If you have followed along so far, dear reader, in the six chapters preceding this one, you will understand me when I say, that I had had quite enough of problems with roommates.  I had tried being friendly and generous, I had tried being kind by offering low rents, I had been polite, still too polite, when my rental agreements and rules were violated again and again and again, by tenants whose real point of view was that I should just stay hidden away in my room and leave them alone.  Failing in all this, I had tried being more clear.  I had tried being crystal clear, in my rules and expectations.  In exchange for all these efforts, I had been bullied, disrespected, dismissed, yelled at, lied to, insulted, and sued, and sued again.  And during all this time, keep in mind, reader, that I was offering some of the lowest rents available in my area, for my tenants.

Hence, there was something I wanted to say, and say it loud.  It was this:

 

In short, I needed to raise my rents, to take back my power in my own house, and to get rid of the godawful horrible atrocious roommates I had had for far too long, as well as all their toxic bullshit, lies and nonsense!!  But before I could finalize these radical changes, and totally reclaim my own house, I had to get my  last roommate, Bridget, out of my house.

 

Bridget: A Great Tenant — Except when She Told me To Fuck Off

In many ways, Bridget was the best tenant or roommate I ever had.  She was extremely polite and sweet, and followed my house rules to the letter, completely without complaint.  It was her nature to be very detail oriented and diligent, responsible and kind.  She also became my friend, something that had never happened with any other of my tenants.

Bridget had been in my house for two years, and had seen the problems I’d had with Jon, and had not only empathized with me during those struggles, but had also offered support.  During the time of the lawsuit with Jon, Bridget was there for me, and expressed her contempt for Jon’s lies and scams. This quite differentiated her from all my other tenants, who invariably had felt pulled to side with other tenants (not the landlord) when there was any kind of problem between myself and one of my roommates.  I was impressed, I was grateful, and I found this quite unusual, and realized, it seemed to be  the very first time, in all the years I’d had tenants, that a tenant actually saw me more as a human being with needs and feelings, rather than an authority figure they felt ambivalent about, who they experienced as getting in their way of having what they wanted, or who was too much older than they and different, to be seen as other than a parent figure.

At the same time as I had appreciated this so much about Bridget, there was a reason why I did not want to keep her on as a roommate, and it was a significant reason.  As sweet and polite as Bridget was, as helpful and supportive, and really as very sharp and intelligent and wise — all of these wonderful qualities about her went right down the toilet when we had a little problem arise — namely a manic episode.  Because unfortunately, though I didn’t know it when I rented to her, Bridget, like Linda, years before her, had a bipolar disorder.

I first became aware of this, about four months after Bridget moved in, when I was tending to chores in my house, and noticed that many things had been moved around.  Shortly I also saw the cause of this, namely Bridget, whizzing around the house, with a new and giddy expression on her face.   She was cleaning up, “just doing a little tidying up” she said, with a broad smile.  Bless her soul, when Bridget became manic, she did not destroy things or break windows, throw dishes in the trash or sit on the sidewalk and scream. She just flitted frenetically about my house, cleaning up.

As nice as it was to have extra cleaning help, there were other not so nice aspects to her mania.  One of these, could be readily discovered by trying to talk to her about her mania.  Because, as anyone knows who has a friend or relative with bipolar disorder, they cannot easily recognize when they are in a manic state.  Often they deny it completely.  So, when I would try to talk to Bridget about what was going on with her, she would become combatative and insulting, sometimes extremely combatative and very insulting and abusive.  This was very hard to take, from someone who normally was exceptionally sweet and polite, as well as a supportive friend — to suddenly find that very same person in your house, now telling you to fuck off.  In fact, Bridget’s own sister Andrea would later tell me, that she could not stand to be physically around Bridget, during her manic episodes, because of how insulting she became.  Andrea would not allow Bridget to come over to her house, when Bridget was manic.

Then too, there was the grandiosity and delusion.  In her normal life, Bridget was a student at a local college — and in fact she wasn’t even an undergraduate yet.  When I rented to her, I assumed she was an undergrad at the major university in my area, but only found out later that she had been in community college, taking preparatory courses for a 4 year university, for many years. She struggled quite a bit with these classes, various science courses.  But when in her mania, Bridget was now leaps ahead, planning her PhD dissertation, winking at me that she knew all the details of the most advanced theories in her field of study.  She would also talk about plans she had that were completely delusional — such as how she was going to go skateboarding with a previous tenant of mine, who had moved out long ago and whom she had never kept in touch with.  All of this delusion and mania was disturbing to me, and others in my house had been disturbed by it as well.

Bridget’s First and Second Manic Episode

So when I first discovered Bridget in a state of mania in my home, and found that it was impossible to talk her about what she was doing or how she was upsetting others, but instead would be told off and insulted, all I knew was that I wanted her out of my house right away.  I phoned up Bridget’s sister Andrea, and Bridget’s mother Lisa, and found out to my dismay that neither of them wanted to take Bridget.  They just didn’t like being around her when she was that way.  I was frustrated and angry — it seemed to me that when someone has a mental illness, this is more the family’s responsibility to take care of, than the landlord’s.  When I insisted that something had to be done, that I could not have Bridget in my house moving things about, insulting me and my other tenants, and refusing to listen to me, Lisa did come over and take Bridget to the hospital, where they stablized her.

When Bridget returned to my house 10 days later, she meekly asked permission to come back, inquiring softly “is it okay if I come back now?”  I saw the old Bridget back again and was delighted about that.  But I also told her we needed to sit down and talk and figure something out.  It was challenging to talk to Bridget about her bipolar condition, in large part, because she didn’t fully believe she had a bipolar condition.  Some degree of the grandiosity I had seen in her in mania, remained during her “normal” state, and she felt that she knew more than most any expert about her condition. She did not apologize for the disruption she had caused in my house, but she was willing to start in a group for those with bipolar disorder, to try to get more support.  I explained that my main concern was that I could not have her in my house when she was in a manic state — that if she wanted to remain a tenant at my house, she would need to find another place to go during those times.  She agreed to this, saying, “I will leave right away — I will find someplace to stay, I’ll go to a hotel if I have to”, but she never did sign the agreement I wrote up for her, in which I asked her to put this in writing.

It was about 6 months later  ( and at a time when I was already renting one of my rooms only to short term Airbnb guests) when Bridget had her next manic episode.   Tomasso had moved out by now, and I had a new  roommate, Lydia, another student, who reported that Bridget was “saying strange things”

and had been sitting on the floor in the hallway, right outside Lydia’s bedroom,talking loudly on her cellphone.  I knew right away what the problem was, and was quite concerned about how this could impact my Airbnb hosting, since I already knew that guests can write reviews of their experience, which cannot be removed or changed.  So, I immediately went to talk to Bridget, telling her that she was having a manic episode, and that, as we had agreed, she needed to leave my house until she was back to normal.  “I’m not manic, you’re manic!!  Leave me alone!,” Bridget yelled at me, and turned on her heels and went into her room.  Irate, I knocked on her room door, and she opened it, and stood there and gave me a lecture on how I was not to invade her privacy.  When I kept insisting about her agreement to leave and stay elsewhere, she hooted, “I never said such a thing!” and closed the door in my face.

Livid, I immediately dialed up Bridget’s sister Andrea, who was the family member who Bridget trusted most and who I had been told would work  with her most closely on this issue.  I told Andrea that Bridget was manic again, and that I really could not have her in my house.  I explained how Bridget was insulting me, refusing to listen to me, bothering my other housemates, and how this was totally unacceptable.  In addition, I had also found that Bridget had turned on the hose in my backyard, and simply left the hose running full blast, all day long apparently.  She was also moving appliances around, and destroyed a rice cooker by leaving it on with rice in it for over a week.  She left the door to my chicken coop open, potentially endangering the hens, to where I had to put a padlock on it.  There were many potential problems with Bridget present in my home.

I asked if Andrea could take Bridget to her house, and though Andrea was emphatic, she would not be around Bridget when Bridget was manic!!  She did call Bridget and speak with her, and then phoned me back, saying that she had been able to get through to Bridget to convince her that she was manic, but that Bridget said she had nowhere else to go and could not afford a hotel.  I was incensed.  If she didn’t have anywhere else to go and couldn’t afford a hotel, why had she ever agreed to that and promised me she would definitely leave my house, “even if I have to stay in a hotel!”  Sadly, I realized that when it came to agreements and rules that I absolutely needed to have followed, sweet, gentle and polite Bridget ended up being the same as all the other tenants I had had very serious problems with  — she signed onto some agreements and responsibilities that she was unable or unwiling to carry out.

Ultimately, Andrea was able to convince Bridget to go and stay with one of her friends for a few days, but, she noted, Bridget fully expected me to refund her rent for the days that I had asked her to go elsewhere.

Sadly, though Bridget had actually become a friend of mine at this point, and we had gone hiking and to movies and dinner together several times, I realized that I was going to have to ask Bridget to move out.  Through the thick and thin, the long and short, the big and tall of it, I had realized — I can’t have roommates who are not my friends, and I can’t have roommates who are my friends — I can’t have roommates at all!!

A change is necessary: no more roommates

I realized a radical change was necessary, in how I ran my house. In fact, I realized that I wanted to do without roommates — but I could not do without renters, since I needed the rental income to pay my mortgage.  So my solution was to have renters, who were not roommates.  This is where Airbnb came in, and fit very nicely.

After Jon left, I still had two renters — Bridget and Tomasso, although since Tomasso was only in my area for two semesters, while he finished a graduate program, I did not think of him as an actual roommate. Here is how I began to distinguish between a roommate and a renter (or “guest” as Airbnb calls them):  a roommate was someone who was moving in for an indefinite period of time, who did not know when they would be leaving.  (Who knows they might never want to leave!) A renter or guest, on the other hand, was someone who was only intending to stay for the duration of a specific project or course of study or research, or internship or such.  This latter type of renter, because they would eventually be moving on, was much less likely to “stake claims” on my property, or have needs that I was not interested in helping them satisfy in my house.

I realized it was this particular issue which made all the difference in the world.  I was now totally uninterested in people who wanted to bring their whole lives to my house, and all their belongings.  I was convinced that this was where all the problems originated, since when someone felt that my house was their “home”, there would invariably be a battle brewing either overtly or covertly, over whose home it really was.  In the past, I had let tenants become too comfortable feeling that my house was their home.  They needed to know much more clearly, that my house was not their home, but rather, it was my home.  I realized that in fact, I didn’t want my home to be anyone’s home, except my home.  I got my first taste of such renters, with Tomasso and some Airbnb guests, when I began listing on Airbnb, after doing many months of work to clean up and prepare my home for short term guests.  And I was enthralled and in bliss with the enormous difference that I experienced, between those who came marching arrogantly into my home expecting and demanding that it was theirs, versus those who came into my home gratefully and politely, respecting it and being very considerate and respectful, because it was mine.

Once I had my first taste of having guests rather than roommates, by listing one of my rooms on Airbnb, I felt like I was in heaven.  This was exceptionally blissful — I saw that now, instead of having nightmares and horrors with roommates, I could run a guest house, and have delightful and grateful people over to stay.  Really the difference was phenomenal.

I give notice to my last roommate

Once Lydia moved on, who had been in my house only a few months to complete her university program, I then turned that room into an Airbnb rental as well, and now only Bridget remained as my last roommate.  I talked to Bridget and explained that I needed her to move, and why, and she sadly accepted this.  I didn’t want to give her written notice to leave (the “termination of tenancy” form) because that legal form is so cold and off-putting, and Bridget had been, and still was, my friend.  I also wanted to give her plenty of time to find another place to live.  Though legally I only needed to give her 60 days’ notice, I chose to give her 90 days to find a new place.

Though Bridget was my friend, was a very honest and responsible person, and she felt obligated to me and actually put a lot of work and diligence into finding a new place, she did not move out in 90 days. In  fact she did not move out in 120 days, or even 150 days.    Here came another sad consequence of my generosity to my roommates:  by the time Bridget was looking for a place to move to, rents had gone up considerably in my area since the 2.5 years prior when she had moved in.  In fact, median rents had nearly doubled in my city during this period of time.  So, given that she was living on disability income (not on a student loan, as I had first thought), Bridget’s income level was actually no longer adequate to enable her to afford even

a room in a house in my city, at median rent.  Hence she was having a heck of a time finding a room she could afford.  I felt angry — now it was becoming obvious that I was suffering the consequences of my generosity.  I wondered if I would ever get my last roommate out of my house!  In all the years I had had roommates, I had never once increased anyone’s rent.  I had kept my rents low, wanting to be kind to those who, like me, had lifestyles and values not oriented to the almighty dollar.  What I finally realized, was that by offering such low rents, I was causing myself a multitude of problems, such as, that when it was really past time for them to go — that my roomates might say they could not afford to move out, because I had the cheapest rents in the whole city and they could not find another place that they could afford to live.

Finally, after nearly half a year, actually about 170 days after I had asked her to move in no more than 90 days, I was elated to hear Bridget call me with the good news that she had found a new place to live.  I was so happy about this, that I immediately volunteered to help her do the schlepping.  When moving day came, I was hauling her boxes out, and I was the one driving the big U-Haul truck she had rented.  However, Bridget said that over half the things she owned, would not fit into her new space, so we stopped at a storage facility on the way to offload them.

When we got to her new home, I was heartbroken for her.  Bridget was happy and upbeat, declaring in an excited voice that her new home had a kitty cat.  But I was downcast and dejected when I saw the miserable shack of a house she was moving into, out in the margins of ghettoland in my city — the only place she could now afford.  Out right in front of her wretched new home, was an illegally dumped TV and mattress, and weeds choked the decrepit looking block.  Opening an institutional looking chain link fence, bowing under viney overgrowth, we entered the property.  The cold, miniscule living room smelled like cat pee, and was gloomy and dark.  The size of her bedroom was pathetic — it was about 60% smaller than the space she had had in my home, and there was no way she could squeeze even 1/3 of her belongings into the tiny room, which featured a window, covered with a shoddy, stained rag of a curtain,  that looked directly onto the neighbor’s ghetto blight.

Altogether, I was so saddened for Bridget, as I continue to be for many renters, who are finding themselves pushed out farther away into the margins, the dilapidated ghettos and suburban hinterlands, because they can no longer afford the rents in my ever more popular urban center.  However, I also realize what a bad idea it is for any property owner to try to provide charity care for their tenant, through generously low rents, particularly in a setting where landlords have so few rights compared to tenants, and can be so obscenely victimized by the legal system. As well, I have spoken to many landlords and homeowners with roomies over the years, and they seem to be unanimous in declaring, that when they raised their rents, they got better renters.  It was in fact the low rents that I offered that had far more to do with the bad renters I obtained, than I had ever realized!!  So, again, my advice to all of you out there who need renters — -please do yourself a favor and run a business, not a charity organization.  You’ll thus be more likely to avoid getting the disabled, the mentally ill, the entitled, the disgruntled, the formerly evicted, the slackers, the anti-authoritarian activists and anarchists, and the bottom of the barrel renters of all kinds.

Bridget and I are still good friends, and I expect to remain friends with her, the sweet soul that she is.  Life has treated her well, and she has actually been able to move on now from the dilapidated and tiny house, into something much nicer.

There is one odd aspect to Bridget’s life, even when she is in quite a normal state of mind — which is, that she has now been taking “preparatory” science coursework at the very same community college for well on 7 years.  In fact, she appears to be taking some of the very same classes, over and over again.  I  continue to be puzzled as to how long Bridget will be able to believe, and/or convince others, that her real calling in life is to be a Doctorate in Biochemistry, a leading world expert in her field, coming up with new theories on Bipolar disorder and new medications as well, when for the life of her, she cannot seem to get out of community college.  But I leave that folly aside, as one of life’s odd unexplained mysteries, and know only that Bridget is one of the sweetest people I have ever known.

My life without roommates

After Bridget moved out, I was clear — there would be no more roommates for me, ever again!!. I had had enough serious problems with roommates to last ten lifetimes.

I call my house a “guest house”, and although I dont’ do only short term rentals, I only rent to individuals who are here for a short to medium length of time, and who I am clear, are not seeking permanent housing.  I choose renters who are here for a vacation, a family visit, a short project or course of study, research, a workshop, one semester to finish school, and the like.  I make it clear to anyone who rents in my home, that this is my home, and not theirs.  I do this by intentionally creating an environment oriented to be a tranquil, retreat-like setting.  I have a very clear set of very solid house rules, which are intended not only to maintain the type of environment I am trying to create here, but also to clarify to renters that this is not your house, this is my house, and you are welcome to visit, but not to stay.

I do this for instance, by prohibiting renters from having any mail delivered to my home, or using my address for any purpose whatsoever, such as setting up a bank account.  I prohibit them from having any friends over: in fact no visitors may enter my home for any amount of time, even 5 minutes.  I prohibit renters from leaving their belongings out in common areas, and insist they use designated storage spaces only. This very much helps with the problem of renters starting to lay “claim” to the homeowner’s space by “marking territory” and leaving their things around.  If after two warnings, a guest/renter continues to leave the same items out in common areas where prohibited, their property will go directly into the trash can.   I prohibit use of phones in common areas, and prohibit socializing or phone use in my house after 10pm.  I also prohibit monopolizing of common areas and if two or more guests start becoming friends and “hanging out”, I direct them out of my tranquil retreat center to a local cafe which is more suitable for such activities.  I am very strict about the rules for guests cleaning up after themselves. I don’t allow guests to bring furniture, appliances, or really anything more than 2 suitcases of belongings. In short, I make it quite abundantly clear that it is me who runs my home, not my renters.

Another very lovely aspect to not having roommates: everything in each room of my house, now belongs to me.  I have all my own furniture in the guest rooms, and all my own art.  I have my books and doo-dads in these rooms, not roommates’ own choice of decor.  This means that my house features art by Picasso, Miro and Kandinsky, not idiotic Occupy or Che Guevara Posters and passive-aggressive anarchist taunts at my authority.  I dont’ allow renters to hang their own things on my room’s walls, and I prohibit renters from hanging things in windows or on the outside of their room doors — I just dont’ want to see my house starting to be rearranged and any sign of foreign invaders staking claims to my territory.

So there is a very real way now that even though these rooms are mostly occupied by others, they remain mine even when others are in them.  This goes a good long way towards allowing me to retain ownership of my entire home, as does the fact that I like to spend time in each of the rooms of my house now, when a guest vacates it, just to keep putting my energy there, saying, “this space is mine!!”

I think it’s often important for women in particular, especially those who have had bully fathers or been marginalized in their own families, to be able to finally take up our space.  So, y’all go,  girls — and make yourselves very large in your own home, your sacred space. I want to see you being gigantic there! Take up the space that is yours, without hesitation or guilt, but with natural female power.  As I experience it, this lovely, mysterious, delicious women’s power comes from Gaia and the earth, and it’s something unique to us as women.    So , go gals, get grounded and go touch the earth and recieve your natural inheritance!

Finally, I will point out something that is very central and highly significant to many Airbnb hosts and others do short term rentals — when you rent to someone on a short term basis, they have no tenant’s rights.  In fact, a short term renter is not a tenant.  I think having read through my story thus far, you will quite appreciate, gentle reader, how much this means to me in particular, as well as to anyone who has had to endure some of the truly beastly and horrific violations and abuse that homeowners have to endure, because in so many regions, tenants seem have more rights in their homes than they themselves do, and end up bullying homeowners about in their own homes.

Hence it is a lovely thing, to know that if a short term rental guest violates your house rules, you can, just as a hotel can do, kick them out the very next day.  You do not need to give that miscreant 30 days’ notice. More, if a short term rental guest overstays the period they have rented for, you do not have to file a lawsuit and go to court to try to extract them, and potentially be stalled for 6 months to a year while a vile scammer pulls a sick fraud on you.  Instead, you can toss them out on their heinie, and their luggage out on the sidewalk after them.  If the guest tries to overstay, they are trespassing, committing a misdeanor crime, and can be arrested.

In my opinion, this is in fact is how it should be for anyone renting a room in someone’s home —  that they have no tenant’s rights, and can be thrown out without going to court — in fact it’s my understanding this is the way the law presently is in Ireland and the UK, and it seems to go just fine there.  Those who want tenant rights, should get their  own apartment.  Those who rent in someone’s home, should not have “rights” to stay in that home one day beyond their having made themselves vile pests there and becoming seriously unwanted there.  Just like cockroaches or other foul vermin, homeowners need to be able to remove all unwanted tenant-pests right away.  (If these words seem harsh to you, please read my last 6 chapters!!)

In short, by having rules in my house that keep guests in their place and keep them from encroaching on my territory or other’s territory, and rules which also, are not those they would be comfortable with on a long term basis or for living permanently with, I help ensure that those visiting my home are very aware of the most important thing, this long sought-after goal which I have finally been able to attain  — namely,

                      My house is mine.  

 

 

 

After the disappearance of my tenant Robb, (and it was still two years before his skeletal remains would be found in a remote desert area of Utah — see chapter five of this story), things began to go more downhill with Jon, who had been my roommate during part of the sordid drama introduced into my home by the Demented Duo (see chapter four of this story).   It’s now time to tell the story of Jon.

I learned more about how to screen renters

After the departure of Marie, and the disappearance of Robb, I eventually brought in two new roomies, Bridget and Tomasso. Bridget was a biology student at a local college, and Tomasso was here from Italy for a 6 month program at the major university.  I had at this point learned that I had better luck with tenants who were students.   Thanks as well to years of some truly atrocious experiences with roommates, I had learned a little more about how to screen prospective renters, and what to look out for.   Though I was earlier less aware of this quality, I’d developed an “arrogance detector” at last, and now I sought out roommates who had an aura of gentleness, sweetness — even obsequiousness.  Because one of the things I had learned in all my misadventures, was that it was just about completely meaningless for a prospective tenant to say that they had read my house rules and agreed with them and would follow them all. This had been very hard to learn, because I’m an honest person, and you, gentle reader, are doubtless an honest person, and it’s just very  difficult for us honest and sincere people to understand how someone can look us right in the eye and lie to us!   We tend to have that naive and foolish belief, that if someone signs a rental agreement and agrees to abide by it, then they will.

 

Otherwise, if they did not want to abide by it, they would go and look for another place to rent, with rules that they could agree to — right? Wrong.  Many of them will sign on to your rental agreement, never intending to follow the rules they agreed to — why? Because your place is cheap, and conveniently located.  So for many tenants, the fact that they need a place in the price range you are offering, and in the convenient location you offer, makes them feel entitled to have it, regardless of the fact that they dont’ intend to follow your rules.  This is exactly the problem that would develop with Jon, as time would show.

What I had found in my years of experience, is that at the very moment many renters are signing a rental agreement saying they will abide by all the house rules, they actually think that all his paperwork is a meaningless formality, and that you, the landlord, are not going to be so tiresome and boorish that you would actually expect them to follow all these rules!! I mean, there you are, sitting across from them, looking normal and human and pleasant and smiling, so, come off it, they think inwardly, you must be joking, you aren’t really going to  expect all dishes to be put away all the time, or no socializing after 10pm, or whatever the rule is that they dont’ think matches your pleasant face.  So, such liars and cheats are signing on, and blowing off, at the very same time.

Such prospective tenants  dont’ care a fig newton for all your rules, they just want  a place that has the low rent you have, and the proximity to public transit or downtown or other convenient location that you have, and so they will unethically, dishonestly force-fit your offering to themselves, dismissing your needs and emphasizing their own.  And thus when one is screening prospective renters, one has to realize the prevalance of this dishonesty, and this self-centeredness and disrespect for you as the homeowner and the person whose home it is, and seek to screen out these dolts.

Hence, what I had learned to look for in renters, was not the words and promises that came out of their mouths, but to apply my intuition (which I had plenty of, but which I had not sufficiently valued) and look for those renters of whom I assessed, that they would be ashamed of themselves if they did not meet my expectations of them.  Because it is one thing for a landlord to scold a tenant for their misbehavior, but it is quite another thing, and much more effective, when that same tenant’s own conscience is scolding them from within.  Thus, you do well as a person offering rental property, if you learn to select those renters who have the capacity to experience shame and guilt, and to be suitably chastened by their own conscience.

Things go downhill with Jon

So after I brought in Bridget and Tomasso, I congratulated myself on my improved tenant screening skills, because both these individuals were exceptionally polite and sweet.  They followed all the house rules to an absolute tee, and had been very honest about their own habits, the fact that they would not be around much, but would be out attending school and busy with studying.

 

At the same time that the overall level of tenant cooperation in my house improved, things started going downhill with Jon.  This problem actually had started around the time that Marie moved out, but grew worse after the arrival of my stellar tenants Bridget and Tomasso.  I had the intuition (and I think I am right on the money here) that Jon (as an anarchist-empathizing political activist at heart) had a deepseated need to have some sort of anti-authoritarian subversion of my authority going on in my house at all times, in at least a minor way. Once I deprived him of any and all co-conspirators to his need to at least subtly subvert my authority, he found himself enormously frustrated, and had to resort to greater open defiance. I think that Jon’s wishes for my home, were precisely in reverse to my own.  As I gained more control over my home and brought in better tenants, those gentle hearted and truly considerate people who followed my rules without complaint, Jon must have felt more marginalized and alone — poor baby! He no longer had anyone in my house to build anti-authority, anti-landlord alliances with.  It must have just riled him that I had at last learned to divide and conquer, and had divided him out from all the miscreants, haters, bullies and other vermin he could use against me.

