Deferred maintenance

I had a couple odd dreams last night. In both of them, I was packing up to move. In the first dream, Anne and I were carrying boxes to a moving van. I woke up from that one, and when I fell back asleep, I was packing up to move again. I can't remember any other time that I've resumed a dream "already in progress" like that, so I'm assuming that my subconscious was working on something. (You can tell I took a couple psych classes as an undergrad.) I'm guessing the dreams were suggested by the fact that my friends Roger and Gina are in the process of moving right now. (My subconscious feels your pain, guys.) We don't have any plans to move anytime soon. Luckily my dreams never act as premonitions because I hate moving. However, I'm getting a bit worried about the dry rot that's slowly eroding the walkway in front of our apartment.

We got a new landlord a couple months ago. This is the third owner since we moved into the place about seven years ago. Each one has brought a unique perspective on property management. The first one was a typical slumlord who illegally evicted people at the drop of a hat. But he was affable if you didn't cross him, and his communist handyman was fun to chat with (although he always did a half-assed job). The next owner was in way over his head trying to manage the property while maintaining his day job as a Baptist minister. The two buildings that make up the property are basically falling apart, and he didn't have the money to fix them, but he tried his best to do the repairs on his own. He lasted about two years before he sold. One of his finer moments as a landlord came when he tried to illegally hike an 80 year old neighbor's rent by about 40%. Did I mention that he's a minister?

The latest owners are a group of people who (as near as I can tell) spend their money buying up properties throughout the East Bay, slapping new coats of paint on them, and selling them at a profit. They have an unfortunately dictatorial style of property management. Within 48 hours of officially taking ownership, and with absolutely no warning, they came in and cut down all of our trees, leaving a barren moonscape in the thin strip of ground between the two buildings. The only living things over an inch tall that they saved were a couple palm trees out front and a big cactus in the back. But all of the greenery out our front windows is gone.

Anne and I were pretty unhappy with the new owners' scorched earth landscaping style, but I was optimistic that at least that implied they would follow through on some of the deferred maintenance. Most critically, the back staircase was listing dangerously away from the building. Not long after the new owners came along, they tore it down. By then there was a good 2" of separation between it and the side of the building. (The most the minister had done was put up some yellow caution tape at the top and bottom of the stairs shortly after he bought the building. This tape was promptly torn down by my neighbor who didn't mind risking his life for quicker access to the laundry room.) It was just this week that some laborers showed up to do something about our lack of a rear evacuation route. They've been making an unruly racket for the past couple days, most of which I've luckily missed while at work. There still doesn't seem to be any evidence of a stairway, but they have exposed a lot of dry-rotted beams supporting the walkway that runs in front of all of the apartments on the second floor.

Some readers, after all of this, may be wondering why we've stayed in this derelict building for the past seven years. At this point, I think I should mention that Oakland has very tenant-friendly laws, including strict rent control. That, combined with the great location, are the main things keeping us here. I'm definitely interested to see what the new owners are up to, although we're a bit nervous about the rent increase of unspecified size we were promised a couple weeks ago ("capital improvements" can be used as a justification for a rent increase above the allowable amount). That was the first time I'd met the new owner, and he seemed pretty shady. That said, once the walkway is repaired, the back staircase is replaced, the building gets repainted, and the promised landscaping arrives, it might be a nicer place to live. I just hope we can still afford it.