MY LANDLORD SUCKS!
Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. There's been some major upheaval in my life over the past month, and most of the time I've spent talking about it online has been through Crazyboards.

Basically, my landlord and I are at war. I've probably blogged in the past about how he likes to let himself into my apartment anytime he thinks he has a valid excuse and without giving me proper notice. I'm certain I mentioned the time I came home and found my toilet seat up.

Anyway, to make a long story short, a few weeks ago I came home and caught him in the act. (I did have a minor repair that needed to be done, but the law says unless it's an emergency, the landlord MUST give me a day's notice prior to entering my apartment. He did not do this.) I freaked. Ugliness ensued. I did some research and found out what my rights were (and I've got plenty, given his behavior). I sent him a letter via certified mail that basically said: you've broken the law, these are the incidents where the law was broken, here's how you can do your job without breaking the law, and these are the legal actions I'm going to take if you continue to break the law.

He responded by slipping a nasty letter under my door that basically said: No one's forcing you to live here, you pay the lowest rent of any tenant in the building, if you don't like it why don't you leave? He also made a vague threat to "shut down" my apartment for health/fire hazard reasons.

The bad news is yes, I can be evicted for excessive clutter, depending on the nature of the clutter. The good news is that if he follows the law, he's got to get some sort of authority (fire marshal, state inspector, whatever) to verify that the conditions in my apartment are hazardous. The authority has to write a report, and my landlord has to give me a copy of that report. From the day he does that, I have 30 days to clean up my act.

The landlord slipped the nasty letter under my door over a week ago, and has not communicated to me since about my so-called "hazardous" conditions. Mind you, my apartment has been like this for years and he's never said a word about it. It's only when I called him out for breaking the law that he decided to play tit for tat.

Anyway, this has given me the kick in the pants I needed to start doing some cleaning up and purging. And I have a neighbor who is willing to haul my shit to the nearest storage facility if that 30-day notice ever shows up on my door.

So this is why you haven't heard from me lately. This has been all-consuming.

In other news, a very unpleasant person at my job was let go last week. YAY! And someone who left because of her might apply to get his old job back. Double YAY because he was a great person and a good neighbor. Still is.
- posted by Pat @ 12:16 PM