For the most part, and for the years since he moved in, I had actually found Jon to be a decent tenant. His anti-authoritarian subversion had generally mostly had at least one other in alliance with him, so he was content to defy my authority in small ways which I didn’t notice much.   Like me he was pretty solitary, and very quiet.  He kept to himself a lot, doing computer work and research in his room.  He had been planning a career change, wanting to do something other than the work he had been involved in with an environmental organization. I guess he realized that as he entered his thirties, that a low salary nonprofit job wasn’t what he wanted for the rest of his life.  He had expressed interest in being an electrician or an ironworker, and I had perked up when I heard about his interest in electrical work, since I did electrical work as part of my home repair profession.  So I gave him some books on electrical work, and offered to take him to one of my jobs where I was installing a new circuit in a house where remodeling was going on (actually the home of a friend of mine), and have him help me there at this house  He came along and helped me the whole day, and I enjoyed the chance to teach him something about electrical work.  Much later, my friend would say that she thought he was pretty arrogant.  I dont’ know why I missed seeing that in him, all the time he was in my house.  Others who met him or heard stories about him, all expressed that they found him exceptionally arrogant, but I didn’t see that in him until things started to go badly, which was actually just around the time when  Marie moved out.

One of the things I had begun doing a few years back, was keeping backyard chickens.  Jon had expressed interest in helping with this, and so for the last couple years,  he and I shared the chores with the keeping of the chickens.  However, I had felt all along that the chores were not  being divided equally.  I noticed too often that I was “picking up the slack” where Jon was slacking off.

The sweet birds needed good care and Jon was slacking off 

He’d forget to fill the chicken waterer, and I would come and find it empty.  He would forget to clean out the coop, and I would have to remind him to do that.  He would get sick with a cold or flu, but instead of asking me to cover for him,  would just flake on feeding the chickens at all that day, supposing I guess that I would be there as usual to pick up the slack.  So Jon’s flaking off became a thorn in my side that was needling at me for several months.

First Butt-Whupping of Jon

After itching with this persistent annoyance of his continual slackage and overall poor attitude about the chicken chores, one day I realized that Jon had brought a second bike to my property without asking me.  The rules were clear: tenants could have one bike and one bike only at my house, which were kept in the backyard in a bike storage area.  When the previous tenant had left, and taken her bike, the new tenant Bridget had not had a bike to put back there, and so I guess Jon had thought that he could simply seize the vacant space and claim it as his.  When I realized that Jon had put two bikes there, I told him that he could not do this, and that he would have to get the other one out of there.  He argued that he had nowhere to put it.  I told him I didnt’ care, but that he couldn’t have it in my bike storage area or anywhere in my yard.  He took it and stored it in my yard anyway, insisting,  “you have to be flexible” – I had to do no such thing.

But in his mind, because he had a need, I was mandated to provide for his need, my own needs and wishes be damned.  He saw I had space in my backyard, and he didn’t care if I didn’t want extra bikes lying around cluttering up my space, and he didnt’ care that I had a house rule that clearly stated that tenants could not leave their belongings in yards or any common area — he felt that I was all but legally mandated to provide for his storage needs.

Jon’s bike finally departed my premises, but not without me threatening to take it to the dump if he didnt’ get his crap out of my yard.  As I started to more firmly plant my foot down now, and assume the full power of my authority in my home and show very little patience with his arrogant bullshit, Jon and I entered into a warpath, which would escalate over the next few months.  I was now standing up to Jon’s nonsense and disrespect, putting him in his place,  and doing with him what I should have done long ago, such as during the second week of his tenancy, when to my disturbed surprise, I heard the distinct sound of a small animal yapping, within his room on my no pets property. Knocking on his door, he opened it, and there he was with a little puppy in his arms.  When I asked what the hell was going on, he couldn’t have a dog in my house, he argued, “it will only be here overnight, I’m taking care of it for someone.”  I should have kicked him to the curb at that time, but as the puppy was cute, I softened and shrugged off this early blatant violation of my house rules. I didnt’ realize it until much later, when previous tenants told me stories about Jon, that he had actually promoted mass defiance against my house rules every time I went on vacation.  I found out he’d had parties in my home (it had always been strictly forbidden for any renter to invite more than 2 guests to my house) whenever I went away for a few days or a week.

After the bike incident and my butt-whupping of Jon, putting him in his place by demonstrating to him that you are my tenant, and I am not your servant, and you follow my rules, I don’t take your commands he became noticably different in his manner in my house.  He was now sullen and hostile looking, and refused to greet or acknowledge me as I passed by him or when I was in the same room with him.  Really I should have just evicted him at that point, delivering him a notice of termination of tenancy and telling him , nothing personal, but I need more space and I’m taking your room.  That would have kept things from escalating and getting worse, and him from feeling that he could only maintain his arrogant pride by putting up a massive fight.  So I’m saying this as a word of advice to all of you out there who find you have a problem with a tenant — particularly one who is a roommate — get them out quickly, before things escalate and get worse.  Early and quick is more painless.

Second Butt-Whupping of Jon

The tension heated up between myself and Jon, and now others could sense it as well.  Jon had become such a slacker with taking care of the backyard chickens, that I finally had to fire him from this task, which he did only out of self-interest in obtaining fresh eggs, because he showed very little love for the hens.  Bridget, took over his chicken care duties, and she reported to me that she’d had a conversation with Jon in which he had spoken about me using foul language.  “She needs to take a fucking chill pill!!“, Jon had apparently said about me, and Bridget said he’d seemed incredibly angry, angrier than she had ever seen him before.

In weeks to follow, there were a couple other things that I needed to talk to Jon about, regarding a couple other small but persistent rule violations regarding the number of guests he was having over.  When I tried to speak to him in person about these things, he refused to listen, and walked away from me. When I wrote him a note and left it in his mailbox, he never responded.  He was blowing me off, but I was not going to be blown off any more. Not with all the crap I’d had to endure, all the rudeness, disrespect and outright persecution from seriously bad tenants.  No, Jon was going to find that he could not blow me off, because I was going to be on his ass. But instead of trying to speak to him more about events now in the past, I waited for a present-time problem to occur so I could confront him.  I did not have to wait long.

Third Butt-Whupping of Jon

Ever since the problems I had had first with the Demented Duo taking over my kitchen for their tawdry sorority drama scenes, and then Marie, inviting over friends and boyfriends nearly every day of the week, I had tightened up my house rules about guests, to try to prevent renters taking over my kitchen with strangers in my house, something that had always made me feel uncomfortable.  So from early days when I allowed renters to have up to two guests at a time three times a week, I now allowed only one guest at a time, 2 days a week, and I no longer allowed the kitchen to be used for “hanging out” — one could only use the kitchen to cook or eat.

One late afternoon in late summer, I heard the sound of laughter in the kitchen below, and went downstairs to find Jon at the kitchen table with two of his friends.  They smiled and politely said hello to me, and I politely said hello to them, and then quietly told Jon that he was only permitted to have one friend at a time at my house.  Jon briefly glanced at me, said “sure”, in a very insincere tone that sounded far too much like “Whut-EVER!!” ,  and continued chatting with both his friends, ignoring me completely.

Not quite sure what to do, I went back upstairs to ponder this issue.  I hoped that in a few minutes I would hear Jon saying goodbye to his friends, and I would not have to press this issue in front of all of them, because I didn’t feel in the mood for more confrontation.  However, as the minute hand wound around the clocks’ face, I did not hear the sound of meals wrapping up, dishes being washed,  goodbyes announced, or doors closing and unwelcome house guests departing the premises.  I only heard the sound of more laughter from below me.

So after about 30 minutes I went right back downstairs, marched up to my kitchen table, looked at Jon, and angrily announced, “You will have to ask your guests to leave right now!!.”  Jon said that I was being ridiculous, and that they were only having a quiet dinner. I told them that they could take their quiet dinner elsewhere, but that he was not permitted to have more than one guest at a time at my house.

He burst out that he had never agreed to that rule, and so I was prohibited from imposing it on him.  In fact, he was 200% wrong in his understanding of state law on this issue (more about this later), but arrogant as he was, he would not allow his complete ignorance of the law to temper his enormous sense of self-righteous entitlement.  I became so angry, that there and then, for the first time in my life that I can recall, I literally yelled at one of my tenants.  As he told me that my rule was ridiculous nonsense, I yelled, “If you don’t like it here,  then get the hell out of my house!!!!” I was shaking and trembling with anger as I yelled that, and I have to say, it felt very good to let my anger out to that extent.  I had finally cut loose with the tension and anger that had built up in me over not just the last few months of Jon’s impudence, rudeness and disrespect, but really over several years of getting trampled by my insolent and bully tenants.  I was massive now — I towered in height over Jon.  Though he was about 6 inches taller than me in physical height, I had now gained several feet in height on him in moral authority and sheer emotional power.  I felt robust, I felt strong, and I felt in charge — and I realized at that point, that this was the way it had to be in my house, from now on.  I was never again going to let this feeling be taken away from me — the feeling that it was actually me, rather than my tenants, who owned my house and who was to have full control of it.

Ironically, I eventually realized something else about Jon that helped me feel more powerful as well as more fortunate than him — as arrogant and insolent as he was, Jon was very uncomfortable with the emotion of anger.  He had a hard time being angry — he tended to repress his anger.  Actually this was likely one of the main reasons he ended up being so vindictive.  (And quite likely also a main reason he is spending his whole life in expressing his anger indirectly, through anti-authoritarian actions) People who are comfortable in their own bodies and anger can have an easier time just letting haul with their upset, and yelling, and this allows a needeed emotional release.

If he could have said what he really thought and felt just one time, perhaps he would not have needed to take such vindictive actions after leaving my home.  Those who are more repressed, and can’t tolerate the feeling of anger, tend to store it up until they have something inside them not too unlike Mt Vesuvius, and about as dangerous to their health.

It can seem new-agey and “lite”, that nice little saying, “If you want to change the world, change your thoughts, and your world will change” — but Carl Jung put it more powerfully, “What is relegated to the unconscious comes to us as fate.”

The Gnostics were even more forceful — I think they glimpsed the Vesuvius within — 

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

So if you find yourself, like Jon, immersed in your computer studying conspiracy theories, blaming and pointing fingers at middle aged women who want to live in peace in their own home , take heed of your projections, and your Vesuvius of repressed emotions, and do some personal growth work.

Fourth Butt-Whupping of Jon

After booting his friends out of my house, I realized now that it was inevitable — Jon was going to have to be evicted.  I had all along hoped that he would realize that my house no longer suited his needs and fit his lifestyle, and that he would just do the right thing and get out.  But, as Jon would later state in his deposition with my attorney,  he stayed at my house, in spite of his dislike of my house rules and in fact his refusal to follow them, because it was cheap and conveniently located.

Since Jon showed no sign that he would willingly leave, I realized I would have to start documenting everything. Owing to my previous experience with the legal system, I knew that it was important to have documentation of all that took place, and to keep notes and a timeline.  So, I began to “cover my ass” by writing up a warning notice to Jon.  In my note to him, I put him on notice that he had not only violated the house rules, both in bringing a second bike to my premises, and then refusing to remove it when asked, but by bringing more guests than permitted, and refusing to cooperate when asked to remove those.  Further, I wrote that  he had been heard verbally stating that he would in fact not follow my house rule about number of guests permitted. I then issued him an official warning, that any further violations of house rules or any further statements that he did not intend to follow my house rules, may result in the immediate termination of his tenancy.

I did invite Jon to talk in person about all this, but he refused, saying “it would be nonproductive” , and then he issued me a note saying that from this point forward all my  communications with him were to be in writing only.  Where had I seen that before? Oh yes, with the Demented Duo, the DooDoo.  So I kind of knew where all this was going, and I was not too surprised to find, later on, that since things had gone sour in my relations with him, he had been again in co-conspiracy with team DooDoo.

Well, since it was totally unacceptable that I would have a tenant in my home whom I was being prohibited to talk with (and in fact I had it in my house rules that tenants may not refuse to communicate with others in the household), Jon was going to have to get his butt out.  I mean, just how did he think things would go from here — did he think he was going to live in my house for another 5 years or so, refusing to permit me to speak to him in my home?

Fifth Butt-Whipping of Jon

So I really had no choice but to finally march up to his bedroom door one day, knock on it, and hand him an eviction notice.  He refused to touch it, I guess thinking that if he did not take hold of it, I could not serve him. I dropped it on the floor in front of his feet – that does as well.  He railed at me, what tyrant I was, what a Nazi, insisted that I had a serious mental disorder.     At this point I had heard so much of this nonsense from tenants that this kind of vomit didn’t phase me any more, so I ignored the gratuitous insults and added, “please note that you have 60 days, and if you aren’t out of here by then you will be sued.”

Jon then stated very forcefully that I was totally in the wrong, and that he would fight me “every step of the way” and that he would ultimately win.  I worried that he would fight the eviction, which can cause it to be a long and costly enterprise, but because he was not a low-income tenant, he would not receive free legal aid to do so, and thus if he wanted to fight the eviction he would have to pay out of his own pocket to do so.  Which I doubted he would try.  Alternatively, I knew that he might leave, and then try to sue me afterwards with some fictional nonsense, as had occurred to me before.

For the next 60 days things were quite awkward.  As I had found before, when 30 days seemed much, much too long to have someone in your home who hates your guts and refuses to talk to you — 60 days is far worse.  Passing someone in the hallway who you have just served eviction papers on, being with them in the kitchen, seeing them emerge from the

bathroom with nothing but a towel on, is all very very awkward.  I knew that if I tried to speak to Jon, after he had given me “official notice” that I was only to communicate with him in writing, he would probably find a scammer attorney  (of which there were many in my area just salivating to have a disgruntled tenant cross their threshhold) and sue me for harassment.  So I had to say nothing to him, and endure extreme awkwardness as we went on living side by side. In fact, as I would later find, reading the trash that his scammer attorney wrote in his lawsuit, it was damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  Since Jon  couldnt’ sue me for harassing him by talking to him when he’d prohibited me to do that, he complained in his whiny lawsuit, that I had sat in stone silence with him in the kitchen, sitting there and looking but not talking.  The nonsense of scammer tenant attorneys is unending!

Given that he had told me to write to him only, I was surprised to get a phone message from him one day, saying that he had “a proposition which I think will save us both a lot of trouble”.  The fact that he was suggesting I would have trouble in any way, was a sign of trouble, and I deduced then that this was a bullying attempt: if I did not cave in to his demands, he would likely be seeking revenge the way bullies so often seem to do now – through the best of all bully tools, the civil legal system.

What did Jon want from me? I made him put it in writing, stating that just as he had told me to put all in writing, I insisted he put all in writing.  (I had intuited that his “proposition” would amount to some form of bullying, and hence, was eager to get proof in writing that he was bullying me with “propositions.” ) He wrote,( attempting to edit out the bullying tone I knew he would have communicated in person) that wanted me to allow him to stay in my house for another 6 months, saying that he “thought” he had a good place to move into then.  Consider what you would do, gentle reader, if you were placed in this situation.

You have a tenant, who has signed a rental agreement and agreed to follow certain rules.  That tenant then not only violates those rules numerous times, but also expresses contempt for them.  Later, when you ask this tenant to leave, because they are not following the agreement that they agreed to, they want to make a new agreement with you, saying that they will agree to follow this agreement this time.  Would you agree?

I hope you will say no, gentle reader.  I hope you will realize that a person who lies one time, cannot be trusted to promise that they will not lie the next time.   You dont’ want to enter a new contract with a person who has just breached their last contract with you.  Perhaps most importantly of all, it’s important for all landlords and homeowners to know, that there are devious means out there, whereby tenants can employ the malicious scamming tactics they are taught by filthy scammer attorneys, such that if you void one eviction notice you have given them, they are then able to manipulate the circumstances, such that they could quite conceivably prevent you from evicting them at all. I had studied up on the law very much by this point, not willingly, but I had come out educated.  I knew exactly what those devious means were by which someone might try to use scams to prevent being evicted.  Besides which, I knew I would rather get another lawsuit in the mail,  than have someone who hated me living in my home for 6 months, bullying me the whole time, who might very well just decide to sue me after they left, as well.

So I said no to Jon’s perverse request to live much longer in the home of someone he hated, whose rules he hated, who he thought was a tyrant Nazi with a mental illness, and whom he refused to speak with, but who he wished to bully into allowing him to stay for oh, I dont’ know, perhaps the rest of his life.

Just a note here, to those who dont’ want to get someone who you find out really doesn’t fit into your house, perversely clinging to it and trying to live there for the rest of their life — it helps a lot if you aren’t the cheapest place to live in your whole city.  If  your rent is too low, bad tenants wont’ let go — they wont’ get out, they will say — “I can’t afford to move” or “I can’t find a place.”  And it may well be true that they can’t find anyplace else in the city they can afford.   In which case you will need a giant crowbar and a whole can of WD-40, or a court order, in order to try to pry them the hell out of your house.  So dont’ do like I did and try to do favors to tenants by keeping their rent low — they will stab you in the back in their gratitude.

Jon moves out and then sues

I was out bike riding at the time, but was elated to get the call from Bridget, when she reported to me that Jon had showed up with a U-Haul truck and was moving his things out, just 3 days before his 60 day notice was expiring.  I was happy, delighted, blissful, never felt so good in a long while, as at this point when I had finally gotten the last bully out of my home.  From all that Jon had said, I fully expected him to try to sue me, but — on what basis? I had been exceptionally careful not to give the slightest reason for him to sue. I had taken caution to look for any traps that he might set for me, and scrupulously avoided all interaction with him during his last weeks in my house.  In fact, there was absolutely, positively no basis whatsoever for any lawsuit.

Yes, Jon had alleged that I was not permitted to change the house rules and limit him to one guest at a time.  His belief was that any house rule changes were invalid without his agreement of them.  This was in fact his major complaint, and doubtless the reason he went to an attorney to try to sue me.  In fact, in my state it is very clear, that Jon was totally and completely wrong on this point.  The law states that in cases where rent control laws do not apply (and whenever a homeowner has tenants in the home where they also live, rent control laws do not apply), the landlord may change the rules or rental agreement at any time, with 30 days’ notice, and those changes go into effect in 30 days.  If the tenant does not agree to the new rules or new rental agreement, he must vacate the premises.  The tenant’s continued presence in the premises, itself implies that he agrees to the changes.  In other words, the only recourse that a tenant has, in a non rent-control situation, when the landlord wishes to change the rules/rental agreement (including raising the rent by any amount) and the tenant doesn’t agree with those, is to vacate the premises, and to leave.  This is why I kept telling Jon that if he did not like it in my house, he should leave.  It was actually illegal, a breach of contract, for him to stay in my house and not follow the new set of rules.

Jon had also kept arguing that he “had a right” to socialize in my house and bring friends over, but tenants have no such rights.  Many landlords who have roommates/renters, actually prohibit their renters from having any guests over whatsoever — which is what I do now.  Particularly with my long experience seeing how bully renters use the occasion to bring visitors over, as a way of bullying the landlord and trying to usurp control of common spaces, I now prohibit renters from bringing any guest into my house at all, for any amount of time.  Many Airbnb hosts have this rule.  Even further, many property owners also prohibit their renters from using the kitchen at all — and I could have done that if I had wanted to.  All those things are legally permissible rules for me to have in my own home, and Jon was ignorant of all of the law on all of this.

But doubtless when Jon strolled into the local scammer tenant attorney’s office, the fact that Jon had the law all wrong, was a moot point to this scammer.  If Jon had received truthful information from an attorney, there would have been no lawsuit, as there was absolutely no basis for a suit.  But Jon found a slimy scammer, and all this sleazeball saw when Jon walked in, were flashing dollar signs. Which was why, when I got the lawsuit in the mail five months later, it had nothing material written in it about the issue Jon had considered central in the matter — his “right” to have his friends come over to my house.  Yes, Jon’s unethical fraud of an attorney did make the idiotic point weakly, (perhaps only as a bone to throw to Jon, who might have otherwise felt a little guilty seeing that everything written in the lawsuit, was fictional) that Jon had a “constitutional right to assembly” in my home, something that prompted smirks and loud guffaws from my attorney.  “This is not a Federal Case!” my attorney laughed, shaking his head at the absurdity of someone to think that he could sue me for federal civil rights violations.  “He does NOT have a constitutional right to assembly in your home!!”

Other ludicrousness from the suit: the allegation that I had perpetrated “Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress” when I yelled at Jon in my kitchen.  No, the impudent and disrespectful Jon had it coming and needed to be scolded.  But his attorney wailed, in hysteria coded into legalese, that Jon had been much damaged by my yelling at him, and in fact had had $50,000 in medical expenses going to doctors for psychological treatment,  based on the harm done by my yelling at him.  Right!  But I mean if you are going to tell lies, why not make them truly massive lies.  Why only $50,000 in damages? Why not $5 million, and claim that Jon had to fly around the world to all sorts of expensive specialty doctors in leading clinics, to have his head examined, after the severe injury of a middle aged woman raising her voice to him?    I could not see how Jon could have signed off on this garbage, which made him look like such a helpless twit.

The entire lawsuit (which cost me not a thin dime, since my insurance company covered all expenses) was another hideous example of the horrendous abuse of the legal system by scammers and fraudsters.  Lacking one single legitimate reason to sue, this particular attorney, who was apparently well known for his unethical, sleazy tactics, simply used a boiler plate template.  Regardless what the tenant complained about, this sleazeball would sue all landlords for the exact same thing. His legal practice was cut and paste — he always sued landlords for the exact same thing, habitability issues. My attorney was quite familiar with this slime — he was well known among defense attorneys working for home insurance companies. He made his rounds there — in fact he was a parasitic growth, a form of human bloodsucking louse attached to the insurance companies.  He made nearly his entire living through these scams, and sadly, it was successful because most insurers just quickly send off a check when their insured is sued.  I pointed out the folly of this approach — it would breed  more parasites and lice, if these vermin found that they could easily get paid for their lies.

This particular scammer  would claim that the premises were “uninhabitable” in various ways.  He would allege cockroaches, or rats, or other vermin.  He would allege there was no heat or a lack of a functioning plumbing system.   This sick scammer knew that in most cases, it didn’t matter what lies he told, because most insurance companies would just quickly cut him a check so that they would not have to spend time and money defending their insured.

So in spite of the fact that there had literally not been a single day in my house in the ten years that I owned it, when the heating system did not function, and in spite of the fact that Jon had never uttered a single complaint about heat in his time in my house (nor in fact had any other tenant ever complained about heat issues), Jon’s sleazy attorney was now suing me primarily over heat issues.  Among his fabrications, was the statement that Jon had complained to me both in person, and in writing, about the lack of heat.  To his credit, when brought in for a deposition, Jon stated that he never had any issues with heat, thus contradicting the lies his own lawyer had written.

Miss Karma will Kick your Butts now

Jon and his scumbag attorney were much disappointed that my insurance company did not simply cut them a check, but chose instead to defend me against their incredibly audacious lies and nonsense.  So Jon’s attorney ended up losing money on this case, because he never got paid for all the time he had to put into a deposition with me (which left him frustrated because I refused to answer so many of his questions, as I simply kept saying “I don’t know” and ” I can’t remember” like the defense attorneys tell you to do), for all the motions he had to file, all the discovery he had to remit, etc etc.

Yes, they got some settlement $ in the end, but it was much much less than they wanted.  During  the process, I hope Jon learned something from the fact that after my attorney filed a Motion to Dismiss,  all the causes of action in the lawsuit were eventually effectively tossed out, except the truly fake ones having to do with claims of no heat.  So, though he got $ from an insurance company, Jon has to live with the fact, and has this karma on his shoulders, that he ended up suing me over something that never happened, and which he knows full well never happened . At the same time,  Jon’s  only real claim against me, the fact that he thought he had to agree to any changes in house rules to make them valid, was tossed out by the Motion to Dismiss,  as being completely meritless.

For their lies and their bullying, and their malicious efforts to harm the innocent – such as a middle aged woman who simply wishes to live in peace in her own home — I trust that Miss Karma will now attend to complete this matter and kick some butt.  Because you can abuse the US legal system, you can fool Blindfolded Lady Justice, but truth will come out in the end.  And those who perpetrate iniquity upon others, will (as is said in the Psalms) fall into the pit they dig for others, and their own evil will return to them.  I am not Christian, but rather Pagan, and I tend to put my energy into love and joy and gratitude — but I do have to say, that after so much experience being bullied and disrespected in my home, I do like to read about what the old prophets said would happen to the evil doers.

Besides, I like to give the power of the wise old prophets a little boost,  with some HooDoo Candle Magic and bags of Mojo. And a little “Return to Sender” Spell might just do the trick as well.  Which is just to say:  Look out, DooDoo, Look out Jon. Look out, Scumbag Tenant Attorneys.  You’ve got a karmic kick comin’ at ya.  

The Crystal ball reveals:

The Magic of the Crystal Ball, also known as “what a little bird told me” or sometimes, “Just Google it”, revealed some interesting news of late.  Pertaining to one of the several previous roommate miscreants, the Magic Ball revealed an eviction process had lately commenced.      Miss Karma is starting to come round.

