews and dogs are both alive and on Earth? {I’m not even going to touch “under roughly the same conditions of survival”, since I have absolutely no idea what you mean} Your argument seems to imply it that if dogs are no worse than Jews {or any other ethnic, racial religious or cultural group}, then Jews are no better than dogs. And we know where that leads, don’t we?

It would depend what you mean by “discriminating”, but if you’re referring to slavery, the answer is “outside of the Southern States of the USA, yes, they did”: taking only England as an example, not only slavery but slave trading was outlawed in 1807 {actually the Danes got there first, but they never owned or traded slaves anyway}, at both significant economic cost in lost trade and in the expense of the Royal Navy actively policing the slavers.

Your argument is patently absurd anyhow: “since 150 years ago discriminating against humans was common practice but is not now, and discriminating against animals is still common practice now, it follows that animals should not be discriminated against.” This borders on lunacy: regarding animals and humans as morally equivalent does not elevate animals, it denigrates humans.

Let me ask you this: if your mother’s house were on fire and I had the chance
to save either her or her cat, but not both, which should I choose? After all, they’re both “living and breathing cute fuzzy things”, so presumably it shouldn’t make any difference to you which I rescue - should it?

55

Hey, if it feels it denigrates humans then you’re already addressing this from a biased perspective. If I feel that humans are no better or worse than animals, than I can’t possibly see why it would be offensive to compare the two, now do I? :wink:
I care about my mother a lot more than I would care about her pets. However, I dislike 99% of people I meet, and I like 99% of animals I meet, so if it were YOUR MOTHER, whom I have never met and don’t care for, I’d probably save her cat just to have more pleasant dinner company. I’m not saying the cat’s better than your mother, mind you, but frankly we have 6 billion people on earth, and I feel crowded.

Good day sir.
P.S. To answer your next question, I just have to do it first!

56

Well, of course I bloody well am: the bias that humans are inherently worth more than animals. Strangely enough, this prejudice is backed up by the customs, practises, laws and mores of every society ever encountered or recorded, including our own.

I loathe this indulgent rhetorical posturing {“Well, naturally I like animals better than people since people are mean and rude and animals are nice”} since it’s only an unfortunate and relatively recent marriage of affluence and stupidity. Do you honestly think you’d hold the same position if you lived in an agrarian society and were forced to choose between keeping a non-productive animal and going hungry?

57

Well, pardon me, you seem to misunderstand. It’s not that I’m above eating animals, but simply put I’m not above eating humans :wink:

58

Y’know, that smiley isn’t a free pass to talk bullshit. Either fight your corner or step out of the ring.