…until you walk into a recently-vacated apartment and exclaim, “how can anyone LIVE like this?”
I evicted a tenant, who had lived there for only three months, after a month and a half of no rent and no sign of paying, not even an empty promise.
Let me make this clear: I HATE EVICTIONS. I have a deep-seated moral opposition to forcing someone out of their home. However, their rent pays my mortgage, and if they can’t pay then it threatens my ability to pay.
It’s a nice house, in a very nice middle class neighborhood away from busy streets. 2 floors, large living room and dining room, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, walk-in master bedroom closet, large washroom, a 2-car garage, and close access to an excellent elementary school and a large wooded park. About 1600 square feet, not including the garage. I lived in that house for about a year, and have fond memories of it.
After walking into the house, I no longer regret kicking these people out.
The hardwood floors downstairs had a layer of grime and roach droppings. The kitchen cupboards and cabinets were littered with even more roach droppings. Large brownish splash stains on the kitchen and dining room walls. Pink fuzz growing in all corners of the bathrooms.
The stench was incredible.
They left their sofas, which had been partially eaten by (presumably) an animal. (They opted not to have pets included in their lease.) They left a lot of large furniture, actually, which took five of us about an hour to move into the garage before cleaning. The walk-in closet and the washroom both had been used as dog kennels. The moldy mattresses they left in one bedroom each had ample urine stains.
The tenants were a mom and two teenage kids, by the way. I don’t know if they all wet their beds, or if there was one chronic bed-wetter who slept in all of them.
Red waxy stuff, probably makeup, smeared on the wall in one bedroom. More brown splash stains in another bedroom. A broken window on the second floor. Every carpet had blackened traffic areas, had chewing gum embedded in them, and vague dusty grit and other loose dirt scattered everywhere.
Rat droppings scattered liberally in the bedroom with the makeup on the wall. I first though they were raisins, until I came across a cache of raisins I could compare against. Urine stains on the living room floor, in the corner with the drapes we’ll probably have to burn.
Roaches everywhere.
None of this was detected by our rental management company, who promises an inspection on the first month. They didn’t start eviction procedures either, until three weeks had gone by. Texas law already gives the tenants a free month.
Where was I? Oh right. Pink and brown fuzzy stuff on the baseboards, the mouldings, all three toilets, the kitchen sink, and where the fridge was. Someone had apparently dumped a pot full of pasta behind the stove. More rat turds on the decorative ledge at the top of the stairs. And so on.
It really feels like the movie Pacific Heights.
I don’t really care for the damage and the cleaning, and if it gets too bad I can make an insurance claim. I’ll probably have to make a claim against the hot water heater, which they broke. But my driving question, the one that kept jerking me awake last night, is: How can people live like this?