 

 

 

 

 

If you have followed me thus far in my misadventures with roommates, and read about all the problems I had with my tenants for several years, you may wonder  how I had the patience to endure all this trouble and distress, all this disrespect and abuse — of which there will be more still to come!

The answer lies largely in love and joy, which in me are unstoppable forces.  I love my life, I love my house, I love the Divine, and I love goodness and beauty, truth and justice, music and art and nature, and many other things, and I don’t let the nasties of the world get in the way of any of this.  The thoughts we think, create our world, and so my world would continue to unfold as love and joy, in spite of all the difficulties I had to experience, because love, joy and gratitude were where I chose to put my energy.    So through all of my difficulties, I experienced myself being buoyed up by the power of the spiritual realm.

Though I’m not Christian, but Pagan,  I find great beauty in some of the Christian music and mythos. “The Pure of Heart Shall See God.” And the DooDoo that set up traps for others to fall into — well,  they shall see something else!!  And the  Christian mythos eloquently speaks to that as well:  (I like to modify some of the Christian story to fit my Pagan orientation)

“Behold he has labored with injustice, and brought forth iniquity — he made a pit, and dug it, and is fallen into the hole he made.  His evil shall return upon him….but I will praise Gaia.  Sing praise to Gaia, who dwells in the Beauty of the Earth and Sky. “

So I would carry on with my mission of love, joy and gratitude in life, and leave the Demented Duo to Miss Karma. She tends to take care of those loose ends pretty well.

After the Demented Duo ( see part four of this story to read about them) moved out of my house, I had a few other more minor misadventures with roommates, but for the most part things were fairly peaceful for the next 2 years, including with Jonathan.  Jon was very quiet, and very clean, and I very much appreciated those things about him.  He didn’t seem to mind too much that I had deprived him of his budding co-revolutionaires the Demented Duo, but I got the sense that he could contently do his political organizing elsewhere.  He seemed to adapt to whatever situation I had in my house.  And I adapted to his “Occupy” poster on the front window of my house — I never liked it entirely, and later on I would get to the point where I would take greater ownership of my entire house, but I wasn’t there quite yet.

Quiet Robb and Marie “You- wont’- have- a- problem- with- me” 

Eventually, I had a fellow artist in the room where Elizabeth had formerly stayed.  I was delighted to have this shy, sweet, very polite young man at my home — a thin blonde twenty-two year old student at an art college in my area, Robb was also very quiet and clean, and one of my best tenants.    His art was fascinating, and he spent long quiet hours making his detailed drawings and paintings. (This image shown here is one of Robb’s real artworks, really created by him!)

Things went very well at my house for about a year. Eventually, I got a new roommate with the arrival of a young French student, Marie.  Just like Elizabeth, Marie had said before she moved in, “You’ll never have a problem with me”, I should have taken heed, knowing that this meant I would have problems with her.  But in she came, and things went well for a few months, until the time when she broke up with her boyfriend.  Usually a break up means one sees less of a person, right?  True for everyone, except Marie.    After Marie announced she had broken up with him, he started coming over every day.  She knew that this was not permitted, but dismissed me when I reminded her of that, raising her voice, waving her hand at me,  and insisting that she could not be bothered with my trivia at this delicate time.  As well, I found her out on my front porch smoking, and her boyfriend out smoking in my backyard, when they both knew or should have known that I did not allow smoking anywhere on my property. There were also cigarette butts being strewn on the sidewalk in front of my house.

Having learned something from my experience with the Demented Duo about the problems that can result when I fail to put my foot down in time, I was not going to be blown aside this way.  I sat Marie down, and I told her how it was going to be in my house. She insulted me and complained how mean and heartless I was, for wanting her to abide by the rules she had agreed to follow at the start.

Later, I would find out that she had complained nonsensically to Jonathan and Robb about me, saying,  “since the house is hers, she thinks she can do what she wants.”  So what did she think, that since the house was mine, I should NOT have things go how I like in my own house?  It was very difficult to understand the childish petulance and self-centered orientation of some of my tenants.

I throw Marie’s boyfriend out of my house

To her credit, Marie was honest enough to give notice that she would be moving out.  Other tenants (notably Jon, in time to come) were not honest enough to simply leave my house when the situation was no longer working for them.  So although Marie gave notice, during her last weeks at my house, she refused to follow the rules, and continued to have her boyfriend come over nearly every day.  Again, I was to the point now where I had endured enough disrespect to last several lifetimes, so there would be no more of this.  All the crap I’d had to endure, and the lawsuit, and all the injustice, gave me strength and spine and I was now going to most definitely stand up and take care of problems in my house.  The next time I found him in the house, I just went right up to him and told him to get out immediately.  He yelled at me about how he wouldn’t go, but when I persisted and kept saying, “get out! get out now! Get out of my house!!!” he finally relented and left, saying he didn’t want to be in my house anyway, as horrible as I was.

Marie scolded me right and left, backwards and forwards, how could I do that, being so horrible and mean as to chase her boyfriend outta my house (the one she had ostensibly broken up with several weeks ago?) !

Meanwhile, Jon, who had become friends with the young women who were tenants in the house next door to mine, had heard that they were having a roommate move out, and so there was a spot opening up for a new roomie next door.  Unfortunately, he told Marie about this opening next door, and she lept at the opportunity.  She pranced on over to the house next door, (which by the way was about fifteen feet away from my house!) and introduced herself, and before I knew it she was getting on right swell with the three women tenants next door. I even saw her idiotic jerk boyfriend smiling and running up the steps next door and going inside there.  I was disturbed at this.  I was perturbed at this.  I did NOT want Marie and her ass of a boyfriend moving in right next door to me!!  I realized I had a phone call to make.

I foil Marie’s plans to move in next door

The three young women next door thought they would just pick whomever they wanted for their new roommate.  And apparently, from all I could see, they wanted Marie.  She had charmed them, as she had charmed me, with her large green eyes and French accent, and promises to be good and courteous.    But, like many tenants, these young women next door failed to realize one important thing — they were not the owners of that house.   Now tenants have their wants and wishes, and landlords have ours, and generally landlords are very keen to know when a fellow landlord has a problem with a tenant.  I knew my neighbor, Tom, owner of that house next door —  I had known him for several years, since I first moved into my house. He and I had got along well. He lived in another city, but we were in touch regularly.   So I called him up and gave him the low down.  Once he heard the tale, particularly the part about Marie being a smoker, he said he would call up his young ladies and quickly put the lid on that plan of theirs to have Marie as a new roomie.  He had smartly set up his rentals so that while he allowed his tenants to choose who they wanted as a roommate, he had the final say and had to give his seal of approval and write a rental agreement with the person. I told him to wait until Marie moved out of my house, before he conveyed the news that she was not welcome in his, because I didn’t want any retaliatory behavior in my house for her last few days.

Marie was due to move out tomorrow, and she was insisting that I give her back her security deposit immediately, the day of her departure.  Now I might do this for someone who has been an excellent tenant, as a courtesy to such a good person, but never for a disrespectful brat. But again, I did not want to give her cause to start acting out before she moved out, so I didn’t directly tell her that she would not get her deposit refunded immediately.

When she finished moving out of her room, Marie approached me and demanded her deposit.  I went in and saw that she had done no cleaning whatsoever, and informed her that if she did not clean the room, then I would be deducting cleaning charges from her deposit. Again, the brat swore at me, declaring loudly how mean I was that I would force her to vacuum her room, (oh, poor baby!) but she hurriedly grabbed the vacuum and ran it to and fro a few times.  It didn’t do much, but I was willing to let that go.  So I told her okay, now you’ll get your deposit back in 3 weeks.  (this is the legal requirement in my state: security deposit must be returned in 21 days) “Three weeks!!!” She yelled at me, that I had promised to give her back her deposit immediately.  I had done no such thing.

So now, I insisted it would be three weeks and no less than  3 weeks, and she said she would be calling the police about this.  I smirked inside — fine, let her call the police, you might as well call the police because I didn’t bake you a pie today.

Marie continued yelling as she ran out the door.  I guess after she went outside, she must have called a friend or two, because she did not give up with her threats that I must fork over her security deposit refund right away.  She sent me a half dozen text messages, all of which I ignored, and when that did no good, she took to banging on my front door, which I ignored as well.  Eventually, nutty Marie went away, to my relief. I wondered what would happen when she found out she would not be moving in next door?

The answer to that came in a couple days, when I received threatening emails from her.  Marie was threatening to sue me for causing her to “lose my home.”  She declared, insanely,  (but with a cute bit of  non-native English speaker charm) , “You cause me to lose my home, so think I should cause you that you lose yours home.”  I was upset, because when I had spoken to Tom, I had made very clear to him that Marie was not to know that I had anything to do with why she wasn’t going to be moving into his house. He had promised me no worries, but when he spoke to his tenants, he had slipped, and told them that he’d heard from me that Marie was a smoker, and “I never rent to smokers: smokers lie.”

I continued to recieve email threats in second rate English from Marie, all attenuated in their violence by the charm of their improper grammar and syntax.  I ignored all of these, believing that by refusing to reply I could best avoid escalation, as well as pointless arguments with an insane point of view.  My neighbor Tom’s house was in no sense whatsoever “her home” , and it was inappropriate of her to even have interviewed with the ladies there, given the problems I had had with her.  Any decent person would have understood that.   Seriously – I had had to throw her boyfriend out of my house, and she thought the two of them could just happily move in right next door to me??  If they got in there, there would be no end to their bullying of me, attempting to retaliate. It would have been very bad.

So, particularly after all the dastardly events with the Demented Duo, I was very happy to score a success with putting the lid on Marie’s plan to move in next door.  Eventually, she quit sending me the ludicrous threats — though she had stated defiantly in one of them that she came “from a long line of French revolutionaries” —-perhaps she finally realized that you shouldn’t start revolutions over trivia and nonsense.

Robb’s Breakdown

Around the time that Marie moved out, I began having a few difficulties with Jon, which I will describe more in Chapter Six of this story.  For now, however, let us go back to Robb, the quiet, shy, young artist tenant.  Unbeknownst to me, Robb was distraught about school, which I would find out later from his parents.   He had obtained a loan and was attending a highly rated art college, studying animation, with the intent of becoming a professional animation artist.  But he felt discouraged — just like manufacturing jobs, animation jobs were going overseas,and he worried that he would never make it in this career.  Aside from that, he was worried about all the debt he was accumulating, paying the expensive tuition at his school.  He worked at a lowly Starbucks job, and again, unbeknownst to me, was having trouble meeting his bills, and his parents had actually been giving him money to pay his rent recently — and my rents were still very low.

 

One day, out of the blue, Robb asked to speak to me.  We had not done much talking apart from light chat during his tenancy.  But now, he seemed to need to talk to me about something. I sat down with him in the kitchen, and he began telling me a story, of how, on his birthday, he went on a hike with a friend of his, up to the top of a local hill.  When they got to the top, his friend gave him a Jewish prayer shawl as a birthday present, and said what I surmised were a few words of prayer or blessing for Robb.  For some reason, Robb was either confused or disturbed by this.  He called it a “ritual” and asked me what a ritual was.  I was taken aback, as I could not fathom that someone would be perplexed or thrown off by something as innocent as a few words of prayer or blessing, particularly if given by a friend.  This was hard for me to understand, since as a natural mystic, I had since early childhood had easy, friendly and plentiful contact with the numinous or divine realm of life.  For me, ritual of all type (whether the magnificent and solemn ritual of Catholic Liturgy, or the earthy and simple beauty of solitary prayer time with a zafu and a candle) was as comfortable a thing as an old pair of jeans.  Hence,  it was very difficult to understand the viewpoint of someone who stood so far outside this powerful spiritual center of all our lives.

I had the intuition that for Robb there was something disturbing about this thing called ritual, in fact the whole spiritual realm.   During his entire time at my house, this was the only occaision he had ever sought me out to talk to me about something specifically.  As I spoke to him about the prayer shawl experience, there was a vacant, uncomprehending look in Robb’s face, that concerned me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of this whole situation.  Robb had never been a very grounded individual, but I had never seen anything like this in him before. When later on I would see the inside of his room, I would notice he had put up on his wall a Tibetan prayer rug, as well as an occult Magical Square above his desk, the Sator Square .  The presence of these symbols in his room, suggested he had interest in the spiritual realm, but as a quite ungrounded individual, he was, unfortunately,  likely blocked from any meaningful access to these realms.

A couple months later, at 4am in the morning, I was awakened by a knock on my bedroom door.  I wondered what the matter was, assuming some emergency.    Answering the door, I found Robb, who stared at me with a vacant expression in his face, and said to me, “What the hell is going on???!!” What the hell indeed.  I thought there was some emergency, and expected him to now tell me that there was a huge water leak pouring into his room or loud music from a neighbor, or something very serious.  Instead, he declared that I was running a power saw in my room.  It took me but a couple seconds to realize Robb was having a mental breakdown, and was in the grip of psychotic delusion.

I told him I did not have a saw in my room, and went out to sit at the kitchen table to talk to him.  As we spoke, Jon was awakened, and came out and sat at the table along with us.  Robb kept talking about the noise of saws, saying he had seen power saws and had seen his parents being cut apart with saws.  Both Jon and I tried to ground him and tell him there was no saw and that these things were not real. I held his hand and asked him to put his feet on the floor and sense his feet.  Robb sat there, with a sort of glassy look in his eyes, and said that he was having a spiritual breakthrough.  Psychotic delusions often seem like spiritual breakthroughs to those experiencing them, which is why matters of sprituality and religion are so difficult for those who have mental illnesses with psychotic aspects.

After about a half hour with Robb, Jon and I said we had to get back to bed, and so we encouraged him to try to sleep.  I went back to bed, and hoped all would be well, but just minutes later, there was Robb knocking at my door again.  I went and opened and he insisted he had to come into my room to check for power saws. I went out again, as Jon did, and we sat Robb down again.  Now Robb was more restless, and kept getting up and going in and out the front door of the house, mumbling to himself something about “Just deal with it” and it seemed to me he was hearing voices. I went upstairs and pulled out his rental application, and found his parent’s phone number.  I called them then and there, at 5am.  It was later now, their time in Iowa, where they lived.  I explained that Robb was having psychotic delusions, and then went and put him on the phone with them.  His mother Carol spoke to him, and he seemed to calm down and do better after being on the line with her.  I then spoke to Carol again, and was glad to hear that she and her husband Darren had asked Robb to come home to Iowa to visit them.

Eventually, I had to leave to go to work. I asked Jon to watch Robb and to let me know or call 911 if there were any serious problem.  I thought that Robb might be turning out to be schizophrenic, as it is often around this age — in their early 20’s — when many schizophrenic individuals first show signs of their mental illness.

Robb’s Disappearance

When I returned home from work later that day, Robb was gone.  I learned later that after spending that night at a friend’s house,  he had boarded an Amtrak train for Iowa the following morning.  It wouldn’t be until several weeks later that I found out that the reason Robb spent the night at his friends’ house, was because Jon had yelled at him at my house and he felt afraid.  I could easily see that Jon would be neither patient, nor compassionate and  mature enough to deal with someone in psychosis.

I hoped all would go well with Robb’s visit to his family, though I was quite concerned that his mother Carol had not seemed willing to accept that her son had had psychotic symptoms.  “He has not been sleeping much” she insisted, “He is stressed about school, he has been anxious and when he gets like that he doesn’t sleep well.”  I didn’t think it was so safe for someone to travel alone while in a psychotic state, but to tell the truth I was relieved that his parents were acting quickly to take care of him in any way, since the alternative was that he would stay at my house, and I worried about a repeat of my experience with Loco Linda years before.  I also did not want to be continually awakened by Robb knocking at my door in the middle of the night demanding to come in my room and check for power saws.

The following day, I got a call from Robb’s mother Carol, asking if I had heard from him.  It turned out that he had never arrived in Iowa.    The train had arrived, but he had not been on it.  A big “I told you so” alarm went off in my head, as I pictured Robb, in a state of psychotic delusion, getting off the train and wandering to god knows where.  I wished his mother had been more willing to accept what I had said about his state of mind.  Later on, she would say that if she had known how bad it was with him, she and Darren would have come out to my city to get Robb herself.

Over the next two days, I heard more from Carol:  Robb had been seen exiting the Amtrak train in Omaha, Nebraska.  His belongings had been found still on the train at its terminus point in Chicago.  No one had seen or heard any sign of him in Omaha.  Carol and Darren believed that Robb was just confused and hadn’t had enough sleep, and would turn up eventually. But still they called the police, and filed missing persons reports.

A week later, still having heard nothing from Robb, and the police not having found him, Carol and Darren drove to Omaha and began a search.  They combed the city and put up missing persons flyers everywhere.  

I wondered if Robb had wandered off into some remote field somewhere, and died. His parents felt sure that he was just needing time alone, was overly stressed out and needed a break and would call them soon, but I was not optimistic.  At the end of the month, Darren drove across the country to my city on the West Coast, to collect Robb’s belongings from his room, and Jon and I met him at that time.  What most struck me about Darren was how very distressed he seemed, and how he did not seem “embodied.”  He also seemed estranged from his own heart — as sad and harrowing as the story of his son’s disappearance was, I could not see sadness or grief in him.  Only tension and anxiety.  I felt the hollow pain of the narrow room in which he made his life.

As a person who trained as a psychotherapist and who worked as a professional counselor with clients for a couple years, as well as someone with a strong natural intuitive capacity, and an earth-centered spirituality, I had an ability to grasp the quality of a person’s relationship to their body and to the earth.  Similar to that of his son Robb, Darren’s energy felt exlusively and entirely mental, and given that his mental state now was so tense and disturbed, without a connection to the grounding energy of earth and body, he had no source of rejuvenation.

I could see him sucking himself dry with the torture of his cyclical thoughts.   I would later see Robb’s mother Carol with the exact same plight, and thus grasp more of the story, and understand why in their posts about their sons’s disappearance on their FaceBook page dedicated to him, there always was a focus that the solution somehow would come by  mentally figuring things out.   As a natural “Sensitive”, I was so aware of the tension they carried, that it actually hurt me physically to observe Carol and Darren in the news stories and TV shows where they were featured, talking about Robb.

Weeks passed, and then months, and no one had heard from Robb. There had been no definite sighting of him anywhere, but Carol and Darren seized on any possibility, any clue. They interviewed homeless people, staff at shelters, cafes, and hired a private  investigator.  They pressed the Amtrak police and Omaha police to do more to pursue all leads.  They thought, and thought harder, believing that if enough thought were applied to the situation they would certainly succeed in figuring this out.  Darren mentioned that one of the last books Robb had been reading, was about changing one’s identity, and they thought he had been so desperate to get away from his debt and his frustration with art school, that he decided to go and live “off the grid”, perhaps with a group of homeless teens in a major urban area.  As the wheels of Darren’s mind turned, struggling to figure things out, they turned in repetetive circles, trapping him in the same narrow realm of painful thoughts.

I was skeptical. I observed all of this with sadness. From what I had seen of Robb’s mental state on his last day at my house, he was not very likely at all to have had the clarity of mind to just easily slip off a train and, without being seen by anyone, make his way into an off-the-grid or homeless community in some major city.  More cogently, Robb had loved his parents.  He had been in regular contact with them.  Hence it would have been quite out of character for him to just try to slip out of his identity and never contact them.  If he was struggling with mental illness, someone somewhere would have come across him, as a person in the grip of psychosis is not going to be able to just readily find his way about the nation, with no money (his wallet had been left behind, together with all his belongings).  I did not have a good feeling about this — in fact I doubted that Robb was still alive.

As months went by, then years, Carol and Darren pursued possible sightings of Robb in many cities around the country.  They traveled to New York City, where someone said they had seen him sketching on the sidewalk, calling himself “Tree. ” They went to Las Vegas, where another reported sighting had occurred. They visited Portland and Phoenix to drop off missing persons flyers and pursue leads there.  They tried hard to get publicity and attention, hoping that the more people who saw Robb’s face, the more potential for someone recognizing him, and their ability to bring their son home at last.  

Eventually they got a TV show to do a segment on Robb’s disappearance, “Unsolved Mysteries” I believe was the name of the show.  Carol and Darren were in the show, seen traveling all over the nation interviewing people at sites of “possible sightings”.

Every so often, I would get a call from Darren, asking some question about what I had noticed about Robb during his last days here, as the two of them sifted through the facts straining for the clues which they felt would ultimately lead them to their son. Darren said that he would rather die of cancer than not know where his son was.  I could not imagine their pain and suffering.  They both attested that their lives would never be the same again until they found their son.

Robb is Found

I didn’t actually think Robb would ever be found.  But due to a stroke of luck, the fact that a  train maintenance worker was in the right place at the right time,  Carol and Darren got an ending to the story at last, though it was not the news they hoped for.  Robb’s remains were found in a remote desert area in Utah, beside the train tracks far from any town.  The train maintenance worker was doing track repair in this desolate area, 15 miles from any road or structure.  Robb’s remains were so

decomposed that detectives had had to identify him with dental records.  The remains were skeletal, and the coroner declared they were in a similar state as if they had been lying in the desert for 75 years. A  bit of clothing remained, and a bus card, and the keys to my house were there beside him, and nothing else.

I wondered if in a confused mental state, Robb had fallen off the train.  Doing research online, I found that over the past 15 years, 43 people or about 3 a year, have fallen off Amtrak trains to their deaths.   Carol rejected this idea, and insisted this had been a homicide.  Talking to detectives, Carol reported that they stated that the situation “reeked of foul play”.  She pushed police and the FBI to pursue the investigation, and expressed great frustration when they did not do so.  She said she would never rest until the killer of her son was brought to justice.  Carol and Darren believe, and I think their idea is plausible, that Robb met with some unsavory characters  on the train, and was lured outside the train in Omaha, where he met with violence in the trainyard.  Then his body was put on a freight train heading back west,and dumped out in the desert. I do think that his confused mental state played some role in all of this, if in no other way than making him much more vulnerable to criminals and predators.

And yet, whether he fell off the train while in a delusional state, or whether he was murdered in the Omaha train yard by hoodlums, or met some other unknown end, the sadness and the grief and the loss are the same, and there is the same need to let go of trying to mentally figure things out, and accept Robb’s death.

We will probably never know what happened to my tenant, Robb, the young student from art school, with so much talent and creativity.  His parents mourn the loss of him and his friends and community grieve for him, and I say prayers for him and wish well to his sweet spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having read chapters one , two and three of this “Goodbye To Roommates” story and blog, you will be well on your way to appreciating why I eventually chose to swear off all roommates.  In the first year of owning my home, I was: evicted by my own tenants, had a kleptomaniac slob tenant,  and one who fell into psychosis and threw dishes in the trash, broke a window, and whose craziness sent her kitty cat into sequentially damaging my floors.  I then had a bully tenant masquerading as a Green,  peaceful, community-loving, nature-loving blithe spirit.  I thought to myself, surely, things will get better now — what else could happen?

But unfortunately for me, I had not completed running the gauntlet, and I was to have another 7 years of further struggles and true tenant horror stories, still to come!

After experiencing these roommate problems in the first year,  I worked harder to improve my screening process, my interview techniques, my rental agreement and house rules.  I did the best I could, but I was at a disadvantage in this process, in that it was difficult for me to imagine how people could look me right in the eye, and lie to me.  I had a weakness:  I was predisposed to take people at their word.  If someone promised me something, I tended to believe them. Much later, I would finally come to realize that  I could not take what prospective renters said at face value. I had to pay much more attention to factors other than the actual words spoken and promises made, in order to avoid seriously problematic renters.  Eventually, I would identify certain “types” of renters that were likely to be problematic, and other types which were likely to be excellent and lovely to have around.  The identification of these types involved what I learned through difficult experience, as well as the use of intuition and paying attention to my “gut sense”.  Later on, I will summarize some of what I learned through these many years of hard experience.

In the next few years after Steve, the Bully Tenant, I had some more minor misadventures with a few other renters.  There was Mariana, from Brazil, who asked permission to paint her room, and ended up painting some of my furniture as well.    There was Greg, who liked essential oil, and spilled enough of it on my carpet that the room was redolent of this scent for 4 months after he departed.  There was Brian, who had lived in his car during a summer in Alaska, an adventure that hadn’t prepared him well to live indoors. He put a plant in his room , but no basin underneath, so for the several months he watered his plant,  he watered and damaged my hardwood floor.  There was Cathy, who must have had more belongings than anyone I ever rented to — she moved them in over many days.  It was only a few weeks later when  the circuit breaker for her bedroom kept tripping, that I realized she had put a refrigerator and microwave oven in her bedroom.

Strange Boyfriend, Strange Religion

Then there was Hannah, who began having her boyfriend over, and something was wrong with him.

He had large red blotches on his face and behaved strangely.  He seemed to always avoid looking at me, and scuttled about, as if he were up to something.  I also began to find, that just around the same times as his visits, the latch on my back gate kept turning up unscrewed and removed from the gate, and deposited on the ground next to the gate.   Someone was removing the latch so that the gate would stay open, and this seemed to happen just around the days he came over.  I issued notes to all housemates insisting that whoever was doing this, please stop, but nothing doing.  The only way I was able to finally solve the problem was to use bolts rather than screws for the latch, which required more tools to remove than Hannah must have had in her secret arsenal.

