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I was at first surprised when the manager said they weren't going to
worry about fixing the car sized hole in my old apartment's wall
until the Summer at the soonest. At first I thought it was because
they needed the warmer temperatures for the repair. Instead it
turned out they were losing the apartment complex to the bank and had
been in the foreclosure process for a while. The old management was
out of the way by January and the complex sold to a new owner at the
start of February. The new owner accepted anyone who applied for an
apartment without any background review as he had to make his own
mortgage payments on the property and the manager's apartment
directly below me was promptly rented to a new tenant. She liked
having the radio on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week... and
so she could hear it anywhere else in her apartment from her bedroom,
she had it at the highest volume possible.
At first I couldn't believe it and assumed she must have been away to
work and hadn't realized she had left the radio alarm on, but I soon
discovered that she was home all day. Even on the rare occasions
when she'd leave the apartment, she left the radio on to keep the
empty apartment company. I finally mustered up the courage to knock
on her door and introduced myself and asked if she could turn down
the volume. When I reached the word ''radio'', she slammed the door
shut in my face mid-sentence. With little other clue what to do, I
wrote a letter to the new owners as they didn't have any on-site
management nor had we been given a phone number, just an address to
send our rent checks. They didn't respond to my letter. As I
had been without sleep due to the never ending noise from below I
asked Daina if I could once again move into her guest bedroom for a
while until the issue was resolved.
The following week all tenants received a notice from the new owners
that they were going to raise the rent by two hundred dollars a month
starting in April. As I didn't have two hundred dollars a month in
spare money, that clinched it for me and I started looking for a new
apartment while staying at Daina's. I had actually started a new
apartment hunting spreadsheet after the car accident had ruined my
old apartment, but had put it aside when I was offered the apartment
two floors above my old one. Now that spreadsheet was back out and
being updated. I identified a few in my price range but as the
nearest bus stop to Daina's condo was quite a walk away, and then a
longer ride to even reach the bus hub before being able to get on the
right bus to any prospective apartment, I decided to wait until
the weekend when Daina would be able to play chauffeur and give me
her opinion on the apartment choices as well.
At such short notice, the selection was very slim and one place we
looked at didn't fit my 'needs' criteria. It was not between
multiple bus lines, so I would now have to pay double for my round
trips to the downtown area as I wouldn't be able to take an alternate
route home for the same initial fare cost. Also the apartment wasn't
anywhere near a grocery store and, having witnessed the problems
people had grocery shopping and trying to get their grocery bags
home on the bus, I didn't want to get into that trap. On the plus
side the apartment was pretty good, though a bit smaller than my
current one, and the rent was actually seventy-five dollars less a
month than my original rent. Looking at the few other choices, all
were worse than this one, but I couldn't see taking it given the
transportation issues I saw with it.
But Daina very much wanted me to get the place as it was half the
distance to her condo than my current apartment and as she had been
driving to my place more and more as our friendship grew, she wanted
a break on the driving time and gas costs. I pointed out my core
problem being the lack of any grocery store, but she assured me she
could start making regular trips taking me to a grocery store without
any complaint. I asked her if she was sure about it as, if for some
reason she couldn't provide me rides, I would be in a world of hurt.
But she was certain it wouldn't be an issue and, given that I was
getting free monthly bus passes from VocRehab at the time deferring
the bus ride cost issue, I applied for the apartment and was
accepted.
I wouldn't be able to move into my new apartment until the first of
March, so I couldn't leave my current one until a few days into the
next month. I wrote a letter to the new owners and let them know I
was leaving the complex and detailed the reasons why, such as the
ceaseless loud radio playing in the apartment below me that they
hadn't resolved, the problems with the heating controls, and the
coming profound rate hike in the rent. I told them I would be out of
the apartment by March fourth. I continued to sleep at Daina's but
would take her to work and then borrow her car during the day to be
at my apartment packing in preparation for the move. Each day I was
there, the neighbor's radio was still at full volume at all times.
As I put my stuff into boxes and collected my mail, nothing had
changed. I filed a change of address card with the post office as
well as notified the phone company of the move date and new location
I needed for service. I actually moved my electronics into Daina's
condo myself a few days before the move as they would have been the
most sensitive to unintended damage from my move helpers.
While my friend Jeff had helped me move into my first apartment shy
of three years earlier, he felt it was someone else's turn this time
and I called one of the former writer's group members who I knew had
a truck. He was willing and we agreed on Sunday March first as the
day. Daina would be helping and even her youngest sister offered to
come from Denver and help out on the day. As I had upgraded to a
second generation PC clone computer, I had my original clone computer
at loose ends. Not sure what to do with it, Daina's youngest sister
needed a computer and I offered it to her for free a month earlier so
I guess she felt she needed to pay me back with the help. The
day before the move, I drained the water bed and disassembled it into
its various pieces and all was set. When the day came, Daina refused
to help load the concrete blocks of my shelving into the truck, but
as the writer's group friend was pretty strong, he didn't mind. I
think it was around three truck loads worth until all of the
furniture and boxes were out, just leaving behind some assorted
cleaning supplies.
The writer's group friend congratulated me on the move and I thanked
him for his help and he was gone. I would only see him one more
time that summer before I'd lose contact with him. Daina's
sister returned with us to my now empty apartment and helped clean it
and then we left for dinner, leaving it as pristine as possible so I
wouldn't get dinged on my security deposit. I checked the apartment
again myself the next day just to make sure I hadn't missed anything
and then mailed the key to the new owner.
Rather than bill me for the partial month, he simply deducted five
days rent from my security deposit, sending the rest back to me.
This time he gave a phone number and I called it as I had told him I
would be out by the fourth, and was actually done with the place
by the second, so I should have only been charged four days
partial rent at the most, not five. My guess was he had forgotten
that February had twenty-nine days that year. But he assured me
he had gotten it right and the additional amount he kept wasn't for a
fifth day of rent, but for the repairs he had done to my apartment
that month.
What repairs were those? I asked. He said he had fixed the
heating valve in my apartment during the last week. I asked him
which day it was as I knew I had been there most of the time that
week packing. He couldn't remember. As I already knew the
heating valves of the complex were in the bedrooms, I asked him if he
had to move the bed to get to it. While my bed hadn't been in the
way, I wanted to test his story. He said that, ''Yes,'' he did but
thought he had moved it back to exactly where it had been. I
didn't bother congratulate him on the strength needed to move a
sixteen hundred pound water bed by hand, I just decided to drop
it rather than try to take him to court for an amount under twenty
dollars...
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