Horrible Property Management

By Samantha Harris

My family and I are on the edge of eviction over $53 dollars. We are a one income family, due to the fact that just before the economy tanked, I was forced to stay home on maternity leave at 4 months pregnant. When I was ready to return to work,  there was no work. We have lived in this unit for two-and-a-half years. There have been problems with the unit and management from the beginning. There was a management switch about a year and a half ago, when the former property manager got jumped one evening. I’m not sure if he treated the tenants like trash the way the current property manager does. I hate that woman, she is arrogant, she refuses to speak to the tenants and she lies.

We moved into this place because we had nowhere else to go. At the time the rent was reasonable, but we’re now paying almost $100 more a month in rent and the electric charge has gone up as well. In total, we are paying $200+ more per month in rent than we were when we moved in here. We went from being able to pay the rent to having the rent be more than one paycheck. We often have to choose between eating and sleeping. We also have a toddler, and it’s hard trying to maintain for him when these people are always making demands of us.

The first winter we moved in here, we froze, because the furnace room had some sort of leak in it, and cold air kept blowing into our apartment. We finally covered the exhaust vent with plastic and used space heaters. I and my newborn son literally lived out of the bedroom for the entire winter. We called in for maintenance, and they came by, said nothing was wrong. Well, come the following fall, we asked again for them to check it out, and it was a matter of an insulation problem and a bad sensor. So we froze for nothing.

We moved in literally a few days after the previous tenant moved out. This apartment was not painted, nor were the carpets replaced. The doors are dry-rotting, and the closet doors are broken (they’re metal and they fold out). The patio door handle comes off all the time, and I’m so afraid of not being able to get back in to my son should I go out on the balcony. The blinds in the bedroom are broken, there is mold in the bathroom, and we had a damaged sub-floor for a year before they replaced it, and when they did, they did not clean the area that was water damaged, so we could still be having mold problems. They also did a cheap job in replacing the sub floor, because they didn’t re-seal the carpets, and the area right in front of the bathroom door still has the carpet nails sticking up. I’ve cut my feet several times.  The toilets overflow regularly, there are constant leaks, and we can have our water cut off without notice in the middle of the weekend.

The place "looks nice" because we clean meticulously. But I’m tired of my son eating carpet fibers and being able to pull medicine out of the hall closet. My 20-month-old knows how to open child-proof caps.

The problems began when I started complaining. It’s not my fault that there are so many problems with this place, these are all things they should have taken care of. My husband is outside now MAKING SHELVES to put in the hall closet, because the closet was missing three when we moved in.

I’ve called so many times, and because these issues are not "major emergencies", they get put on the back burner. I’ve written two letters, to which the property manager decided to take offense and ignore. The regional manager said my letters were "derrogatory". I’m not sure what letter she read.

The main issue started this year, when we lost the unemployment which helped pay the rent on time. We have paid late only three times in two and a half years. Even the management company says that our account is "not that bad".  But they’re mad that I complained. They’re mad that I called the property manager "barely visible". I’ve walked in there for an appointment with her, and she’s stood there 15 feet away from me with her back to me while someone else told me she wasn’t available. They give you the runaround.

In July we had to pay our rent late. The last check from his old job (he got hired as a federal employee from a contractor) was nowhere near enough to make the rent. So we paid it on the 22nd, and paid all the fees they asked us to. Apparently, since we paid after the 15th, there was some sort of "writ of posession" that was instigated. But we weren’t charged for that until two weeks ago. Because we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent and this fee, they gave us a 7-day eviction notice. I asked the rental office, and they blamed the sherrif and the lawyer. But the rental office is the one who tells the lawyers and the sherrif to evict. They should have added that charge on the 15th, so we could pay it when we paid the rent and the fees. They did not, and cannot explain why they did not. They will not explain, instead they harp on the "mean letters" I sent them. I wrote firstly to complain about the water issue and how I felt that the property manager was ignoring her old tenants in order to get new ones that she could charge more due to "accent walls" and new appliances. The second letter was saying that the illegal day workers they hired killed my flowers and messed up my balcony while "trying" to fix the roof. Those men spent more time sleeping on the grass and staring into my apartment than anything.

The Regional manager says that because our rent was late and because of the emails I sent, they could evict us. I feel like they’re retaliating because I’m agreeing with everyone else who says not to move into this place. I never called names, I never said anything other than DO YOUR JOB.

I’m tempted to put my rent into escrow and begin the lawsuit process.

Am I crazy or are they acting in an illegal manner? Note, that as of today none of the issues in this apartment have been fixed.

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