There was something secretive and about both Hannah and her blotchy boyfriend —  an artificially polite air, how he always looked away when he passed by me.  I began to suspect that he was actually staying overnight more than the 2 nights a week I permitted.  I asked her about this and she denied it.  Halloween came, and I put halloween candy out for each roommate by their bedroom doors.  An hour later, at a time when I knew that no one but Hannah was home, I saw that all the candy had vanished.  Not too long after this, Hannah moved out.

When Hannah departed, I saw that she had taken one of my bowls from the kitchen, and placed it on the floor in her vacated room.  She had placed a flower beside it, and filled the bowl with packages of condoms, like an offering at an altar.  I hurriedly threw out the remnants of her strange religion, and wiped my hands of her.

 

Enter the Demented Duo: DooDoo for short

Around the 3rd year of my adventure in home ownership, I ended up with 3 female renters.   Sandra had come first — a short-statured, easy-going, pleasant woman who radiated confidence and natural poise.  Then a few months later came Marge,  a heavy-bodied and somehat dowdy woman with what I appraised as a wry and affable look on her face, who had worked as a paramedic in her native state of Pennsylvania, and sought the same type of work here in the Bay Area.  She didn’t have work yet, but had insisted she had plenty of savings and could pay the rent easily.  I thought I had seen something earnest in her eyes when I interviewed her, and l liked her down-to-earth quality and the fact that she’d been involved in such essential and practical work.   I thought that anyone doing such very practical work, just had to be a responsible and honest person.  I was wrong!  The other area where I was wrong with Marge, was in ignoring the discomfort I felt when, during my interview of her, she asked me too many questions about myself.  That discomfort was a sign, and I ignored it and suffered the consequences.  Marge was the first of the pair who I would eventually term the “Demented Duo“, or  “DooDoo” for short.

Shortly after Marge, came Elizabeth, the second half of the Demented Duo.  (These two could also be termed the “Loathsome Couple” — and in time to come would prove truly a despicable, distorted pair, in a real Edward Gorey kind of way) She was starting a graduate psychology program at a local university.  She seemed to be very passionate about her subject, which to me was a great sign, as I’d had good luck with grad students.  She wrote to me that she was a studious, quiet person who’d be spending hours at her studies, and mostly would be out of the house, only home to sleep and study.  Again, great, just what I was seeking.  She agreed with all my house rules and said “you’ll have no trouble with me at all.”  (I would later find that those who said this about themselves were generally the ones I had trouble with).

Elizabeth came to her interview with me, with a big blaring warning sign and red flag, which I completely ignored — her boyfriend.  In retrospect I dont’ know why I so readily dismissed the implications of this.  I had already had enough experience of getting annoyed when I would set up a “room showing” for a prospective renter (and from the start I had only ever permitted ONE renter per room) and find that person showing up at my door with a friend, or a lover, or a partner, or a father or mother or child, as if my home were open house for the whole world to just come on in and traipse through!  So I had begun to very much not appreciate surprise extra people expecting to come into my house.  But for some reason, maybe because Elizabeth seemed to be exuding 110% manners and politeness, or maybe because I had a master’s degree in psychology myself, I dismissed this big red flag, that she brought her boyfriend to her interview with her, which so very well revealed her dependency  … as well as first intimate her tendency to form alliances to bully and ride roughshod over others.

Toxic Sludge Takes over the Kitchen

Within mere days after her arrival, I began to sense I had made a mistake with Elizabeth.  This awareness deepened each time I visited my kitchen.

At this point, I was not using the kitchen in the house very much, having found that I thoroughly enjoyed the privacy of my own room upstairs, where in my charming private “suite” setting, I had a small second room with a  refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven and hot plate to use — which was pretty much all I needed for 90% of my cooking.  I was never much of a cook, as I had too many other interests to want to spend much time with preparing food.  So I had most of my meals upstairs, but I still needed to use the kitchen downstairs to use the oven, and to store some bulk items.  As well, I would pass through the kitchen many times a day when I went out to the backyard, or garage.

What I discovered within days of Elizabeth’s arrival, was that I increasingly felt like an embarrassed intruder in my own house — in my kitchen.  It seemed that it had only taken a few hours inside my house, for her to create a die-hard “clique” with Sandra and Marge — particularly Marge — and sometimes an additional friend of one of theirs, as well.  Prior to the arrival of Elizabeth and Marge, my kitchen had been a relatively quiet and peaceful place.  Sandra or one of my other two roomies at the time (two men who were out most of the time and cooked lightly) would use it, but they would be there briefly, rarely all three at once (in fact mostly only one at a time) and the three of them all went their own way.  They would chat with each other, and there was a friendly and light atmosphere — which felt fine to me.

My kitchen becomes a tawdry sorority den

But now, with the coming of the DooDoo Duo, Elizabeth and Marge, all of a sudden the entire atmosphere of my kitchen and thus my house had changed.  In spite of my having heavily emphasized in my house blurb, my house rules, and my interviews with tenants, that I intended to create a quiet and tranquil environment in my home, without heavy socializing, and in spite of the fact that Elizabeth had assured me that she would be out studying all the time , and rarely home, (and that she was quite studious and scholarly as well),  I found that my kitchen had become a loud and boisterous, very busy place, where I was continually hearing much more than I wanted to know anything about, even just in a few seconds of passing through.

My kitchen was now “socialization central”, a “happenin'” place where not only at mealtimes but for several hours during each day, I would notice that at least two of these three were sitting and talking — and the conversations never seemed light and easy.  The drama was thick and heavy in my kitchen — I could cut it with a knife, I could section it into slabs, and set them out in a pan to fry.

The body language and the facial expressions, the knowing nods and whispers, the gestures, the shrieks, screams and demented outbursts, everything,  reminded me of girlish cliques in high school.   Within only the first two weeks of Elizabeths’ arrival, the heart of my home had been transformed into a tawdry sorority den, where I  heard references to sex and booze, drugs, divorce and infidelity in  boyfriends.  There were loud shrieks, which tore through the house and disturbed me in my meditations in my second floor study, and there were giggles and piques of cackling.  Often this went on late into the night.  Though I had stipulated quiet hours after 10pm, more than once I had found Marge and Elizabeth deeply engrossed in gossip at my kitchen table around midnight.  Once I woke at 3am, and thought I heard mumbling noises.  I went downstairs and found the Demented Duo, Marge and Elizabeth, going heavily at the drama in my kitchen at this wee hour.

In one particularly bad case of TMI, I was in the kitchen watering plants, and overheard Elizabeth fretting with Marge that ever since she had gone to that photographer Sandra recommended, and had him take nude photos of her, she worried that these might show up online.  Later I heard Sandra getting into this conversation, and deduced from what was said, that Sandra made her living as a nude model, and was trying to coax Elizabeth into making side income doing the same.  Meanwhile, I observed Marge with a wine glass at every dinner, and would later realize she was an alcoholic.

GROSS! I got their YUCK on me!

I could not go into my kitchen any more without hearing much more than I wanted to hear about  intimate details of these women’s emotional and sexual lives.  Such an environment, which involved the violation of standard polite decorum, as well as revealing the extremely poor (nonexistent, really) boundries in these two women, both repulsed and sickened me.  I felt violated just after a minute of  listening to their disturbing drama  — It felt like, “gross! I got their yuck on me.”  This feeling of getting their yuck on me, intensified when Elizabeth had her boyfriend come to visit — a rare occurrence since he lived in another state. Then  I heard the screeches and shrieks, and the sounds of  alien life forms having strange sex,  ripping through into my quiet artist’s atelier, while listening to Baroque Music and doing abstract watercolor paintings.  Yuck, yuck, yuck.

I was very uncomfortable, and wasn’t sure what to do.  What I should have done was evict all three nitwits, telling them to get out and take their sleazy garbage and their drama along them.    But I was afraid of having serious problems with all three of my roommates at once.  I was afraid of having a mutiny on my hands.  So I tried, in a variety of kind and polite, and therefore apparently ineffectual and useless ways, to ask them to “tone it down” and take their socializing elsewhere.  Once when I called up Elizabeth to speak more directly to her about this issue, her response was so irrational, reactive and defensive, so hysterical, that I was flabbergasted that this was a woman who actually intended to become a psychologist.

Elizabeth had no capacity to rein herself in — she was a seeping morass of neurosis, uncontrolled and toxic emotions, leaking out everywhere, all over my house — a toxic sludge polluting my premises.  She had no capacity whatsoever to reflect on her own behavior.  She had no capacity whatsoever to tolerate criticism.  In her mind, my politely asking Elizabeth  to respect the rules of my house, which she had agreed to in advance, and to be quiet in my home which I had intended as a quiet tranquil place, was akin to me ganging up on her with 3 or 4 meanies and engaging in vile and obscenity-laden cyberbullying.   Elizabeth’s mind, her mental and emotional state, was a filthy rat’s nest.  Her psyche was  full of horrors and distortion such as I had never seen before in my life so close up.  I had seen mental illness  in the pathetic sidewalk-dwellers in my city,  I had seen hysteria in films and horror stories, but until the coming of the Demented Duo to my home, I had not seen this type of delusion in person.  Even Loco Linda, the bipolar woman who’d tossed my dishes in the trash and sat mumbling and rocking on the sidewalk, was preferable to Elizabeth — because at least Linda knew she had a condition. Elizabeth had no idea what toxicity emanated from her sick mind, and so garbage flowed from her wherever she went.

I need a hazmat suit to protect me from my toxic roommates

I felt quite anxious after this disturbing insight into her character. I felt increasingly afraid and helpless in my house — I felt like the presence of Elizabeth in my house was getting grime all over me– and felt like I needed a hazmat suit to protect me from all the grossness invading my home.

Yet as time went on, things got worse instead of better.  Starting with her second month at my house, Marge began paying her rent late every month, and I found her inebriated in my house on a few occasions. When I would walk by her in the house or yard, she would always avoid looking me in the eye or saying hello — I continually felt dissed and marginalized in my home, by both Marge and Elizabeth, as if I were just so peripheral and really irrelevant to the “happenin’ scene” that was going on here, the scene that ate my house.

When I attempted to talk to Marge about her continual late rent payments, she would wave me off, frowning and saying that she didn’t have time for this now.  With both Elizabeth and Marge, there were so many ways that they continued to blow me off or dismiss me.  It was clear that they expected that they and their loud, drama-heavy “scene”  could just eat up my house , and I should run off and hide in a corner.

Only 3 months into grad school, Elizabeth was already having serious problems there.  Around this point, there were many more instances of kitchen occupation at late hours of the night, and more shrieks, cries and wails.  I finally found out that Elizabeth had gotten suspended from graduate school, for speaking inappropriately with her advisor — threatening her, apparently!  Elizabeth was a piece of work, and Marge was her enabler and caretaker, the good alcoholic paramedic, who felt happy disrespecting me and the rules of my house, but always wanted to make sure Elizabeth, the neurotic princess, was okay.  The drama and its grotesque sludgy toxicity kept spreading.

The Kingdom of one’s Home 

There were two factors contributing to this increasingly serious problem, factors which I would not fully under stand until a couple years later.  These had to do with the control of the kitchen, the heart of the home, and with the building of alliances in my house.  Essentially, I discovered, being a homeowner-landlord with roommates, is unfortunately more similar than I would have liked, to being a  king or ruler of a city, state or nation.  I did not fully understand it, but this is vital for a homeowner who has renters to understand:  the kitchen is the heart of the home, and whoever controls the kitchen, controls the home.   (In some cases, the living room may be the heart of the home) This was why the most serious problems I had in my house with roommates, all ended up being centered on the kitchen.  It was there that Steve had his “duel” with me, first marking territory by leaving his things out, then telling me to get out of my kitchen, and then finally sabotaging my kitchen and trying to prevent anyone from using it, by refusing to wash any dishes whatsoever and piling the sink high and higher with his refuse.  This was why the toxic sludge of polluting emotions, neurosis, alcoholism, lack of boundaries, and other tawdry sorority trash, was now spreading out over my home, emanating from the kitchen and Elizabeth.  And this would be why, in two years to come, in the last ugly tenant battle I had in my home (coming soon in chapter 6 of this story!) , the fight also was centered on the kitchen.

In fact, when years later I did research and contacted a woman named Sue who’d owned my house years before (two owners prior to my friend Rachel who’d sold me the house) I discovered that Sue had actually sold her house (my house), primarily because she kept having this same issue I was having and would continue to have for a while. Her tenants would continually gang up on her.  She actually often had more tenants than I did, as she would have two to a room — but apparently she found herself similarly marginalized, bullied and besieged in her own home.  So my house actually had a history of homeowner bashing by tenants.  It was only my deep love for my house and my patience with immensely trying circumstances that would finally bring this sordid history to an end!

Sue had had the same problem I did, in her attempt at rulership.  By creating a private refuge in my upstairs suite, where I could stay alone and did not have to emerge too often because I had a “kitchette” of my own there, I had unwittingly created a power vacuum, namely, I had apparently abandoned rulership of the heart of my kingdom — the kitchen.  Hence, the foreign powers kept trying to invade this area, and steal this land away from me.  The dilemma I faced was that I was an introvert and needed a lot of time alone, and did not want to “hang out” and spend time in my kitchen just to maintain rulership of that space.  I ultimately realized that in order to resolve this problem, I would have to dramatically change how I ran my house.  (More on that later).

The second problem that faces both kings of nations, and landlords with roommates, is that of alliances.  Specifically, alliances of enemies or foreign powers.  The building of alliances among roommates is a threat to the homeowner-landlord, which can be understood by simple mathematics, as in: three against one.  Hence the landlord, just like the king of a nation, needs to work against the building up of alliances in his/her own home, in the same fashion: divide and conquer.  What this means, is that if you have more than one roommate, it is often in your best interest as a landlord to make sure that the roommates you bring in, are not people who are likely to become good  friends.  So if you have two vacant rooms, and Mary responds to your ad and says that she and her friend Barbara would like your two rooms, you do not want this arrangment.  You will do much better if you rent to someone who Mary is not likely to become friends with.   Someone who has few or none of her interests, and who has different hours.  This can prevent the kind of alliance building that can result in you discovering one day that your home has been usurped by a foreign nation, and invading army, an alien tribe, and that instead of being a king ruling a nation or a home, you are stuck in your little bedroom, scared to come out.

Enter Jonathan, and the Occupy Movement

Jonathan was trying to change the world — his revolution against authority started in my kitchen

But let’s get back to the story with Elizabeth, Marge and Sandra.   By this point, after I had made it clear enough that I was very unhappy with the goings-on in my home, Sandra, bless her heart, was honest and respectful enough to move out.    She did this quickly and painlessly.  Realizing that above all I needed to NOT bring in another chatty Cathy into this difficult situation, I opted for a new roommate who I thought would be the perfect antidote to the sorority scene:  enter Jonathan, a tall, thin, silent, bespectacled man who in appearance and by his own self-description, seemed to be quite solitary and unemotional.  He was in fact rather flat and leaden.  I thought this dull, heavy lead applied to the hysteria would accomplish the needed alchemy to tone things down.  Unfortunately for me, the (serious!) mistake I made was in not taking into account that he was a political activist as well.  One of the more intellectual of such, but an activist nonetheless.  The other mistake I made, was in failing to recognize the level of arrogance in Jonathan.  I would come to pay dearly for these mistakes later on.

Soon after he moved in, I noticed to my dismay that Jonathan was quite enjoying sitting in the kitchen,  having conversations with the Demented Duo.  It was true that his heavy leaden nature did take the hysterical edge and giddy sorority shrillness off the scene, but it did not remove the scene — it just changed the personality of the scene that was still eating my house.  Now instead of a sorority hangout site, my kitchen was the crucible for fomenting  political activist conversations and general revolt and subversion of authority (for instance: my authority).  The noise level diminished, thanks to Jonathan (and he actually did cooperate with me and helped convince the DooDoo to tone it down, something I’d been unable to achieve), but it was still very apparent that a revolution was being organized at my kitchen table, and I was not happy with this.  I would still find myself walking through my kitchen, fetching foodstuffs or there to use the oven, and getting the message loud and clear that I was peripheral to this important political organizing being done in my home.  For one thing, I was being totally ignored when I entered my kitchen.  No one said hello, no one even bothered to look up.  There were intense looks, gestures, laughs, sometimes steely stares in my direction, as if to say to me, “what are you doing in our kitchen!!”  

In fact, much later, in legal documents during a litigation proceeding, Jonathan actually came out directly and said that when I had come and sat down with him and Elizabeth and Marge, eating with them during a holiday dinner (when I first naively thought that if I just tried harder to befriend my tenants they would surely respect me more), they had all felt awkward about my presence in my kitchen.  Jonathan’s attitude (which I am sure was also representative of team DooDoo) was thus very clear: since my presence there made my tenants uncomfortable, their view was:  I did not belong in my own kitchen.  

I think it would be difficult to find any of my tenants’ viewpoints that shows more clearly than this, just what was going wrong in my house.

This was about the same time that the Occupy Wall Street movement was starting up, and there was a local Occupy movement in my area.  Jonathan talked to me about his involvement in this, and I was empathetic, because I was opposed to the abusive behavior of the Big Banks and Wall Street as well.  So although my politics were most definitely not in keeping with the liberal progressive majority in my city (I had always been pretty much centrist) I supported the Occupy movement.  Therefore when one day I came home from work, and saw that the front window of my house, the window of the room Jonathan rented, now was covered with a big 3 foot by 2 foot “Occupy” poster, depicting a raised fist, I was a little taken aback, but not smart or strong enough to say what I should have said to Jonathan, “ get your fucking crap down off my front window.”

It would later come to be quite a piece of irony, that I was evicting from my home a tenant who was at the same time loudly declaring “occupy” on my own window of my own house.

Another tragicomic irony about my problems with my tenants, was that they would constantly complain about how “mean” I was and what a “dictator” or “Nazi” I was.  In fact, as you my gentle reader have by now well understood, one of the biggest reasons that I continued to have serious problems with my tenants was that I was far, far too nice and polite!!.  I was too much of a doormat.  I was weak, I was fearful, I lacked strength, and to tell the truth, I kept hiding away from my bully tenants in a corner of my house.  I continued to allow myself to be disrespected, ignored, and my house rules violated and blown off, for much, much longer than was reasonable.  I applaud all of you who will not have endured what I did because you took the stick to the baddies early on.  As for me, I had to learn everything the hard, hard way.

I was by now feeling so uncomfortable in my house, (indeed, I felt more and more afraid to leave my own room) that I realized I was experiencing another kind of bullying, different than the direct in your face defiance of Steve, but bullying nonetheless.  For the last 4 months Marge (who had not yet succeeded in finding gainful employment, and who apparently had fallen into depression)  had failed to pay her rent on time. Seeking to solve her problems with booze, she wandered shitfaced around the house on a few occasions.

Elizabeth continued with her hysterics, and spent most of the day in my kitchen “hanging out” in long drama sessions with Marge, and now with Jonathan often there as well, though as someone with actual employment, he was not home during the day and could only hang out with them in the evenings.  A couple times, Elizabeth had had friends over for dinner, and the noise level of these gatherings was disturbing. Once I went downstairs to tell Elizabeth and her two friends to tone it down, and two of them rolled their eyes at me, as if to say, nodding to each other in a condescending and sarcastic tone, “This woman, the one who owns this house, isnt’ she a kick? Don’t you find her just a hoot?  I mean, who does she think she is? The owner of the house or something? !!” 

 

Ultimatim Delivered

In short, I had had quite enough, and my anger started to move me out of the inertia caused by my fear.  I sat down and typed up a letter in which I articulated new rules for use of the kitchen.  There would be no “heavy” conversations here — private matters should be discussed in private, not in common areas.  It was henceforth not allowed to use the kitchen to “hang out”, but the kitchen was ONLY to be used for meal preparation and dining.  No one was permitted to use or be in the kitchen after 10pm.  Renters could not invite more than one guest over at a time, and no more than twice a week.

Jonathan almost immediately approached me expressing his displeasure about the new rules, stating that he did not believe I  was ” allowed” to have such rules.   I would continue to have problems with Jonathan for the next two years, and you will read more about that in Chapter 6 of this story.

Really, the change in rules was the wrong direction to go in that it was too patient.  I should have just given a big black boot in the behind to Elizabeth and Marge (and really Jonathan too!)  and kicked them right out of my house with a round of triple eviction notices.  The truth was, that I had read enough about tenants and evictions at this point, that I was afraid to evict a tenant.  I had heard it was much better to just wait for a tenant to give notice and leave, rather than for the landlord to terminate their tenancy.  However, that really wasn’t true, all things considered.  What I eventually learned, is that the most important thing, is that you as the homeowner are not forced to suffer in your own home, that you don’t allow your renters to cause you to suffer any longer than absolutely necessary.  Anyone who causes you any problem, you get them out right quick.  The quicker the separation the less pain all around.  Delaying in this only causes the situation to escalate and exacerbate.  But I would not really learn this for another 2 or 3 years.

So in the meantime, I talked to tenants — in person, on the phone, by letter.  I changed house rules, I changed visitors policies. Instead of bringing about better behavior, this brought about resentment and some blatant defiance and tit for tat behavior.  If I was going to enforce rules on Elizabeth, Elizabeth wanted to enforce tenants’rights rules on me, and complained that she had a problem with the window in her room that she had mentioned to me about before, and that I’d never fixed it.  So I told her I would do that the next day.

“Get out of my room!” Quoth the Demented dolt

So the next day at mid-day, I knocked on her door, prepared to fix the window.  Hearing no response, I went into the room, and saw she was in there, lying naked on her bed.  She yelled at me to get out, and I said as I turned to go that I had come as promised to fix the window, and she yelled that I had not said I was coming today.  I went out and fumed. I worried that  she would try to use this against me, that I had entered her room when I thought she was gone, and she’d been in there, in bed and unclothed at full noon.

 

Enter: the Legal System, perfect tool of Demented Bullies

I was so upset by now that I knew this all had to end.  I phoned up Elizabeth and told her that it was not working out, having her living at my house, and that she needed to find another place to live.  The next evening, I heard a loud shrieking laughter from the kitchen, and went down and found all three roommates there.   I demanded to know what was going on, and Elizabeth, with a victorious grin on her wicked face,  looked up at the ceiling, where there was a vent cover, and toweling behind it. She pointed up and said there was light coming through the vent, which she said showed that one could see down through the vent from the room above — my room. Elizabeth had now pulled out her cellphone camera and was clicking away, taking photos of my heat vent cover, as if she had found evidence of a crime.  She was convinced there was something not quite right, something suspicious, about this particular heater vent.  I was angry , but I was also fearful and worried.  Because by this point in my landlord apprenticeship, (and I had also assisted a couple other apartment owners with property management functions)  I had heard stories of tenant scammers, and I had realized that anything, and I mean absolutely any trivial innocent thing, can be twisted and distorted by those with motivation to do so.  So I felt sick as I observed Elizabeth gleefully and wickedly laughing, photographing my heat vent cover overhead.  I felt dread and bewilderment, worried what type of unimaginable scam this might lead to.

Marge was sitting at the table drinking wine and shaking her head “no” as if to say, “I can’t believe it.”  I gradually realized that these women, this Demented Duo,  thought I had been spying down on them in the kitchen, through the vent hole in the ceiling!  Of all the idiotic delusions, that took the cake.  I had spoken to them countless times about how little I wanted to hear any of their drama, how embarrassed I was to overhear them, how I wanted them to take their private conversations elsewhere, — and in spite of all that, this Demented Duo thinks I would want to spy on them? And listen in to their appalling, twisted sorority gossip and toxic tawdry drama????!

Surprisingly, Jonathan, in spite of touting himself as an intellectual, just cold hard dry facts, Ma’am, stood there and seemed drawn into this hysteria, as though the fact that Demented Elizabeth really believed something, made it so.  He stood around stiffly, but looked at me with a puzzled expression that suggested that he, too, was quite prepared to fantasize that the local authority figure he and the DooDoo had dismissed and contemptuously ignored, the ruler they were trying to subvert and overthrow, might have retaliated by drilling peepholes in the ceiling or peering down through heater vents to spy on them.  Why it didn’t occur to these nitwits that if I wanted to overhear their garbage, all I had to do was just walk down into my own kitchen and sit down and there and listen to them, I could not fathom.

I sat down next to Marge and started to explain to her the innocent and quite benign purpose of the heating vent duct, but she would have none of it, and just sat there sadly shaking her head, as if she had just been appraised of a massive betrayal of confidence.

It was hard to know how to respond to the demented distortions and delusions these women were capable of.  I just knew I wanted them out of my house as fast as possible.

The following day, I got a letter in my mailbox from an attorney, stating that I was to put a copy of my house rules in Elizabeth’s mailbox (each tenant had their own mail box slot in the hallway) by the end of the day.  Frightened, I wondered what in the world was going on now.  I debated, and inquired of friends: should I do as requested, and hope that this would appease the vampire girls, or should I (figuratively) scream fuuuuuuck yoooou!!  

I ended up cooperating with the request.  After the appearance of the legal system into this matter, I was intimidated into retreating, and tried to avoid Elizabeth and Marge as much as possible.  Elizabeth escalated the legal bullying by depositing a note in my mailbox advising me that from this point onward, all communications between us were to be in writing only.

 

The DooDoo is flushed — but it comes back up the toilet

The week thereafter, come a Saturday, I observed a large pickup truck pulling up in front of my home.  I peered out the window and observed Marge and Elizabeth commence to carry out their mutual belongings, and I rejoiced inside, realizing they were moving out.  The truck came and went all day, and I saw them carrying things out all day.  I mostly tried to avoid them, but at one point when I thought they were gone, I went outside to water the plants, leaving the door open behind me,and then I heard them laugh and giggle and close the door, and I realized they had locked me out of my house.

Four days later, I had not seen the Demented Duo ( DooDoo) at all in my house, and had not heard anything from them.  They had not turned in their keys and so I did not know whether they had completed moving out or not.  It would seem reasonable to think that they had completed moving, so I went and looked in their rooms, and noticed that each of them had left about 3 small items in their rooms — a scarf, a bag of trash, a pair of shoes.  I assumed these items were abandoned, but did not want to risk throwing them out.

The ghastly gals set about to perpetrate vampirism on the innocent

So I emailed Marge and asked her if she had finished moving, saying that I had noticed some things still in her room.  She emailed me back, saying that it was now clear to her that I had trespassed into her room, but that “given everything else that is under consideration in this matter” this was of less consequence.  A deep black dread built up in the pit of my stomach, as I realized I had been set up.  The DooDoo had set a trap and I had walked right into it. No doubt the Demented Deluded Duo, this pile of stinking toxic DooDoo, had been coached by some sleazebag attorney to intentionally leave a few things in their room, thus to trick me into going into the room, so they could try to sue me for trespassing.

A day later, the DooDoo Duo emailed me, saying that they demanded that their rental agreement be terminated immediately, and that they wanted to come over and collect their security deposit and hand me the keys.  I was conflicted: I didnt’ want to be give their security deposit back right away, but if I said no, they might continue playing this game with me, saying that they hadn’t moved out yet, and in fact, refusing to complete their move and retaining possession of their rooms, playing this demented game for who knows how long.  So I caved in, and made an appointment with them to come get their security deposits back. When they arrived, they had three police officers with them!!! I was flabbergasted — I have no idea what fiction they told the police, that the police would come and accompany them just to collect their security deposit and retrieve the last trash they had left in their rooms.  I felt quite bullied, to have the police come into my home and stand over and watch me as I made out the checks.  In fact, security deposits do not need to returned until 21 days after move out, and failure to do so is not a criminal but a civil matter.

After the DooDoo left with their bizarre police entourage,  I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that was the last I would see of them.

A couple months later, 30 pages worth of lawsuit arrived in my mailbox.  Every fiction and delusion that one might imagine, was therein contained in this most abusive of documents.  The term “despicable” was cast at me at least two dozen times within this perverse prose.  Reading over this web of lies, and researching online to see what scams various malicious tenants had perpetrated through the legal system that so readily invites scammers and fraudsters to abuse it, I found that it was not unusual to cast at people lawsuits alleging half a million dollars in damages, for injuries which were entirely fictional, for things that never happened, for phantasies dreamt up by vindictive vampire tenants in their hysterical huddles and twisted minds.

 I read of two cases where  women lost their house in foreclosure, both times because the legal system prevented them  from evicting, in a timely manner, those tenants who were not paying rent. I myself knew personally a woman whose tenant  commenced to rip apart her apartment, tearing sheetrock from the walls, toilet from the floor, light fixtures from the ceiling, and who turned a hose on and flooded the entire premises.  The tenant got “free legal aid” and the incredibly unethical attorneys at the  “Eviction Defense Center” fought for this malicious cretin’s right to stay in this woman’s apartment , while continuing to destroy it.  How such hoodlums can sleep at night is beyond me.  It took her over 6 months to get him out, and he was ripping her place apart the entire time. She was left with little more than a heap of rubble. And stinky rubble  at that, because he’d had two dogs in there that were not housebroken and peed on everything.

I read of another case where a woman had been sued by former tenants, with false allegations, and she was unable to pay the $15,000 in judgment that the court case had levied against her, so the tenants’ attorney forced the sale of her home to pay the judgement, and she lost her home to the lies of her former tenants.   In short, it is an understatement to say that the US civil legal system is sick ,it is twisted, it is demented, and it destroys lives.

The perversity of the US legal system is that there are absolutely no fines, penalties or consequences whatsoever, for hurling at innocent people, any manner of baldfaced lies and false allegations.  At the same time, for the poor homeowner who is sued, there is no way to extract oneself from this virulent and toxic scam, without spending either many thousands of dollars of your own money or that of your home insurer. In short, if you are sued, you have two choices: (1) either you pay, or (2) you pay.  Courts do not throw out frivolous or totally fictitious lawsuits, because the place where whether or not it is true or false is determined, is yet $50,000 away.  Simply put, you cannot afford what it costs to get to the point where you get to try to prove that the shit that’s been cast at you is all lies.  So you have to pay a settlement.  It’s pure extortion, bald and blatant, and the legal system rolls out the red carpet to malicious tenant scammers and says, “come and extort someone — it’s easy if you just plop down a filing fee!!.”  It takes a willing sleazy attorney, of course, to make this work, but there seem to be no shortage of those.

I finally escaped from the vampirism and claws of the toxic, poisonous slime of the lies of the lawsuit, many months later, worn and torn , tired and traumatized, but thankfully with my house still underfoot, something which I had not been certain would be there below me when I went in.  Many have lost much to the jaws of this horrific monster, the law, and so if I say at this point that I have enormous contempt for the law and the legal system, I hope you, gentle reader, will take into account my intimate experience.  And sadly to say, this would not be the first time that I was to encounter this despicable monster that we call the US justice system.  Read more about that in Chapter 6 of this blog!

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the upsetting first and second chapter in my first few months at my new house, these disturbing incidents following so closely on each other, I realized that I needed to do something to try to ensure that I didn’t continue to get bad roommates.   Reflecting on my process for finding roommates, I realized I was not communicating enough about the kind of environment I wanted in my house and the kind of people I was looking for.  So, I undertook to write up a short introduction to the type of setting I was intending to create — although I did not realize it but I was still much too idealistic and naive.

Seeing that I had just had two roommates who were slobs and who showed little interest in communicating with me, I thought the mistake I had initially made, was that I hadn’t sufficiently emphasized that I was seeking housemates who were communicative, friendly, clean,  respectful, and able to contribute positively to a small community.

So I wrote up a blurb about my house and how I wanted roommates who would communicate, attend weekly house meetings (I thought this would be just the trick to help support open communication), be friendly with each other and respectful, and in general simply attempted to appeal to the higher ideals of human nature.  In essence, I was saying I wanted nice people.  Little did I know that this was about as effective as writing a personal ad in which you say that you are looking for someone to date who enjoys candlelight dinners and walks on the beach.  I would only realize much later that it is fairly pointless to say you want “nice” roommates and expect that the non-nice will recognize themselves as not desired, and politely bow out.  At this point I still had much, much too much faith in people’s ability to assess their own qualities quite astutely and insightfully, as well as to be  honest about those qualities.

So, thus armed with my quite useless short description of the “nice” setting of my nice house , and an equally useless description of the kind of “nice” roommate I was seeking, I placed more roommate ads on Craigslist, still offering the rooms at nearly rock bottom prices — still feeling obligated to do more to take care of others, than caring for myself.

After the double eviction of David and Linda, and before my  next seriously problematic tenant,  I had gone through a few other roommates, and had experienced a small series of awkward roommate adventures.  There was Daniel, another student, here for a semester, polite and friendly, really very sweet, but he had set fire to my armchair by putting a space heater too close to it.  Then there had been an Indian man named Naveet.  When I went into his room to show it to a new prospective roommate, I noticed with some embarrassment that on his computer screen, pointed towards myself and the young woman coming to see the house, there was a very clear and very large image of a nude woman with her business end pointed towards the viewer.  Naveet moved out and Selena moved in.  She , like Naveet, stayed only a couple months. While she was here, she dyed her hair orange in my tub. The tub remained orange for the remaining two months of her tenancy.  I thought it was damaged for good but the color finally wore off.  Each of these incidents and embarrassments tended to result in me going off to my list of house rules and adding to them — “no use of radiant space heaters, no use of hair dye, no illegal downloads…”  Several years later, as an Airbnb host, I would joke with other Airbnb hosts that our list of House Rules had gotten to be the size of the Yellow Pages, and as hefty, but in my case as in theirs, we didn’t actually have any rules in our list, that were not drawn from actual experience and real problems with renters.

The Green Healthy LIving Good Communicator arrives

After Selena moved out, I placed another Craigslist ad and in short order, I received a reply from a man, Steve,  who seemed to exactly fit the bill of the nice person I wanted for my nice house — someone who was very communicative, who valued open and honest communication, was happy to have house meetings,  and he expressed enthusiasm for “green” energy, cooking healthy food,  and clean living.  Hope lit up silly twinklings  in

my large and foolish eyes as I pictured Steve as the polar opposite of David — a person who was clean, would bring a positive energy to my house, was engaged in meaningful pursuits, would communicate openly and honestly and not hide in corners whispering secrets to other roomies.

When I met him, Steve didn’t seem quite as lighthearted as I had expected (this was the  warning sign that I didn’t listen to), and had a firm, tenacious kind of energy — something which I misread, in my hope and kindness, as an indication of a person with perseverence and stamina.  Actually, it was arrogance and pushiness, but I would only come to realize that many weeks  later.

Steve moved into my house, along with my existing housemates at present:    Bob, a tall thin man who had a strong interest in bike racing, and Jack, a computer programmer.

It was early December, and after moving in, Steve hung an attractive green wreath on his door, which he clarified was not a Christian but a Pagan holiday symbol.  Things went fairly well for the first few weeks, although the house meetings were awkward, because as it turned out there wasn’t much to talk about.  I wasn’t interested in having dinner or get togethers with my roommates — I just wanted a peaceful setting in which I could be my introverted self in peace.  After a month or so I decided to call off the house meetings as we would all show up, and have nothing much to say, and it was just increasingly embarrassing to me that I had come up with this dipshitty idea.

 Marking Territory Commences

Within the first few weeks of Steve’s time in my house, I began to notice that dishes and other personal items were being left out.  Not a lot of dishes, and not always in the sink.  There would be a cup left on the counter, or a plate in the sink, or a pot on the stove and cutlery on the counter.  Clothes were left on the floor in the bathroom, or a toothbrush on the windowsill.  All of this was pretty minor, but it was persistent.  By the time I had brought Steven and Bob into the house, I had set up what I thought was a good solid set of “house rules”,  one item of which, (and highlighted as being particularly important to note) was the statement that things needed to be put away in the kitchen after use of the kitchen, and that personal belongings could not be left in common areas.

I had been proud that I came up with this rule, after the experience of finding too many of Linda’s belongings left around the house, and feeling that I needed to prevent roommates laying claim to common areas much the way a dog marks its territory.

So now after Steve moved in, as I found things being left around the house everywhere, a little here, a little there, I had the distinct intuitive sense that my home had been “marked.”  All four corners were marked, each room seemed to be territory claimed.  The claiming was continual, as a dog which needs to mark and claim the same territory each time it trots around its circumference.

At the same time as I noticed these items being left out, and intuited an associated claim on territory,  I had begun to be aware of a certain “energy” or “aura” around Steve, as I observed him walking around my house.  One day as I saw him walking around the kitchen, and chatted with him, it occurred to me — I have felt this before.  I knew this energy.

It was the same energy I felt when I worked in a couple jobs where I was the only woman present in the male-dominated environment.  The energy was not welcoming, it was not friendly.  There was a message to this energy that I was now feeling coming from Steve, and it was:  get out.

Even as I became aware of these associations, I dismissed them, and wrote them off.  Instead of “trusting my gut”, something that many years later I would be advising for other newbies to having renters in their home, I was dismissing the wisdom of my own psyche and my Woman’s Intuition, that sacred gift.  Instead of believing in myself, I doubted myself, and criticized myself for making so much of small things like a cup left out or a shirt on the floor.  In such a conflicted state, it was very difficult to do what needed to be done.  But eventually, the “voice from my gut” grew louder, and it would not be silenced.  It kept telling me that something was off, that something was not right here.  So I began talking to Steve about the various items he was leaving around the house everywhere. I politely reminded him that this wasn’t allowed, according to  house rules, but I said it with such self-doubt and guilt, that I’m sure I did not come across as very convincing.  And I was certainly easy for him to ignore, because ignore me he did.

Self Doubt makes it hard to run a House

As I continued to find the dishes in the sink, and other items around the house, I went to speak to Steve again about this, and this was more difficult to do.  I was very anxious when I approached him again.  Was I being unreasonable?  If I was going to put my foot down about this and push this point, I needed to be confident and sure, and I was neither confident nor sure.  Was this all very innocent, normal behavior, and was I over-reacting?  Or did I have a right to request my house rules to be followed, exactly as I had written them, and what I had written was quite unmistakably clear.  I had this doubt about my right to have these rules, because in my family, I had not been permitted to have needs and rights.  I was told what to do — my own wishes and desires were not respected, my needs were disregarded.  So, to start to value my own needs,wants and desires, was new and difficult for me.    I was the authority in my own house, but I had so much difficulty assuming that authority and believing in my own right to have that authority.

When I spoke to Steve again, he responded angrily, saying that I was “being OCD” or “Nazi” about the things he left out.  This accusation hit home, deepening my doubt in myself . I questioned whether I was being reasonable. I talked to my friends, mentors — the people I considered wisest were backing me, saying, you have a right to run your house as you wish.  People dont’ have to live there if they dont’ agree to follow your rules.  I would have the same rules in my kitchen. The most helpful advice went something like this:

It doesn’t really matter if your rules are casual and easy, or strict and challenging, or they seem fair, or unfair, or whether you are exceptionally sane and wise, or OCD and nutty as all get out, whether you are friendly and kind, or harsh and authoritative — the fact is, it’s your house, and you get to make the rules!  People cannot sign a document agreeing to certain rules, and then afterwards argue about them or refuse to follow them, or say, in essence, “I didn’t think you really meant your rules.”    That constitutes breach of contract.  Aside from that, why on earth would someone read a rental agreement with a set of rules, conclude that those rules were written by a Nazi with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and then decide, “Hey, that’s just where I want to live.”  ???

 

While I was struggling with this issue with Steve, there were other incidents.   He had a couple of his friends over for dinner one night.  While I was in the kitchen checking on my roast chicken in the oven,  I was concerned to see one of his friends just get up and go to the cabinet, take down and open up a bottle of salad dressing that belonged to another roommate (Bob).  I pointed out that he couldnt’ do this, and he said “sorry ” in a way that was not at all apologetic, but rather sounded sarcastic.    A couple minutes later, this same guy looked up at a project I was doing in the backyard, building a chicken coop (had a plan to have chickens eventually)  and then, without any invitation from me,  just got up and went outside and started inspecting my chicken coop construction. I followed him, annoyed that he was feeling at liberty to just explore my property, and he began making comments about what I had done wrong. When I told him it wasn’t appropriate to just go out and start inspecting my project uninvited, he brushed me off and said, “It’s no problem, really.”

I was quite offended — the nerve of the asshole! —  but I wasn’t yet strong or confident enough to say what should have been said, eg get the hell out of my house.   Steve and his friend were bullies, they were intimidating, and they intimidated and frightened me, because I was still too weak in my own authority and my own power.

Another time, I was looking around in my kitchen for a large salad bowl that I stored on a high shelf, and couldn’t find it.  I asked Steve where it was, and he said, oh that, I took it to a potluck party I think I left it there. What??? Steve had taken my property out of my house, without my permission, and just left it at someone’s house?  I demanded that he bring it back.  He actually never brought it back — it seemed that someone else had taken it, and the bowl he brought back, was not my bowl but a different one.

Now I needed more house rules — if you bring friends over, they have to follow the house rules.  You cannot use other people’s belongings without their permission.  As my tenants were dumb and dumber, as the list of jerks and fools grew longer, my house rules list got longer and longer.

But getting back to the issue with Steve.  So I talked to Steve a third time,  and a fourth.  The third time, we sat down at the kitchen table and had a long conversation.  I thought sharing more about myself and the reasons for setting up my house the way I did, would help. But in the end I realized all this chat and attempt at “honest open communication” , didnt’ accomplish anything: we were where we started. My reasons for what I wanted didn’t interest him — he just wanted what he wanted.  I wanted my rules followed just as I had written them,  and he wanted to ignore my requests and leave things around the house.  He argued that his orientation was the only reasonable one.  So in essence he was arguing that unless my house rules matched his own values, he didn’t have to follow them.  Thus he felt free to impose his own values on my home.  And likewise, the cup or article of clothing that he left here or there,  I understood intuitively, was in essence a dog’s pee mark, another instance of his subversion of my authority,  lifting his leg and staking his own claim.

The fourth and last time I spoke to Steve about continually leaving his things about, the bully in him burst right out from behind the green healthy earth friendly clean living man BS.  He yelled at me and told me to “get out” of my own kitchen.  Very disturbed by this outburst, I went upstairs again to my private room, depressed that yet once again, for the third time now, I was going to have to evict another roommate.  The 30 day notice of termination of tenancy was already there on my computer, as I’d had to use it before for David.  Now I printed it out, applied today’s date, and went downstairs, and handed it to Steve.

The War of the Dishes

For the next 30 or so days, before he moved out, Steve not surprisingly began to escalate in his refusal with my requests,   and left more and more dishes out.  Most of the dishes were left in the kitchen sink.

Not one now, but entire sets of dinner dishes.  He would leave all his dishes from dinner in the sink until the next morning, ignoring complaints from other housemates Bob and Jack that they now couldnt’ use the sink at all. Then, instead of simply leaving the dishes in the sink overnight, he would leave them indefinitely, never washing them at all.  I took the dirty dishes and set them aside, putting them in a bin and placing the bin in Steve’s personal storage area.  This cleared out the sink for others’ use but it didnt’ avail us of extra dishes.  Pretty soon all the dishes that I had in the entire house were sitting in bins on Steve’s shelf.  Refusing to do any cleaning up at all, Steve was now making it impossible for others to use the kitchen unless they cleaned his dishes.

In order to avert murder and the stabbing to death of Steve with unwashed knives, I had to come up with a plan. The plan was that I got help from Bob and Jack in washing all the dishes, cutlery, pots and pans that Steve had refused to wash, and which had accumulated in bins on his shelf, and then all these items were taken and kept privately in our rooms.  I informed Bob and Jack that due to the extreme non-cooperation of Steve, he would from this point on have no dishes whatsoever to use, and the three of us would each hoard 1/3 of the dishes in our private rooms.  Under this plan we were able to use the kitchen, but Steve still did what he could to bully us about by tossing food on the counter and floor and bringing in plastic utensils that were again left in the sink.

Again it was all too long, much much too long, to have to endure 30 days of being bullied in your own house, by someone whom you need to have gone.  I tried to avoid Steve as much as possible, and this helped.  It also helped to make a little chart and mark off each day, so I could visually see the progress and the point where I would be finally free of this miscreant.   WHen the day came, I was elated, and very very happy to start over again. I celebrated with a friend,   and tried to cleanse out the room as best I could.  I had very much hoped that this first bully would be the last — but sadly that was not meant to be my fate and I would still have to endure more of being bullied in my own house, while I spent time growing stronger and more confident, more comfortable with my own authority.  And growing more comfortable the fact that this house I was living in, is actually my house. (Sadly, it did not fully feel that way until several years later, when I got rid of the last of my roommates).   

When I saw Steve years later, walking out of a hardware store, he looked angry and unhappy, and I wondered where he would go in life, this man who thought he was a Green, Earth-loving, Nature-child, but in truth was an arrogant bully.

 

 

In the  first chapter of my story “Goodbye to Roommates” , you read about how I had very serious problems with roommates, before I even moved into my own house.  How I ended up evicted from my own house by my tenants.  How my tenants broke into my room, took my belongings out of my house and put them on the porch in the rain.  How I called the police, and the police said, “Get out of here, lady, and leave your tenants alone.”

However, after this most horrible welcome to my own home, I thought things could only get better.  I mean, what could be worse than being evicted by one’s roommates???? I thought  that once I lived in my own house and was able to select my own roommates, surely I would be able to live in peace and harmony there!.  Again, I was quite mistaken.  Due in part to my not having learned the right skills in screening tenants, I  would continue to experience atrocious behavior, disrespect and bullying, within my own home, for actually several years to come.  Which is why, I was never so glad as on that day when I said goodbye to my last roommate.  (But that day would still be several years away….)

So let’s pick up the story from where we left off, with me arriving at my house just after the initial ghastly trio of roommates moved out , the ones who came as an added bonus with the purchase of the house.  (Hint to homeowners:  don’t ever buy a house with tenants in it — I guarantee they won’t be so excited to have you as their new housemate!)

I did need to have roommates of some kind, since I could not afford to pay the whole mortgage by myself.  This opportunity to purchase this house from my friend, was particularly exciting and unique, because it offered something that many other homes would not — I would be able to live there with others, but the potential existed in the house, to create a relatively large private space, so that I could live with others but simultaneously experience a good measure of the kind of private living that I had known for the last 20 years, as a renter living in my own small apartments.  The house had three bedrooms, two downstairs and one upstairs, as well as a large living room and additional parlor or dining room.

The upstairs bedroom, spacious to begin with, had an additional “extra” room attached, that could be used as an office, or meditation room, and it also had a private half bathroom.  What I realized I would be able to do, was use the extra room, (or at least half of it) to set up my own “kitchenette”, with a refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, and hot plate, and so in effect, except for those times I needed to use an actual oven, I would be able to do most of my food preparation in my own spacious “bedroom”, and have privacy in that I wouldn’t have to leave my own room except for purposes of bathing.  It was almost like having my own studio apartment within my house. The other half of the extra room, could be used as my office and computer work area.   I relished this opportunity to be able to create a big private space, because I am an introvert, and need a lot of time alone to recouperate and recharge, after getting drained spending time in interactions with others.

As well as creating a large private space for myself,  I would be able to rent out 3 rooms to others.   The house had a large living room as well as a parlor/dining room, and I planned to make the living room into a 3rd bedroom — it already had a door (it was the room I had unsuccessfully attempted to move into myself) and was really all  ready to be a bedroom — all that was needed was to close the large, Victorian-era double doors between it and the dining room,  add a permanent wall covering to that opening as well, and then I would have 3 bedrooms I could rent out to others, which would help incredibly in allowing me to afford my home, in the very expensive housing market in my area.

As soon as I got possession of my house, I began to move in and clean it up.  The ghastly trio of tenants who had left, had left the place a mess, not only not cleaning it up but leaving piles and piles of belongings.  When I contacted them to ask them to retrieve their things, they said that none of what was left there, belonged to them, that it must have belonged to “past tenants”.  There were a good two entire truckloads of things that belonged to “past tenants”!!  I cleaned and hauled, cleaned and hauled, and at the same time worked to move my own things in, and to start putting ads on Craigslist to get some roommates.

I knew nothing about how to select roommates!!.  I had no idea how many problems this lack of skill and knowledge would create — small problems, serious problems, kerfluffles and urban living misadventures that I would later find, added up to such a story, that those who heard it thought they were hearing tall tales.  People had a very hard time believing that what I told them, was actually my real experience.  My whole experience would educate me in such a way that I would end up becoming a leader in the Airbnb host community, for my ability to warn new hosts of problems — not hypothetical problems, but mostly, each and every one,  a problem I myself had had with a renter!!

So at the start, I knew nothing, and in that ignorance, had no idea how much there was to know that I didn’t know!  I set my rent fairly low, because with 3 rooms to rent, ( I would have the 3rd bedroom ready to rent within a month ), as well as my income from my own home design/repair business,  I did not need to charge a high rent in order to be able to afford  all the costs of my house.  I was happy to offer moderately low rents, as I had just spent 20 years as a renter myself, and wanted to help out other renters by keeping their rent low.  I had no idea that by offering low rents, I was also attracting some of the “bottom of the barrel” renters, and the problems that came with such people.

 

My first two new roommates were a young man who was to do a last semester at college, at the nearby major university in my region, and a thirty something man who worked at a chain retail store in my region.  The third was a woman who worked at a local nonprofit organization, a Peace and Justice type of organization.  I also made the frequent beginner’s error, of allowing these latter two roommates to have pet cats in my home, both of which caused damage to my house.   Ultimately, these two out of these very first 3 roommates, turned out to be seriously problematic and had to be evicted.

The student, let’s call him Howard, was a fine roommate, and eventually I would discover, that students, researchers, visiting professors and most anyone associated with a local university, tended to be the best roommates.  This was not 100% true (and would prove to be very untrue in at least one appalling case) but it was a good starting point — something I would only come to appreciate years later after making many mistakes.

The chain store employee, call him David, and the nonprofit worker, call her Linda, started out well enough.  David was quiet and out a lot, which I appreciated.  When home, his use of the kitchen was lightweight and quick, and he was good about cleaning up after himself.  David and Linda started hanging out together, which at first I was pleased to see, as I thought it would bring harmony to the house. Yet there began to be some things about their growing friendship that troubled me.

I would come into a room where they were both talking, and after I entered the room, they would both grow silent, and then look up at me sheepishly, and then abruptly leave, going into Linda’s room to talk.  This happened often enough that I began to feel like there were secrets growing in my house, secrets being kept from me.  There were giggles and laughter, and secrets, sheepish glances at me, and scurrying away from me.  This didnt’ feel good. In fact eventually it started to feel quite gross.  There was a “thing” developing in my house, something that I wasn’t being told about, and which I was intentionally being kept out of , and I would eventually learn that this is just the kind of thing that anyone who wants to keep control over their own home, needs to avoid.  But it would take several more years and several more “scenes” taking over my property, before I finally learned how to stop these toxic home invasions.  

 

A month after my housemates moved in,  I started to notice things going missing in the house.  It started, improbably enough, with the laundry detergent.  As someone who likes to cut down on shopping trips by buying in bulk, I had put three large gallon jugs of laundry detergent by the washing machine.  A week later, coming to wash some clothes, I noticed that 2 of the 3 gallon jugs were missing.  I asked all 3 roommates about it, and no one knew anything about that.  Then, I noticed that one of my kitchen appliances had vanished. My crock pot was gone.  I looked in all the cupboards, everywhere, also looked in the laundry area, wondering if had been moved — nothing.  No crock pot.  Again I inquired with all the roommates, and again, no one knew anything about it.

Little items were vanishing as well — a quart of milk, a book from my bookshelf in the dining room, and there seemed to be fewer cans of canned food on my shelf in the kitchen than I remembered.  Howard complained that his little paring knife was missing.  I was very upset, realizing we had a thief in the house.  I suspected David or LInda.

A few days later, I had told David I needed to go into his room to finish a painting task that I had started before he moved in.  The first thing I noticed when going into his room, was the awful state it was in.

It looked like someone had just thrown a bunch of clothes and belongings in, at random, scattering them everywhere.   Also, David had no bed, and was sleeping on the floor, on a thin foam pad.  I was appalled to see that his cat litter box was full to the brim of cat poo, and there was cat litter and cat poo on the floor near it as well. It was clear that in the entire month he had been here with his cat, he had never changed the litter box.  Also, there was a plant in the room, sitting on the floor in a pot that had no basin underneath it to receive the water, so every time he would water his plant, the water would drain out of the holes in the bottom of the pot and go right into my hardwood floor.  In the corner of the room, not quite hidden from view, I also saw my missing crock pot.  On his blanket, I saw my missing book.  A jug of laundry detergent was uncovered underneath a pile of clothing.  (The 2nd missing jug was nowhere to be found) The entire sleazy portrait of David was now unfolding: I had rented my room to a kleptomaniac slob and baldfaced liar.  

 

I grabbed my belongings out of his room, and raced upstairs to my room, sitting down at the computer and starting to do searches on how to do an eviction.  Who would have guessed that only one month into my adventure with roommates, I would already have to evict my first roommate!   Since I had already had to speak to an attorney for help with bad tenants before I even moved into my house, I knew a little about evictions just from those conversations.  I knew that in order to evict someone, I had to give them a very specific, legal eviction notice form, stating that their tenancy would be terminated in 30 days.

I printed out this notice and taped it to David’s door.  When he came home later and  found it, he was upset, but he still denied stealing my property, and said that he had only been “borrowing” these things, and that he was definitely not responsible for the other missing items.  Right.

What I discovered after giving notice to David, is that 30 days is far too long to have someone in your home who is a kleptomaniac slob and baldfaced liar!!  By now I had started doing research on the laws in other states, and found that there were some lovely states, such as Connecticut, where a landlord only had to give a tenant 3 days’ notice to move out.   Or North Carolina, 7 days. Or even Utah, Florida, Colorado, Arkansas or Louisiana, 10 to 15 days.  I deeply envied the luck of Connecticut homeowners when they had an arse of a roommate!

At the same time as things were going south with David, Linda was acting more strangely.  On a couple days, I found Linda out in front of my house, sitting on the sidewalk, acting loopey, and smoking.  I thought she had a strange look in her eyes, but I found myself looking away, partly out of fright.

Another day, I found some of my dishes in the kitchen trash can, three plates and a bowl, all in fine condition but inexplicably deposited in the trash.  At this point LInda was sitting on the sidewalk talking to herself and mumbling, and her eyes had glazed over look, and she was rocking back and forth mumbling to herself, and I finally realized we were dealing with serious mental illness. I went to her rental application, where fortunately I had had her fill out parent contact info and emergency contact info,and phoned up her parents in Virginia.  They said oh no, not again, and I was then  informed that Linda was bipolar and had a habit of going off her medication.   Right.  What else now, I wondered.  How could this get much worse?!

The answer to that question came a few days later, when I found Linda’s cat peeing on the hardwood floor in my dining room.  I then noticed that there were other spots where her cat had peed, and realized that her cat was mirroring her: as Linda was falling deeper into the realm of psychosis, her kitty cat was acting out and expressing contempt for my home.  I phoned up a hardwood floor specialist, and was told that each spot of cat pee on a floor would cost $150 to repair.  At three spots so far, LInda had already used up 4/5 of her security deposit.  I was disturbed, enraged and very fearful about what the total amount of damage would be if I could not get Linda out soon — it could end up being in the thousands of dollars! Infuriated, I saw Linda starting to come up my front stairs, and I had an urge to shove her right down the stairs again and start throwing her stuff out of the house right after her.

If that wasn’t enough, I got another rude awakening about Linda’s destructive bouts that night.   David (who still had 10 days to go until his tenancy was terminated, and all the while I had to worry that he might not move out as required) called me up that night, very upset, saying that Linda had just broken his car window, and he wanted me to pay for that.  Lovely — a lover’s bad breakup now, between a kleptomaniac slob and a psychotic woman with a disturbed cat.  By now I had been on the phone several times with Linda’s mother, and insisted that she come and retrieve her daughter from my home, citing the ever growing list of violations and damages.

Very fortunately, her mother was quite willing to come and “Bring Linda back home” so I did not have to worry about also serving eviction notice to Linda, and potentially then also being stuck with Linda and her disturbed kitty cat, both inside my home, causing more and more damage daily, while the court system wound its slow working machinery, and jot and tittle of letter of the law were preserved, all to safely protect the valuable rights of malicious, destructive, criminal, and truly psychotic renters.  If you detect a note of contempt here for a “justice” system which goes to great lengths to protect the rights of tenants, while turning a cold shoulder to the situation of property owners who may daily be forced to impotently witness the gradual destruction of their property, you will be correct in your assessment of my opinion of the legal system.  But, ha! At this point I knew very little about the depth of injustice of the legal system, and you will have to go on and read parts 3 and 4 of this blog story, to discover the full perversity of the US civil legal system, which only unfolded for me to fully see, several years into my life in my new home.

Even though Linda’s Mother was rushing to my city to collect her daughter, she could hardly arrive soon enough, and in the next 3 days while I had to wait her arrival, I had to fish more of my crockery and cutlery out of the trash can where crazy Linda had ditched it, and I had to stay home from work every day just to make sure that the windows of my house didnt’ end up broken in the same way that David’s car window had.  I had to endure bizarre shrieks and more insane sidewalk occupation by crazy Linda,

which I hoped would not appall my neighbors and turn them quite against me so early in my tenure in this community, as someone who brought garbage to their neighborhood.

David finally moved out, about 4 days before his last day to legally remain on my premises.  I observed him gather up whole armfuls of clothes and belongings, without bothering to pack them or even put them in bags — he just took out these large loose armfuls of stuff and piled it into his car, in his trunk, in the passenger seat, anywhere.  He declared he had found a new place to rent, in a part of town that was expensive and fashionable, and I wondered what lies he had told to get his new room, and how long he would last there.  I didnt’ give him but 2 months at most.

Linda’s mother and brother arrived from Virginia to collect her, and started moving her things out as well into their car.  As soon as they arrived and started the first phase of moving her out, I actually changed the locks on the front door and didn’t give LInda the new key.  Not really legal, but I couldn’t afford to stay home from work every day to monitor Linda and make sure she didn’t destroy more of my property or sneak more of my dishes into the trash while her Mother’s back was turned. So I was going to make sure that she and her family could only enter while I was there to supervise.

At last the day came when both David and Linda were gone for good.  Of his original $575 security deposit, I refunded David a total of $11, and he stated that his parents would sue me, but I doubted it. WHile observing Linda’s relatives first arrive to help her move out of her room, I got to see the inside of it, and noticed that for who knows how long, Linda had been sleeping in a bed that had no sheets on it, (just on the bare mattress) and like David, most of her belongings seemed to be stored on the floor.  Yecch.

I was ever so happy to see the back of David and Linda as they departed my house with the last of their armfuls,

and told myself I would never have problem roommates like these again.  I was learning to screen renters, I told myself.  From now on, no theives or mental cases.  But again, I was quite mistaken to think that I had yet learned enough, and I was also very mistaken that I would never again have serious problems with my roommates! In fact the ghastly problems to come would make some of these incidents seem like child’s play.  So stay tuned, parts 3 , 4 and perhaps 5 of this blog  will coninue the story, and describe further misadventures of this reluctant landlord!!

 

 

Airbnb and the crisis in (Affordable ) Housing.  These two subjects often arise together today — in the media, where the story often goes, that Airbnb is having a deleterious effect on the available affordable housing, is causing the cost of housing to increase, is taking housing units off the market, and in general is exacerbating the housing crisis.  To hear some of the more hysterical versions, Airbnb is an alien life force, zooming in to planet earth with the ghastly mission of sucking all the affordable housing out of cities, expelling tenants and turn every house and apartment building into a hotel.

Housing crisis — we have a national housing crisis, which has been building for decades.  I want to describe this crisis, and some of its causes, and explain why short term rentals, such as those offered on Airbnb, have very little effect in adding to this crisis, but do actually provide a solution to the affordable housing crisis to many, as they allow people to afford their housing.

Airbnb and short term rentals are disrupting the housing landscape, and this upsets many people.  However, as we will see by exploring the dimensions of the housing crisis and its causes, housing in this nation is in great need of change — the housing crisis is serious, and it is growing, and we will not solve the housing crisis by continuing with the status quo.  Rather dramatic changes are needed in how we house people — and so if the entry of short term rentals on the landscape begins to lead many to have questions about such matters as zoning laws, occupancy limits, rent control,  property rights,  gentrification, demographic inversion, the limits of government regulation of what people do in/with their private homes,  building codes, neighbors’ expectations and their limits, housing for low income and homeless individuals, and one of the most important questions of all — just who is responsible for providing affordable housing for Americans.

The Housing Crisis Nationally

According to Andre Shashaty, author of Rebuilding a Dream: America’s New Urban Crisis, the Housing Cost Explosion, and How We Can Reinvent the American Dream for All , we have a national housing crisis. In this article he explains that in broad terms:

How dire is the affordable housing situation right now, nationally?

Andre Shashaty: I call the decreasing affordability of housing the silent crisis because it eats away at the wellbeing of families and, by extension, society as a whole, with little notice from policymakers or the press. It got worse during the recession, as stagnation of incomes proved a bigger factor than a short-term hiatus in the long-term pattern of rising rents. There’s been some improvement as the economy has recovered, but the problem is still serious.

There were 42,447,000 renter households in America in 2013, according to new data from the American Community Survey. Of that number, about 14 million paid more than 40 percent of their income for rent. That is one-third of all renter households, and that kind of a cost burden means there’s less money for other things, like nutritious food and education, and little chance to save for the future. However, this data doesn’t tell the full story. It doesn’t shed any light on the quality or location of the housing that these “rent-burdened” households occupy, which is often pretty bad. In addition, it does not reflect the plight of the homeless or the precariously housed who cannot afford to lease any kind of apartment. The precariously housed are people who share the homes of others or sleep in motel rooms. According to the Department of Education, there are 1.258 million homeless or precariously housed school kids in America, a number that has increased steadily in recent year.

 

Housing Crisis in California and the Bay Area

Let’s begin by looking at some data on housing from the San Francisco Bay Area, which is fast becoming the region with the most expensive housing  in the nation.  According to the  December 2015 Zumper Report  , San Francisco has the highest rents in the nation, at a whopping $3500.00 median rent for a one bedroom apartment, (median rent in San Francisco was $3670 in  in November 2015 according to Zumper) which is about twice the monthly mortgage payment for a 2 bedroom home selling for $500,000 at purchase.  Oakland, once considered the dumpy sibling  city of its sister to the west,  is now the 4th most expensive rental market in the nation, with a median rent for a one bedroom apartment of $2190. These rents represent an increase of 10 to 12% in just one year, and  according to this article this article in the East Bay Express, rents in Oakland have doubled from 2011 to 2015.

But it is not just in the San Francisco Bay Area where rents are rising — this is happening in large cities across the nation —  rents are rising, and vacancy rates are falling.  The November 2015 Zumper report also states that:

According to a US Census Bureau report from the second quarter of 2015, the national rental vacancy rate dropped to 6.8%, the lowest seen in the past 20 years. Furthermore, a recent report conducted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, found that the national homeownership rate declined for the 10th consecutive year in 2014, dropping to 64.5%. This softening was seen across the entire country, affecting both urban and suburban areas alike.

 

As rents increase, renters have to pay an ever larger percentage of their total income just for housing.  In his book Rebuilding the Dream, Andre Shashaty reports (pg 9) that more than 27% of renters paid more than 50% of their income for rent in 2012.  Incomes of renters actually decreased by 13% from 2001 to 2012, while rents increased — sometimes, as in Oakland, rents have increased 100% in just a few years.  A December 16 2015 issue of the East Bay Express has an article entitled Oakland’s Perfect Storm , in which an Oakland renter expresses her sadness that she cannot even afford to rent her own apartment in the city.

The median purchase price of homes has not increased as dramatically, but loans are more difficult to obtain since the mortgage meltdown in 2009.  Housing costs in California are particularly high, according to this report , which indicates that housing costs in California began to significantly exceed those elsewhere in the nation, as early as 1970.

Between 1970 and 1980, California home prices went from 30 percent above U.S. levels to more than 80 percent higher. This trend has continued. Today, an average California home costs $440,000, about two–and–a–half times the average national home price ($180,000). Also, California’s average monthly rent is about $1,240, 50 percent higher than the rest of the country ($840 per month). ….A shortage of housing along California’s coast means households wishing to live there compete for limited housing.

ed housing. This competition bids up housing costs.

 

Consequences of the Housing Crisis:  Finger Pointing

Rising costs of housing is causing more people to struggle in finding housing, or finding what is affordable, and is also leading to more homelessness across the nation.  There is a growing rift between the housing “haves” and the housing “have nots.”   About 64 percent of U.S. households own their homes, but only 54 percent of California households do. (Only New York State and Nevada have lower homeownership rates.)  So, there are more renters in California, and San Francisco in particular has a very high percentage of renters:  a recent census indicates that 63% of SF residents are renters .

The struggles and suffering caused by these housing problems, causes greater stress, tension and anxiety for many who struggle to find adequate housing.  These individuals may often seek someone or something to blame.  The greater the housing crisis, the more that each unit of housing is fought over, with the result that any phenomenon such as Ellis Act evictions or Airbnb rentals which is viewed as removing housing units, becomes the subject of intense debate and scrutiny.

In such a tense environment, I think it is particularly important that we do not “lose the forest for the trees”, and ignore the many complex factors at work in creating the housing crisis, while focussing narrowly on a few units which property owners seek to repossess, or which are being used as short term rentals (which, as I will argue below, is often done simply so that owners can retain control over their own property).  The more the entire context of the housing crisis is examined, I hope the more clear it will be that short term rentals are not a significant cause of the housing crisis, and draconian regulations on short term rentals will not be a solution.

There are two significant elements to the housing crisis which I see too little mention of in public dialogue on the subject.  The first has to do with some basic facts about supply and demand, and the second has to do with the kind of housing we are building — housing that is too expensive for too many people.

Supply and Demand

The cost of housing has risen most sharply in many areas, because there has not been adequate new construction to meet demand.  This problem has been particularly acute in California coastal areas.  As  this government report  summarizes:

…some of California’s most sought after locations—its major coastal metros (Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Ana–Anaheim), where around two–thirds of Californians live—do not have sufficient housing to accommodate all of the households that want to live here. The lack of housing on the California coast means households wishing to live there compete for limited housing. This competition bids up housing costs.

Rising home prices and rents are a signal that more households would like to live in an area than there is housing to accommodate them. Housing developers typically respond to this excess demand by building additional housing. This does not appear to be true, however, in California’s coastal metros. Building activity during the recent housing boom demonstrates this. During the mid–2000s, housing prices were rising throughout the country and, in most locations, developers responded with additional building. As Figure 4 shows, however, new housing construction, as measured by building permits issued by local officials, remained flat in California’s coastal metros. We also find that building activity in California’s coastal metros has been significantly lower than in metros outside of California that have similar desirable characteristics—such as temperate weather, coastal proximity, and economic growth—and, therefore, likely have similar demand for housing. For example, Seattle—a coastal metro with economic characteristics and average temperatures that are similar to California’s Bay Area metros—added new housing units at about twice the rate as San Francisco and San Jose over the last two decades.

Part of the reason for the slowdown in housing construction in the California coastal regions, may be that it is more expensive to build housing in California.  The report indicates that

Building Costs Are Higher in California. Aside from the cost of land, three factors determine developers’ cost to build housing: labor, materials, and government fees. All three of these components are higher in California than in the rest of the country. Construction labor is about 20 percent more expensive in California metros than in the rest of the country. California’s building codes and standards also are considered more comprehensive and prescriptive, often requiring more expensive materials and labor. For example, the state requires builders to use higher quality buildingmaterials—such as windows, insulation, and heating and cooling systems—to achieve certain energy efficiency goals. Additionally, development fees—charges levied on builders as a condition of development—are higher in California than the rest of the country. A 2012 national survey found that the average development fee levied by California local governments (excluding water–related fees) was just over $22,000 per single–family home compared with about $6,000 per single–family home in the rest of the country.  Altogether, the cost of building a typical single–family home in California’s metros likely is between $50,000 and $75,000 higher than in the rest of the country.

In order to keep up with demand, this government report concludes that

….our analysis suggests that the state probably would have to build as many as 100,000 additional units annually—almost exclusively in its coastal communities—to seriously mitigate the state’s problems with housing affordability. Adding this many new homes, however, could place strains on the state’s infrastructure and natural resources and could alter the longstanding and prized character of California’s coastal communities. Facilitating this housing construction also would require the state to make changes to a broad range of policies that affect housing supply directly or indirectly—including many policies that have been fundamental tenets of California government for many years.

 

Due to the law of supply and demand, when demand is higher than available supply, costs for the desired commodities increase.  Many urban areas, including San Francisco and Oakland, have built very little new housing, yet these cities have growing populations.  The government report cited above provides several reasons for the failure to build an adequate amount of new housing, one of which is  that the city’s residents are often voting down proposals to build new housing.  Sometimes residents oppose housing developments because they are too large, too tall, or dont’ include enough affordable housing units.  In Berkeley, there has been tremendous contention about the city’s plan to build an 18 story residential development in downtown Berkeley (the “Harold Way” development) , including threats by some citizens to sue the city over the plan.   The planning stage for this project alone took 3 years and 37 public meetings, as detailed in this article .

In San Francisco in November 2015, there was actually a proposition on the ballot to prohibit the construction of market-rate housing in the Mission District: many were adamant that the only housing that should be built, was “affordable housing.”  In his book  (pg 49) , Shashaty pointed out that in two years 2011-2012 in San Francisco, 36,000 jobs were created in the city, while only 538 housing units were built during that same period of time.  There is a similar problem getting housing built in many cities — recently in  a letter to the East Bay Express an East Bay resident wrote:

It’s severely misguided, though, to assert that any significant part of our current crisis is due to a failure to mandate inclusionary housing in market-rate projects. Affordable housing mandates can be a powerful tool to bring much-needed affordable units into our community, yes, but the author ignored a significant detail which negates the argument.

We aren’t building any market-rate housing in Oakland.

In 2014, we built 788 units total, of which 72 percent were affordable housing projects. If each unit holds two people, you could fit everyone who has found a home in these units on a single BART train.

We could require market-rate projects to build 50 percent affordable housing, but 50 percent of zero units is still zero units.

Demographic Inversion

Meanwhile, as neighbors and city council members are arguing about what housing should be built, and where, but not really building any housing, people are pouring into cities like never before.  We are seeing what Alan Ehrenhalt calls a “demographic inversion”, where people are moving out of the suburbs and into urban areas. This is a reverse of the trend that began in the 1950’s, and earlier, when Americans fled the cities (often in what was called “white flight” ) and settled in the suburbs. Now the cities are being viewed as more desirable, so we have a reverse migration — white and middle class/middle income individuals are moving into the cities, while blacks and immigrants are moving to the suburbs.

In Atlanta, for instance, between 200o and 2010, the percentage of black residents fell from 61% to 54%.  The white middle class is moving in, but black residents are also moving out — in particular, to Clayton and DeKalb counties, which acquired black majorities, says Ehrenhalt in his book The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City.   Likewise, Washington DC has gone from being 70% black to now having only  50% black residents.   

Though many people use the term “gentrification” to refer to  the movement of white middle class into areas historically black and working class, Ehrenhalt points out that “gentrification” is actually an inaccurate term as this refers to patterns in an individual neighborhood, whereas what we are seeing is “a rearrangement of living patterns across an entire metropolitan area, all taking place at roughly the same time.” (pg 3) As well, “gentrification” has been a term used in what at times appears an   offensive manner, suggesting that there is something undesirable about white newcomers.   I have even observed that on neighborhood comment boards in my neighborhood,  where the views of some neighborhood residents were dismissed simply on the basis that they had only lived in that neighborhood for 5 or 10  years, and so they were dismissed as “gentrifiers.”   These claims about the damages caused by middle class newcomers, have been coupled with statements suggesting that there is something romantic and desirable about crime infested slums and blighted neighborhoods, and that it is a negative thing when neighborhoods improve.  Clearly, people getting priced out of their cities is not desirable, but people are not getting priced out simply because there are white middle class people in the world who have as much right as anyone to choose where they want to live.  And just like “simple physics” and the law of gravity, those who have the most means, will have more options.  (What we want ideally is more options for everyone.  And homes for everyone!  )

Wealthy individuals originally moved out of cities due to the pollution and noise caused by industry and factories in cities.   As industry has moved out of cities, urban areas became more attractive to the classes of people who had originally left them, and the demand for urban housing is greatly outpacing the available supply.  Around September 2001, there were 15,000 people living in lower Manhattan, Ehrenhalt reports.  By 2008 there were 50,000 people living there.  But not only are Americans moving from the suburbs to the cities — the number of Americans, or individuals living in our nation, has increased greatly. According to Andre Shashaty in his book Rebuilding a Dream, the total US population grew 10% in only 10 years, between 2000 and 2010.  There are also 350,000 more people in California this year, over last year.

Building restrictions affect the supply of affordable housing

Andre Shashaty states in this article that government is largely responsible for our collective failure to produce adequate affordable housing:

Governments at all levels have been complicit in allowing housing costs to rise year after year, making it impossible for builders to produce housing affordable to working people without government subsidies. There are lots of reasons for this, from building codes to land use regulations that limit density. Most local governments keep driving up the cost of housing and very few of them do anything to mitigate those increases, and even fewer work to reduce the cost burdens they impose.

 

In a report on the effect of building restrictions on affordable housing ,  Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko indicate that

zoning [regulations] are responsible for high housing costs….the affordable housing debate should be broadened to encompass zoning reform, not just public or subsidized consruction programs.

In  this article about the housing crisis in San Francisco, arguments are made which demonstrate that , as one commetner summed up, “government policy, driven by selfishness of all of us, for very different reasons, is the root cause of the high cost of housing.”

Indeed, government subsidies alone cannot keep up with need.   Given that the government is not able to provide adequate subsidies/support even for those who are exceptionally needy (the lowest income Americans), the likelihood of government support for those of middle income as well, who are having trouble finding affordable housing, is nonexistent.  Federal government assistance to those in need of housing, is unable to keep up with demand.  Between 2007 and 2011, Shashaty reports, the number of Americans eligible for federal housing assistance rose by 3.3 million, but the number of opportunties for assistance, remained the same.  In many cities, it is not possible to even add one’s name to the wait list of those seeking Section 8 housing, as the wait list is too long. Shashaty states that

Less than 25 percent of the people eligible for housing assistance actually receive that assistance. There is little prospect that federal spending can be increased enough to do more than keep that percentage stable. In other words, 75 percent of the folks who are eligible for help may never get it.

Another report states that 25% of the cost of any new home, is attributable to government regulations.   This report also covers regulatory costs in housing construction .  Governments have many requirements to build: site and soil tests, engineering studies, environmental impact studies,  feasibility studies, affordability studies, zoning hearings,  creating plans and studying the plans, costs of permits, and inspections. THis 25% cost attributable to government regulations does not even cover the costs implied by the zoning and building code regulations which prohibit individuals from building the kinds of simpler homes that would be entirely satisfactory places to live.    When building codes and safety requirements get more complex, housing costs continue to climb.  Many of those who demand housing to cost less, dont’ seem to have any answers about how we can produce the standard housing that we have been producing, for lower costs, when costs of everything only keep rising.

Unnecessarily High Housing Standards Drive up Housing Costs

I am convinced that a significant part of our problem in creating an adequate amount of affordable housing, is that we are insistent on creating ever higher standards for housing, and our building codes and zoning laws are actually the most significant obstacle to the creation of an adequate amount of affordable housing.

 

Because the plight of the homeless is the most extreme case of the housing crisis , it may be helpful to illustrate the problems for the homeless when we refuse to let go of unrealistically high standards for all housing.  In his book, Democratic Architecture, the architect Donald McDonald (no his name isn’t really Ronald!)  describes how little “camper” type structures called “City Sleepers” were being built for the homeless in San Francisco,

where they could sleep indoors, out of the rain, with their belongings secure.  These were vastly superior to sleeping in a cardboard box on the sidewalk, or simply under blankets on the sidewalk, but due to city concerns about code violations, and the California Dept of Transportations’ concerns about liability, the “City Sleepers” were taken away and the homeless were left to sleep on the concrete sidewalks again.  McDonald points out (pg 24) that

…the labyrinth of codes that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to build low-income housing. …For example, do we always have to have double walls with insulation, and double-glazed windows to save energy, even in a mild climate like California’s? Which is more important to health: a hallway between the kitchen and bathroom, or not having a kitchen and bathroom at all?

McDonald then asks,

The objection often raised to code modifcations is that in paring the codes down, the poor receive inferior housing, that they are deprived of the comfort and safety enjoyed by the wealthy, and that injustice is perpetuated.  But is that really the point of view of those who are homeless, of families who are forced to share apartments with relatives, or of young couples who cannot afford to buy a house?

In addition to the increase in housing costs when we insist on building everything to the specifications of upper middle class values, there have also been losses of entire styles of housing, based on changes in zoning laws and code provisions.  In former times, as Andrew Heben points out (pg 17) in his book Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages:

An abundance of single room occupancy (SRO) hotels flourished in US cities of the early 20th century, ranging from rooming houses for the middle class to lodging houses for the lower class.  Just within lodging houses, accomodations ranged from private rooms to large rooms broken into cubicles, to bunk rooms.

Ironically, at the beginning of the 20th century, we were better able to house the very poor, than we are now.  As Heben points out, changes to the building codes made it impossible to continue to build the SRO housing which was one of the best options for the poor.  The minimum square footage for habitable space was increased, and it was then required for each unit to have its own kitchen and bathroom.  He writes,

This significantly drove the cost of development up, making it economically unviable to build very low-income housing on the private market.

Thus the theoretical improvement in the standard of living, as reflected in increased requirements in the building code and changes to the zoning code, actually has reduced the standard of living for many, as they now live on sidewalks instead of in  the now-prohibited bunk rooms in an SRO.  Additionally, since it is impossible to build private housing that is affordable for the very low income, housing for these populations is now dependent on government subsidies, which are in ever shorter supply.

Heben summarizes (pg 20) by saying that

The building code has come to mandate middle class norms and eliminate simpler housing options that are perceived to negatively influence adjacent property values.

In   this article on reasons why San Francisco doesn’t build enough new housing, author states that:

where zoning regulations create artificial limits on home production, the final prices to home buyers jump far above construction costs. In the 1980s and 1990s, they found that virtually all of San Francisco’s home prices were at least 140 percent above base construction costs.

 

I think you will have anticipated the point I am coming to, which finally brings the housing crisis issue back to Airbnb rentals.  I’m going to bring up the fact, that some have pointed out, that people (gasp!) are renting out yurts, RV’s, tents, tiny houses  and treehouses on Airbnb.  In cities across the nation, at City Council meetings where Airbnb hosts are addressing the councilmembers, explaining why they feel they should be allowed to rent out their “art studio” , they say that it is not suitable as a long term rental, because it has no bathroom. Or no kitchen.  People are aware that standard expectations/requirements for long term housing, don’t necessarily apply to short term housing, and are asking questions and thinking of possibilities.  Two forces are at work: tenants and homewowners are wanting to make additional income by renting out spaces that they dont’ need, and others are looking for a place to stay, that fits their budget.

So the situation of these short term rentals, brings up a question which cities should be asking as they try to address the housing crises ravaging the nation.  Which is, if someone can live quite contentedly in a “backyard studio” with no kitchen or bathroom, for 2 weeks, why can’t they live happily there for 2 years?  Or if someone can live in a treehouse, yurt or tent for a week, why not for a few months?  What is wrong with living in an RV parked off the street on private property, and what is the problem with a person renting out a “studio apartment” that doesn’t have a full 8 feet of ceiling height, particularly if they are a short individual?   Why can’t people build tiny houses, not only for short term guests, but for their own permanent occupancy, and live in those? Why is it that cities will permit 12 people who are all related to each other to live together in one single family home, but declares that it is impermisslbe for 10 people not related to each other, to live together in that same home.  Why do so many city regulations show biases towards nuclear family arrangements, something particularly anachronistic in a time of housing crisis when people have to come up with more and more inventive ways to live together.

The tiny house movement is producing zoning questions which cities need to explore.  Tiny houses are simpler, tiny houses are more affordable.  Tiny houses put the dream of home ownership within reach of many.  Tiny houses blur the distinction between homes and RV’s. Some municipalities are leading the way in terms of openness to regulatory changes.  In  Spur, TX  tiny houses are allowed as primary dwellings.  In Quixote Village in Olympia, WA, a former homeless tent camp has become a tiny house village of 30 homes with a central kitchen and shower/laundry area.  Emerald Village in Eugene OR and Community First Village in Austin Tx, as well as Om Village in Madison WI, SEcond Wind Cottages in Ithaca NY, and River Haven in Ventura CA and Dome Village in Los Angeles, offer residents a place to live with a buy-in cost of only $10-30k in many instances.  These are experimental solutions which have yet to be applied on a large scale, and to more municipalities, but I think they are very important examples of what can be done to provide more affordable housing.

Other examples of ways that housing costs can be decreased by relaxing building codes and zoning requirements:  eliminating the energy-savings requirements in building, such as use of double glazed windows and regulations on insulation.  Reducing minimum room size and unit size.  Reducing ceiling height requirements.   Eliminating the requirement that many cities have that there must be on-site parking spot for each unit.  Reducing permit fees and inspection requirements.  Relaxing regulations on grey water systems, and electrical and plumbing hookups.  Eliminating the regulations which require new housing in a residential neighborhood to be of a similar type to existing housing there.  Allow residents to live in RV’s , treehouses, tents or yurts, or unheated cabins lacking electricity or plumbing,  on their own properties, or rent out such space.  Revise city zoning laws so that SRO’s/rooming houses/lodging houses can be again constructed to provide housing for the lower income individuals.  Abolish “nanny-state” laws which prohibit individuals from renting out any space whatsoever  to use as a dwelling, and treat people as adults who are capable of making their own decisions about how they want to live.

 

Stop the Nannying

The fact is that a lot more housing would be available to many more people, at prices they could afford, if we didn’t build to “middle class values”, but simply allowed people to create the housing that worked for them.  Which brings me to my next point,  that of excessive government interference, really government nannying, that contributes to high building costs via excessive regulations and inappropriate zoning regulations.  These regulations in my opinion are at a level where they are no longer sensible and now amount to “nannying” —  telling people how they have to live, in what kind of structure or building they have to live, and what they can rent.  If governments get out of the way and “quit the nannying”, stop creating obstacles to affordable housing, many people who are currently unable to buy their own home, could afford to do so, since tiny houses cost markedly less than large middle class ones.  Many people who can’t afford to rent their own apartment, could afford to rent an “art studio” in someone’s backyard which has no kitchen or bathroom, but shares those facilities with the householder, or could afford to rent a room in a new version of the old SRO or lodging/rooming house ,and share bath and kitchen with many others.  As well, those currently homeless will be able to have homes —  municipalities can construct tent cities and RV parks where individuals can live in tents or in RV’s, and have showers and toilets and a common indoor kitchen and dining facility on site, and storage lockers to store their belongings — and how very badly so many homeless people simply want a little tent, their own site, where they will be safe from being shooed away by the police. Several regions already have set up legal, sanctioned campgrounds for the homeless, such as Tent City in Seattle, PInellas Hope in ST Petersburg FL, and Camp Hope in Las Cruces, NM.

The homeless do set up unsanctioned campgrounds, as well, and I do not advocate that these be permitted. THey are often set up in places that damage the environment, or trespass on private property, or appropriate public spaces as private , and there are serious problems with trash and sanitation at impromptu homeless camps.  However, most all these problems could be solved if cities worked with these individuals to set up sanctioned camps.  In my area, there was a homeless community “experiment” at Albany Bulb,  a local park.  For years, police had directed homeless people in that city to get off the sidewalk and go to Albany Bulb, where the city kindly (and foolishly) let them live. Over the years, more and more went to live there, where they built makeshift shelters, some quite elaborate, and fashioned art work.  But a homeless camp does not fit well in a public park, particularly when there are no trash cans or sanitation facilities (there was not a single portapotty in their compound) and the city eventually moved to evict them.  Sadly, an attorney representing the homeless sued the city to prevent the eviction, which immense waste of resources just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished. Cities really should not let the homeless simply set up camp anywhere, because it could cost them a lot to get them out again.  Having clean sanctioned camps run by the city will help prevent filthy impromptu camps.

In addition to the blessing of providing the homeless with a space that is all theirs, permanent camps could offer other benefits to them.  Tenants at the camps could be required to do chores in return for the accomodations they are given, which could help build their sense of worth — it is so damaging to the sense of self -worth of individuals, when they can only be people who recieve handouts from others, and never are able to work and contribute to society.

Also, housing the homeless, even in quite rudimentary housing, could drastically reduce the cost of caring for these individuals.  Shashaty reports (pg 39) that the chronically homeless people use 50% of available public resources, and that for instance, 15 homeless San Diegans used $1.5 million in medical services alone in 1.5 years.

So the great irony is that all those tenant attorneys, who are so eager to jump up and “fight” for tenants when their housing is missing some tiny item from the ever-growing-longer checklist of government requirements (even the lack of a cover plate on a switch is a “habitability” issue) , are in fact banking on the very things that are making housing more and more out of reach for those very tenants — more codes, more requirements, more safety features, more environmental studies, more expense overall.

If people don’t like their housing, if it doesn’t have something they need or want, they should move out, and find another place to live.  What makes that difficult now, is the dearth of housing, but there are  ways to build a lot more housing for less, rather than a tiny bit of housing for a lot more.

Rent Control Causes Housing Costs to Rise

One of the consequences of the housing crisis, has been an obsessive focus by some cities and some tenants, with rent control, as a means of providing affordable housing.  When area median rents rise dramatically, tenants and city governments tend to try to impose more controls and more regulations on property owners, whom they believe will experience greater temptations to evict  tenants, in order to raise their rents.  Some cities attempt to expand rent control laws, or impose heavier fines for violating them, and other cities without rent control contemplate having rent control.   In Oakland recently, the City Council, declaring a “housing emergency”, passed a   90 day moratorium on rent hikes and evictions…. in spite of the fact that Oakland has rent control, which already severely limits rent hikes and evictions. (No one bothered to explain how the “housing emergency” created by decades of failure to build adequate housing, might be solved in 90 days) .

San Francisco, taking a page I guess from Oakland’s playbook, then   ruled in April 2016 that it was no longer permissible to evict schoolteachers or students during the school year.  Also in  San Francisco in 2015,  A landlord was fined $276,000 for evicting a tenant via the Elllis Act and then turning around and offering the apartment as a short term rental.  The city council in Alameda ( a city without rent control laws) passed a  temporary moratorium on rent increases in that city in late 2015, during a heated city council meeting in which one person was assaulted.  Tenants had become desperate when many were being given no-fault eviction papers, or were seeing their rents increase as much as $500/month.

In the former article about the landords fined $276,ooo, city attorney Dennis Herrera said,

“Illegal conversions that push long-term tenants out of their homes diminish the availability of residential rental units for San Franciscans, and they’re a significant contributor to our housing affordability crisis.”

In fact, neither illegal evictions, nor short term rentals are a significant contributor to the housing affordability crisis, but they are definitely scapegoats for these things.  Nor is rent control a solution to the housing crisis.  In fact, rent control exacerbates the housing crisis, much more so than short term rentals.

Economists are nearly unanimous in agreeing that rent controls are destructive.  In this article on rent control the following points were made by Walter Block:

 

In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1 Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement.2 The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners milton friedman andfriedrich hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureategunnar myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.” Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”3 His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”4 That cities like New York have clearly not been destroyed by rent control is due to the fact that rent control has been relaxed over the years.5

Rent control is  a perverse type of law in several ways.  First, in a free market economy where we have almost no other form of price controls, it imposes price controls, setting the maximum amount that individuals may charge for accomodations that they are offering.  This amounts to forced charity, where private individuals are forced to provide charity to other individuals, who may have absolutely no need for such charity.  in fact there are no need requirements for tenants to benefit from rent control, and many benefit who are actually wealthy individuals.  We dont’ tell people that they have to sell their baked goods at such and such a price, and that they must give charity to everyone who buys them — we dont’ insist that people sell their clothing at set prices. ANd in fact, as Walter Block points out, it would make more sense to have price controls on all other products, except for housing.  Rent control scares off investors, developers and it scares off potential buyers — thus reducing the likelihood of investment in or construction of the housing that is so badly needed.  Thus Block writes:

The surest way to encourage private investment is to signal investors that housing will be safe from rent control. And the most effective way to do that is to eliminate the possibility of rent control with an amendment to the state constitution that forbids it. Paradoxically, one of the best ways to help tenants is to protect the economic freedom of landlords.

This article provides more info on the destructive aspects of rent control, and points out that rent control reduces the supply of housing:

When a community artificially restrains rents by adopting rent control, it sends the market what may be a false message. It tells builders not to make new investments and it tells current providers to reduce their investments in existing housing. Under such circumstances, rent control has the perverse consequence of reducing, rather than expanding, the supply of housing in time of shortage.

William Tucker in this report states that rents are uniformly higher in cities with rent control, because rent controlled tenants tend to hoard their apartments:

…data I have collected from eighteen North American cities show that the advertised rents of available apartments in rent-regulated cities are dramatically higher than they are in cities without rent control. In cities without rent control, the available units are almost evenly distributed above and below the census median. In rent-controlled cities most available units are priced well above the median. In other words, inhabitants in cities without rent control have a far easier time finding moderately priced rental units than do inhabitants in rent-controlled cities.

This is because tenants in the regulated sector tend to hoard their apartments, forcing everyone else to shop only in the shadow market. Thus, rent control is the cause of the widely perceived “housing crisis” in rent-controlled cities.

Even such a traditionally liberal -progressive paper as the SF Weekly ran an article entitled, “The Case For ending Rent Control” in August 2000.  See that article here:  The Case for Ending Rent Control .  Did you know, for instance, (as stated in this article) that

“Before the late 1970s, rent controls had been enacted in the United States only during times of war and economic crisis. Policy-makers considered the controls to be of temporary use in damping inflation. With the exception of New York City, controls were lifted when the national emergencies receded.”

Rent control removes many units from the housing market, thousands more than do Ellis Act evictions, for instance.   The  Anti Eviction Mapping Project reports that there were 4014 Ellis act evictions between 1997 and 2014 in San Francisco, a period of 17 years. This averages to 236 per year, which they label the number of “San Francisco Families forced out of their homes.”  Yet, since Ellis Act evictions are often done so that the property owner can move themselves or their family back into their property, Ellis Act evictions are just as likely to be oriented to a San Francisco family reclaiming their home.  While 236 tenants are evicted each year by the Ellis act, it must be pointed out that in San Francisco it is nearly impossible to evict a tenant through any means other than the Ellis Act.  Meaning that a property owner has to go to extraordinary lengths simply to have access to their own property.  Some property owners as the one in this story never actually are able to move into their own home.  This in my view is actually a more perverse situation than price controls on products.  THe fact that as a business person, one could be effectively imprisoned in a relationship with someone who one has long since lost interest in doing business with, is a feature unique to rent control, which makes the law particularly appalling.  This is most notable and egregious in cases where we see the property owner living on the same property as the tenant they cannot evict, and who may be bullying them, as occurred in this case . 

While Ellis act evictions removed 236 renters a year from other people’s properties, rent control laws themselves kept 31,000 units off the rental market in San Francisco, as reported in this article .   As well, the recent news about the “Panama Papers” in April 2016, has revealed that money laundering could actually be a significant contributor to San Francisco’s housing crisis.  THis article goes into that issue:  How Money Laundering effects SF’s housing Crisis .  We know as well that foreign investors, increasing those from China, are buying up apartments in US cities, and leaving them empty. This is happening in a significant degree in Vancouver, Canada, for instance — where the “vacancy rate” is reported to be 0.6%.  In fact the vacancy rate is likely to be much higher if these investor properties are considered — but as these owners are not renting out their properties, but instead hoarding them off the rental market, they deplete the supply of long term permanent housing in a quite significant manner.

All perversities of rent control as law set aside, let us consider the practicality of rent control as a means to provide affordable housing.  First, as we have seen, rent control actually decreases the available housing supply, due to the number of property owners who would rather keep their units permanently off the market, rather than have them filled with a rent controlled tenant.  Rent control causes tenants to stay in place longer than they would otherwise, resulting in less turnover of units.   While the tenants in a rent controlled unit do benefit from the artificially lower price they are paying (and what renter wouldnt’ want to pay the lowest price possible?) , the lower the rent they pay, the more the landlord has to increase other tenants’ rents to compensate for the loss involved in that low rent situation.  As well, the less rent paid, the less the landlord can afford to maintain that property, so it is quite common that rent controlled properties become more run down and blighted than those not subject to rent control.

Also, because a landlord has to assume that any given tenant might stay in place a long time, when there is a vacancy, he must increase the rent as much as possible, so as not to lose out over time when the tenant remains and remains.  Finally, those benefitting from rent control, can only benefit while remaining in the same place.  They are trapped in place, and cannot move.  This can cause stress and fear, if for instance the renter has needs arising which would make a move to a different apartment very desirable, but the tenant cannot afford to move because rents in the city have increased so much during the time she was in residence.

Rent control does nothing to make units affordable to newcomers to an area, but rather, for reasons explained above, tends to ensure that newcomers will see higher rents.

The solution to affordable housing cannot be that once you rent a place, you can never afford to move.  Rental agreements in the USA are of two types — month to month, and a year lease.  No one signs a rental agreement saying that they will be renting the premises for the rest of their natural life.  That isn’t how we do business in the US, and yet, that is the implication of rent control — that what was intended to be a business arrangement that could be ended in either 30 days or 1 year by either side, now becomes a form of imprisonment, once for the tenant, who increasingly cannot afford to move out, and secondly for the property owner, forced into a potentially lifelong business relationship with someone  they may very well not want to do business with for a lifetime.

The premise of rental housing contracts that are 1 month or 1 year, is that the renter can always find another place to live.  In a housing market where it is more difficult to find another place to live, desperate and frightened tenants increasingly view their apartments as their own property, encouraged in this entitled attitude by the rent control laws.  Often tenants and property owners alike will assert that “housing is a right” and that people have a right to their housing.  I would agree that people have a right to housing, but they do not have a right to stake claims on other people’s property.  I believe we can provide all people with a very basic level of housing, which we could say is their “right” — such as  tent in a campground, with shared access to common shower and cooking facilities, or a bunkbed in an SRO.  Beyond such basic housing rights, everyone can obtain the housing that they can afford. It’s my argument as well that we need to make it easier for more people to afford housing by offering many more simple forms of housing.

Landlords naturally resent rent control laws, and not surprisingly seek ways to get around rent control laws, such as by renting their units as short term rentals on Airbnb or VRBO.

In cities such as San Francisco and New York City, where housing is most expensive and scarce, there has been an exceptional and irrational fixation on property owners “taking units off the rental market” and renting them out as short term rentals.  The way the short term rental hysteria goes, cities seem to believe that without draconian regulations and massive fines in place, every apartment building in the whole city would be converted into short term rentals.  So, New York City has proposed $50,000 fines for those who violate its laws on short term rentals and rent out whole apartments, and San Francisco is fining similar violators, and has tallied up $400k in fines against STR violators .

If we pause and think about it, I believe we will realize that the demand for short term rentals in any given area, is not infinite.  There will never be more people seeking short term stays, than long term rentals.  For this reason, I believe that market forces alone would be sufficient to limit the number of property owners who “take units off the market”.  Some will do this, others will not. Many of those who try running their units as short term rentals will find that it is not profitable — the stories in the community of hosts indicate that it is not easy to make more money from a unit as a short term rental, in a setting which becomes glutted with other short term rental listings, as is the case as Airbnb hosting catches on and more and more and more people sign up to be hosts, (many of whom are absolutely unprepared for the task — see my other blog, “Dont’ be an Airbnb Baby”)

Certainly a few units will be “taken off the rental market”, but the accusation behind this question needs to be examined — why is it not the right, of anyone who puts a unit on the rental market, to take it back off that market again?  Why are property owners not permitted to do what they want to do with their own property?  It must be pointed out that insofar as many property owners are motivated to do short term rentals with their property precisely because they want to avoid being subject to rent control, the abolishment of rent control would result in many more property owners suddenly having much less motivation to do short term rentals.  And it is not as if they would also decide to raise the rent for a one bedroom apartment a few thousand dollars a month more, beyond the median price now in SF, $3500 a month.

De-Control instead of Rent Control

My argument through this article, is that more and more government control, rules, regulations, codes, is what is actually causing the crisis in affordable housing.  The solution to affordable housing is therefore most certainly not going to come from still more control, more laws, more fines, more punishments, and more expropriation of private property.  Rather the solution will come from de-control, and a relaxation of building requirements, a relaxation of zoning laws, and a relaxation of regualations on short term rentals as well as any other kind of rental.  With fewer regulations on property, particularly less rent control,  property owners would be more likely to stick to standard long term rentals, knowing that they can get renters out quickly if need be, regaining the right to no fault evictions.  In addition to the abolition of rent control, something else that would help provide more affordable housing, is to make the process of eviction one which no longer involved going to court, or at least eliminated the option of a jury trial.  It should be very simple and reduce time and expense, to have tenant and landlord in an eviction case, simply meet with a judge, as in small claims court, and obtain a result in a few days or at most a couple weeks, instead of the 6 to 8 months it can now take to evict a tenant who fights the eviction or requests a jury trial.  (In this case it took 274 days for the landlord to evict the tenant, who actually had never paid the landlord a dime since he first moved into the apartment)

Too many landlords have had to spend far too much money just to evict a tenant who isn’t paying rent, or who is vandalizing their unit, or harassing other tenants, or causing other problems.  It is incredibly ridiculous that someone could refuse to pay rent, vandalize your property, and then when you move to evict them,they could insist on a jury trial and delay the eviction and cause the property owner to have to pay thousands of d0llars just to remove a deadbeat’s heinie from their property.  This too makes landlords less interested in doing long term rentals, when they know that in the case of a problematic short term renter, they can just evict the person without going to court .

People who do Airbnb hosting do not do it just because they like to meet people from around the world.  They also do not do short term rentals just because they earn more money this way.  They often do it because they are fed up with tenants, or roomates, and the bad attitudes and problems they have with these people who lay claim to their property, and who can cost them thousands to get removed.  As well, many renters resent that they are the housing “have nots” and do not have as much as the property owner.  This resentment can lead to the “bad attitude” that many landlords report they experience from tenants, a problem that has enough landlords fed up, that they are turning to short term rentals so as not to have to deal with tenants and their bad attitudes any more.  If we can create a society in which there is plentiful affordable housing, and in which (as in the first part of the 20th century) anyone who wants to buy a home, (or build their own home) and works towards that, can afford to do so, then we can see less tension between tenants and landlords, because the tenant doesnt’ have to grab onto someone else’s property as if it is their lifeline, and the landlord doesn’t have to be anxious and fearful of taking on a long term tenant, if they will not be imprisoned in a business relationship with that individual.

Housing cannot continue to be both affordable and adequately available, and built to upper middle class values and specifications.  Homes need to be smaller, and more building options and choices need to be available.  Humans have lived for thousands of years in simple dwellings, and in order to continue to keep people housed, we will need to return to simpler homes.  As well as removing government imposed obstacles and costs to building standard housing (environmental reports, feasibility studies, design reviews, zoning hearings, permit expenses, inspection expenses, and more) more standard housing needs to be built, particularly housing which maximizes use of space and is suitable for urban infill.  As well, we need to open the way to legally build and dwell in many more simple types of housing — yurts, treehouses, tiny houses, RV’s, one-room cabins, backyard “art studios” without kitchen or bathroom, clusters of individual homes centered around a common kitchen and bath facility, an expansion of lending options including more tenants-in-common home purchases, are the direction we need to move in to solve the housing crisis.

Small Private Property Owners are not responsible for solving the housing crisis

It’s my view that draconian regulations on short term rentals, often emerge from the misguided view that private individuals, property owners, even small property owners who only own one property (which may have 2 or 3 units) are responsible for providing affordable housing, or long term housing.  I strongly disgree with such a perspective, and I hope I have done something in this article to explain why I believe our housing crisis is owing more to government regulations, than any other cause. First, the government creates obstacles to development in the form of the costs for studies, reports, planning and zoning meetings, permits and inspections, all of which add up to 25% of the cost of construction, and then it creates even greater obstacles in terms of severe restrictions on the type of housing that may be built, and where, and imposes upper middle class values and requirements on those who cannot afford such housing and may not even desire it.

Secondly, the government responds to the housing crisis its own bureaucracy has created, by passing rent control laws, which in effect constitute a partial seizure of private property, by the government, for its own purposes of housing people.  Through rent control, government expropriates private property, imposes harsh and unrealistic limits on rent which do not keep up with increasing costs of property owners, and essentially imprisons property owners into business relationships with individuals they may have long since ceased to want to do business with, by prohibiting them from evicting tenants. In some cases, property owners are actually unable to move into their own home and live in their own home, or must pay enormous sums to do so, because the “right” of the tenant to housing is deemed greater than the owner’s rights to their own property.   Facing such ominous and indeed sometimes terrifying restrictions, many property owners understandably seek ways to avoid being subject to rent control, being imprisoned in relationships with bad tenants, and being unable to move into their own property when they wish, and consider doing short term rentals instead.

Third, the governments then pass short term rental regulations, which prohibit property owners from conducting the type of rental with their own property that they wish to conduct, insisting that these private property owners help solve the affordable housing problem that government regulations created.  And so the tale of government overregulation and nannying finishes its hideous cycle, with property owners enslaved into government labor.

I realize that it is not likely that in regions with the politics (and the housing crises) we see in San Francisco or New York City, that property owners will be allowed to rent out any number of apartments they own, as short term rentals — particularly the large landlords who own many buildings or large multiunit buildings.  I am not so concerned about restrictions being placed on these large landlords.  What bothers me are the restrictions placed at the same time on the small property owners, who may only own one or two buildings.  I feel that such small owners, should be given the liberty to use their property as they see fit, and not regulated into duty to the government, to help solve problems that government regulations created.

Affordable housing is, after all, not just a need that renters have.  Property owners too need affordable housing, and one of the ways that they attain this, is by renting out space in their home.  Particularly if the live in locales where rent control laws could result their inability to ever recover the space they rent, from a long term tenant, owners who may want to use that space, for themselves or for visiting family, naturally will view short term rentals as a perfect solution both for their affordability needs and their own desire to retain control over their own property.  ANd governments should support property owners making their own home more affordable in this way, rather than disallowing this.

Curb population growth

A final comment on the housing crisis — much of it, particularly in the most desirable areas of the country like the coastal areas of California, is caused by population growth.  Overpopulation is a serious problem for not just coastal California, but the whole world, and may actually be the leading problem we face in the world today, at the root not only of housing crisis issues, but also a cause of environmental destruction, habitat loss, global warming, extinction and endangerment of species, natural resource depletion, and the increasing problems we will have in the future regarding water supply and availability of fossil fuels.

In the US, greater awareness of population growth and its destructive impacts can be developed, and housing can be better built to be environmentally friendly.  This means emphasizing high density construction instead of outward sprawl into exurbs and suburbs, as well as considering the potentials available in urbanizing the suburbs. IT means recognizing the difference between building regulations which curtail environmental damage, and those which simply impose middle class values and protect area property values.   It means encouraging home designs which make intelligent use of space, and building smaller homes, reducing the overall space per person required for new home construction.

Problems can best be addressed when we know their causes, and when those who cause the problems are held accountable.  In the past, communities and tribes which lived in a given area, would experience the consequences of their own relationship to their environment. If a tribe cut down an entire forest of trees, or hunted all the deer in their region to extinction, then that tribe would be endangered by its own reckless behavior.  It is this kind of local accountability of people to their environment that I believe we need to encourage.  Communities should be encouraged to recognize and respect the limitations imposed upon them by their own local environments, rather than being permitted to deplete their environment and then migrate elsewhere, presumably to deplete someone else’s environment, or being permitted to live in settings that are not friendly to human habitation, because they are able to import resources from elsewhere to do so.  Globalization has weakened the valuable link between community and their local environment, since for instance people can now live in desert regions like Arizona, where there is a scarcity of water, because they are able to import water from other parts of the nation.  The population of Los Angeles came to depend greatly upon water taken from the Sierra Nevada, far to the north, something which ultimately endangered the existence of Mono Lake.  Similarly, in a world environment where the wealthier first world nations continually come to the aid of the poorer third world nations in emergencies, a dependency is created which mitigates against the ability of communities to live responsibly within their own means. The relatively free movement about the globe offered by immigration, mitigates against people’s commitment to and responsibilty for their own lands and environment, since migration simply allows people to go ever in search of new places to live (and perhaps to exploit), when their current circumstance has become unworkable.  When immigration is motivated by environmental degradation or natural resource loss caused by overpopulation, we see a problem trend occuring which cannot continue indefinitely.  THere will not continue to be new, unused and available land , housing and natural resources, for ever greater numbers of people.

A recent A recent New York Times article indicates that there are more young people in some parts of the world than previously — unfortunately, the article fails to indicate that this is at root a symptom of the global overpopulation problem.  People are having too many children — more so in some nations than others — for the environment and the planet as a whole to sustain.  The article does point out that when these children grow, and demand the same things their parents have had — a job, housing, resources to make a meaningful life — the situation will not be pretty when these young people are unable to get what they want or need.  We already see the start of this in the squalid refugee camps that refugees from Syria have built along the border between Greece and Macedonia, since Macedonia is feeling too full at the moment and will not allow any additional people in.  This problem of where to stick people when the earth is bulging at the seams, will not get easier.  If nations dont’ have room now for refugees who are fleeing desperate and intolerable , life-threatening situations, then it is not likely that they will have room for more such refugees in the future.

Living simply will become more necessary than ever — and so we come back to that Airbnb listing, which offers a tent in the backyard, or a treehouse in the redwood, or a yurt or tiny house.  And we say, good going, why not. Why can’t people live in the housing that they want to live in — why does the government have to meddle.  Stop the Nannying and start solving the housing crisis.

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, most of us who are doing short term rentals and Airbnb hosting, are doing this because we do not want long term “roommates” (see the other blogs entitled “Goodbye to Roommates!”).  We have been there, suffered through that, and we have had it up to here with roommates.  So we are seeking people who will be staying for a fixed, short or middle term time period, could be a few days, or perhaps a month or two, but never with plans to stay on indefinitely.  So Airbnb hosts rarely want a “Move-In Mark” who offers to stay for a week, or a few months, or quite a bit longer than a few months. (What this usually means, is that it definitely will NOT be just a week, and could be up to a year.) Finally, those who are seeking permanent housing, should just look for permanent housing, not try to make a short term rental offering into permanent housing!!  That smacks of a presumptuous attempt to appropriate someone’s home and their  generosity, particularly in the case where a hosts’ listing clearly states, as mine does, that I do not take reservations for more than X amount of time.

It should be noted too, that it is far easier, and quicker, for someone to book a short term stay in a room or a whole apartment on Airbnb or the like,  than it is for someone to go through the standard and much more complex process of obtaining a long term rental — which involves filling out an application, credit reports, interviews, and perhaps more . So, it is quite possible for people who are really seeking long term housing, to try to “sneak under the radar” by booking short term housing in hopes of making it long term. Note too that in many regions, in fact most regions in the USA, those staying more than 30 days, can thus obtain tenant’s rights, meaning that if they overstay their reservation, the host might have to go to court and engage in a costly process (even, possibly, a jury trial!) to get that “guest” out of their home.  Hosts should be aware of this and approach all requests for longer term stays with abundant caution.

Finally, I just thought it was odd that someone had their own home, then sold that home, with plans to move into a room in someone’s house.  That seems like going backwards rather than forwards.

Fifteenth type: Sally the Scammer

Sally is a very smart gal.  She has found ways of getting a lot of things she wants, all without paying for them.  Sally is very clever.  Because she is clever, she is likely to know how to present herself to appear like the kind of guest you think you want.  Which is why it can be difficult to recognize a Sally when she contacts you.   She may seem pleasant, she is likely to be forthcoming and tell you about her purpose for visiting your area.    She will ask standard questions , and appear cooperative.  The one thing that Sally is not likely to have in her presentation, however — is a big, open-hearted, sincere and friendly smile in her photo.  She may be smiling, but if you are intuitive and look closely, you won’t see an open heart behind the smile — more likely you will see Sally smiling about her own cleverness. For she is proud of herself. Yes, there is someone and something Sally loves in this world, and it is herself, and her own capacity to pull a fast one on others.  Sally, (or Scott as the case may be) is likely to look arrogant in her photo — or perhaps distracted. And if lies could make a nose grow, Sally would have a very long nose.

The first sign that you have a Sally Scammer guest, is the call or text message that you get, which complains of some serious problem with your place — a problem you have a very hard time believing could exist.  You scrubbed the place top to bottom and had it professionally cleaned, and Sally is calling to say it is “very dirty, …really uninhabitable.”  Or Sally sends you a text message to say, “There are fleas all over the place…I’m getting bitten all over…” and you have never had animals in your home, and none of your guests have had animals.  Yet Sally claims there is a horde of vermin in your home.  If not insects, it might be mice…or rats, cockroaches.  Even hamsters inside the wall, anything is possible for Sally.

If it is not insects or vermin, Sally will complain about heat.  There is not enough heat.  Or there is too much heat.  Or the bed is not as promised, or the oven is broken, or the tub is not draining.  Or perhaps the tap water is cloudy, or has sediment in it.   There may be mold or a moisture problem in the unit — (perhaps Sally even helped it develop by dumping water on the carpet and letting it sit) Perhaps the problem is noise — your  neighbors are having a loud party, Sally claims, she says people have been coming and going — something you know is very unlikely, as your neighbor is an elderly 87 year old woman.

Regardless the type of problem that Sally complains about — one thing will be true — she doesn’t actually want the problem fixed. So if she complains the place is very dirty (“unliveable” , really) , and you offer to send a cleaning company over that very day, she will make various excuses about why she can’t let them in.  If the heat is problematic, she wont’ let you send a heating repairman over .  No, you can always be sure that Sally is up to her scams, when it becomes clear that Sally doesn’t really want any problem she complains about to be solved.  And if you offer to put her up elsewhere, you’ll find that neither is she interested in leaving for a better situation.  No, she’d rather stay and complain, while allowing nothing to be fixed.  Sally’s planning to submit a claim for a big $$$ refund from you after her stay, and she is also likely  to threaten you with “legal action” if you dont’ pay up, because bullying people with legal threats is one of her favorite pastimes, as it is for all malicious sleazebags.

In short, there is no shortage of complaints that Sally might make about your place.  Sally is a scholar on scams, and knows that in many cases of renter’s complaints, fiction and baldfaced lies can go a long, long way.  The US legal system in fact seems to roll out the red carpet to malicious liars, as it has never heard of a lawsuit worth throwing out.    Sally thrives in this atmosphere where lies get you so much mileage, and figures Airbnb renting should be no different.  Sally may even have come prepared with evidence to plant at your home, secreting away some bugs in a ziploc bag in her luggage, which she will pull out later as “proof” that your home is infested.

The one type of Sally you really need to watch out for, is the one whose scam is to squat.  One of the worst possible things to happen to an Airbnb host or any property owner, is to have a renter who wont’ leave and won’t pay.  Laws heavily favor tenants in some areas. , and in such places, tenant scams abound.  There are several stories of Airbnb squatters —    The ones in Watsonville, and another one in San Diego , another in San Francisco and then one in Palm Springs and then there was a squatting nanny in California as well.  (Note that all of these squatters were in California!, and that several of them had previous evictions on their records — hosts can if they want do a superior court case search in guest’s county of last residence, under that guest’s name, to find any lawsuits filed by or against that individual)

So, the various scams that Sally the Scammer may pull, could vary from trying to get a partial refund, to demanding a full refund for her entire stay, to attempting to squat and refuse to leave.  Those renting a unit for over 30 days need to beware of laws which make it easier for such renters to squat, since stays of 30 days or more give them “tenants’ rights” , whereby if they refuse to pay or leave,  you will then have to go to court to get them out.  Since court processes move slowly, this can take quite a long time in some cases, particularly if the renter fights the eviction lawsuit.  In this case it took the property owner 274 days to remove a renter who actually never paid rent from day one — much like the horror story about tenants Pacific Heights,  the film with the tagline,

“It seemed like the perfect house. He seemed like the perfect tenant. Until they asked him to leave.”

Moral of the story: beware of scammers.  It may be hard to recognize Sally when she first contacts you to stay at your place, but look for someone who in some way doesn’t appear entirely genuine or open hearted. Maybe her self-description just seems to have some holes in it.  In any case, once you accept her and she arrives, it won’t take long to find out what kind of person you have in your house.  Please don’t fall for her fiction, and dont’ cave in to her demands for refunds, and if possible, give Sally a swift kick in the heinie as soon as possible, and boot her out of your home and far from you.

just say noto Sally the Scammer

Sixteenth Type:  “Destructo-Dave”

Our last type of guest to beware of, is the guest who can be most costly.   For you may not have a problem with them during their stay — they may be quiet, they may be polite– but  they will break, damage or stain one or more things during their time at your house.  And the damages may be small, (as with Destructo-Dave’s habit of dropping dishes) , or they may be quite expensive.  For instance, when Destructo-Darlene enters the house, she forgets to remove her shoes — and whereas with some this may only result in a bit of dirt being tracked in, Darlene has stiletto heels and with each firm step on your shiny, newly refinished hardwood floor, she drills a hole into the floor.  So that the traces of Darlene’s route through the house can be mapped by the serial gouges.  Darlene has only been in your home one day, but she’s already tracked in several thousand dollars of damages to the floors.  

What about that TV in the corner, why is it turned the other direction, not how you left it? That’s because Dave dropped it and cracked the screen, and turned it, hoping to hide the damage so you wouldn’t see it.

How nice of Darlene to offer to strip the bed and load the laundry into the washer before she left, you thought.  And you refunded her security deposit pronto as she was so polite, before you realized that the reason she loaded the sheets, comforter and all into the washer before she left, was to hide the damage she did to them…the coffee stains, from when she ignored the rules not to eat or drink on the bed and spilled her Starbucks there…

Destructo Dave is a strong man, and doesn’t know his own strength, so when he pulled on the cord for the curtain, he not only yanked the curtain off  the curtain rod but also yanked the curtain rod out of the wall, leaving a bent rod and sheetrock powder spilling out onto the floor.

The kitchen looks okay on first glance…no broken dishes there…but then you notice that there is only one wine glass on the shelf instead of your set of eight…and it dawns upon you that Dave and Darlene broke the other 7 glasses and just threw them away.   And what’s this? You pull out the drawer of utensils and find that you’re down to one spoon and two forks, whereas when Dave and Darlene arrived there was a full set of 10 of everything.  How can a guest break utensils? You go sifting through the garbage can and find the remaining forks and spoons are all in the trash.  Together with one cracked plate.   They are smeared with peanut butter or grease, jam or butter…but they are not broken, why were they thrown out?  Because Dave and Darlene dont’ like to wash up after themselves.

Why is the bedspread turned inside out? It’s because Darlene left her hair curler on it, burning two parallel black lines into the irreplaceable antique white quilted bedspread.

Why was the extra quilt from the bedroom left folded neatly over the couch arm? Because hidden underneath it are burn holes in the couch — you have a strict “no smoking” policy on your property but Destructos dont’ mind such peevish things and Dave and Darlene both smoked cigarettes on the couch, and their embers dropped around and burned the furniture.  Oh, and as you look down, you note– also the carpet.

Destructo Dave and Darlene are not only serial destroyers, but they apparently have long practice with how to try to hide the damage they do.  So it’s not until 2 months after they have left that you find the broken CD player, the cracked window and a few other things you correlate to their rampage.

You wonder, as you scour your property for other signs of damage disguised…how Dave and Darlene do at their own home…are they lords of a domain of broken furniture, cracked windows, burned quilts and singed carpets? Or has their place long ago been reduced to a pile of rubble?

Moral of the story:  Beware the Destructo-Duo!

Seventeenth type: “Doan Speak Much English”

Our 17th type of guest you would do well to avoid, is the guest from another nation who has mastered the game of being smart and skillful in the local language when it benefits them, and feigning ignorance of local customs, laws, house rules, or the local language when that benefits them.

Doan-Speak-Much-Daria arrives at your house smiling pleasantly, ready to stay for a couple weeks while she completes a short course for her Master’s Level program in  Business Management.  She is traveling with her Mother and Brother.  Everyone is polite and smiling — it appears all is going well.

You return a couple days later to drop off an extra blanket as Daria requested, and when you look inside the house you are disturbed to see that there are 3 extra people in the apartment, and cigarette butts in your crockery on the end table.  You tell Daria that she cannot have extra guests.  “What mean?” she asks.   You’re startled by her naifish prattle, since she communicated in excellent English in her initial inquiry.

You lift up your ceramic bowl, now containing cigarette butts, and frown, “Smoking is not allowed in the house.”  Daria gives you a blank look and says, “Sorry, not understand.”    You are wondering how on earth Daria manages to get through her workshop in Business Management when she seems capable of only these simple responses in broken English.  Did she feign familiarity with the regional language when inquiring, and get help in her initial email communications from a friend? 

Just then, you hear one of Daria’s unregistered guests in the other room, talking to someone else in perfect English.  You then hear one of them call out to Daria in English, and wait for her to respond saying, “What mean?” but she does not.

You discover that Daria speaks English flawlessly, when she wants to, and that she pretends to not understand a thing in English, when that is convenient for her.

And you then require Daria’s extra guests to pack up and leave, and submit a bill to Daria for $250 in extra cleaning fees due to her smoking in a non-smoking unit.

Being an Airbnb host is often a funny thing. It is a very unique situation — a unique kind of business. Having people come and stay with you in your own home — it’s a very personal, even intimate kind of business. You can end up making good friends with people you may never otherwise have met. You can learn much more about people than you ever would have learned or known, had you not had a chance to learn their kitchen cleaning or non-cleaning habits. You can learn their foibles and idiosyncrasies, as they may learn yours, and you can share their joy and delight and see your own world with fresh eyes when someone from the other side of the world tells you how they are experiencing your neighborhood.

There is another kind of uniqueness to being an Airbnb host, and that is, that we weren’t something that cities thought of.
Cities’ lack of thought about us, seems to be a relatively new forgetfulness, since 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and certainly 500 years ago, many or most people who traveled, stayed in private homes when they traveled. This wasn’t seen as odd. There were no neighbors back then out picketing and complaining and writing to their city council, about how those Airbnb medieval voyagers parked their horse-drawn carriage in front of my home, or smoked a pipe in my cornfield.
Seems we got something right then that we have now forgotten. Somewhere along the way, something called “ZONING” happened, and new things called inns and hotels started taking the traveler business away from the private homes, and cities started cementing this compartmentalization of traveler into increasingly box-like rooms in hotels, via their “zoning.”

Many cities developed regulations about where “hotels” could be located, which kept them in “Commerical ” districts. Airbnb didn’t exist then, and neither did the “sharing economy”, so these regulations didn’t actually address having guests in a private home. They dealt with hotels.

So now, along comes Airbnb, and the rise of home sharing, and the city sees a lot of people starting to have travelers at their home again — just like the good old days! But the city doesn’t remember those good old days. It only sees through a narrow set of regulations, that dont’ even directly address this phenomenon. THe regulations are for “hotels.” Many hosts would argue, and argue coherently, that we are not “hotels.” Neither are the Hyatt Regency or the Flamingo Inn someone’s private home that they have opened up to guests. In fact, though some cities (and some disgruntled neighbors within these cities) insist that we are “commerical operations” if we have guests, a Colorado Court has recently affirmed that having guests in one’s home, is a RESIDENTIAL use of one’s home, and is NOT a commerical use of the home. (See this thread about that — globalhosting.freeforums.net/thread/819/colorado-short-term-rentals-commercial )

So we often fall in between the cracks, and cities actually have no existing laws to address home sharing. Or, the laws that exist, are challenged by many to be backward, and to represent a stage of culture that may be on its way out.

Thus, many cities have yet to take up the issue of home sharing and create regulations that are in step with modern times and the reality that home sharing is not going away. Yet in many municipalities, there may be forces that are arrayed against home sharing, which political pressure city leaders may feel obligated to address.

Which brings me back to the title of this thread. How one person creates short term rental regulations for a whole city. Who is that person, you ask? Well, if you are very fortunate, that person is you, or another Airbnb host. Ideally it is the first host in the city who starts working with the city and/or with other hosts to get the ball rolling to develop favorable regulations. But , it may also turn out, and this has happened in some cities, that it is NOT the host who is the one to create short term rental regs for that city — instead it is that hosts’ neighbor.

You see, that host had a guest. Or make that, several guests. Actually it was supposed to be 4 guests, staying at a 3 bedroom home, with a huge yard, and an ocean view, located in an exclusive, upscale neighborhood of a desirable city…but it turned out to be 75 guests, staying at, partying in, boozing it up in, blasting loud music all over, and vomiting in the backyard next to the neighbors’ fence, in that host’s home. Not to mention the police cars that arrived later on and drew still more attention to the whole affair. And then, the person who the city council heard from, and heard from again, and again, and again, in numerous letters and several council meetings in sequence, for several months, was not the host, but that hosts’ neighbor.

You get my point, I hope. It has been made clear in many cities, that the city leaders are far more receptive to one neighbor’s complaint about one hosts’ bad guests, than they are to 400 hosts whose neighbors never complained about their guests. That one party incident may go a long, LONG way towards creating short term rental regulations in that city. Now if the city leaders are reasonable people who are already openminded and aware of the reality that “the sharing economy is here to stay”, this problem may not arise. But if city leaders are less open, and want any excuse to ban short term rentals in their city or town, it is quite possible that such city leaders will seize on that disgruntled neighbor’s lament, the way that a child’s fist clamps down around some delicious candy it received on a special day. That one neighbor’s complaint can go a long way. Particularly if that neighbor starts rallying other neighbors behind him or her. So now it’s not just one complaint –it’s 5. Still, when it’s a score of 5 vs 400 , in a city with city councilmembers tilted to the wrong direction, the 5 will win. And then quite possibly, the city will say no, no Airbnb in our town.

In fact, quite recently, this exact situation came to pass.  In the town of Danville, California (a town with only 15-20 Airbnb hosts), one single instance of a neighborhood feud caused the neighbors of an Airbnb host to get so upset at her, that they collectively worked together, and pushed the town to ban short term rentals.  The host’s guests in this case actually did not cause any problems, other than that very trivial issue of perhaps parking in front of someone else’s home, but the host had poor interpersonal skills, and intentionally did many things to rile her neighbors and upset them.  And so now no one in her entire town of 16,000 can do short term rentals.  See more about that situation here: Danville Bans Short Term rentals .

So the moral of the story is — be careful in how you host. Do good screening for guests, have good house rules in place that you can effectively enforce, be in control of what happens at your property, be attentive to your neighbors’ needs, make sure the neighbors have your contact info. And dont let your angry neighbor be the one who creates short term rental regulations for your whole city!!

 

I have a pet peeve – actually I have several of them but let’s just take one at a time.  My pet peeve as relates to many of those who sign up to do Airbnb hosting, is that they approach starting their own small business, as though they were somebody’s baby.  Airbnb’s baby.  Maybe they watched This dreamy Airbnb video too many times.  Or maybe they have never run a small business.  Maybe they had no idea they were opening a small business, but thought they were clicking a button to get Santa Claus to send perfect guests automatically to their home, delivering them on a sleigh,  one after another, all wrapped up nice and pretty with a red bow on top.

That isn’t how being a host on Airbnb works.  I think Airbnb actually doesn’t help as much as it could, to clarify that those who sign up as hosts are starting a small business.   So, some Airbnb Babies jump into opening up a small business, with little understanding of market forces.  We see many of these new hosts coming into the host community, proudly telling other hosts that they have now opened up their listing and hung their shingle up in Nowheresville, AnyCountry, 60 miles from the nearest city, 10 miles down an unmarked dirt road, and are complaining that they haven’t had any inquiries.  “Why am I not getting any guests?!?!”  They fail to understand that listing a place on Airbnb doesn’t magically make it into a tourist destination.  There has to be a reason why people want to come to your area, because it’s unlikely that the host’s home itself is the vacation destination — unless you happen to have a home with a national park in your backyard, or you own a hunting ranch, or a private zoo, or you offer kayak or float trips on your local river,  or something else very special that is going to make guests want to come to your area just to visit you.  So as you contemplate becoming a host, it pays to do some research into the demand for short term rentals in your area.

Many find the process of becoming a host and getting their first guest, to be so easy and straightforward, that they are led to believe that they don’t need to be careful who they accept as a guest in their home, or have good house rules that help ensure appropriate guest behavior, and delineate necessary boundaries.

I have noticed that a lot of relatively new hosts, come to the host community, with questions, complaints or stories, which indicate that they did not adequately understand all the implications of starting a small business as an Airbnb host or short term rental operator. To begin with, many hosts don’t understand that it is they, rather than Airbnb, who need to do the screening for people who will be staying in their home.  Hosts have one, then two, then 6 or 8 good experiences with guests, and get lulled into the illusion that Airbnb is somehow “vetting” all their guests for them.  They have heard that there is a thing called Verified ID, they have heard that there are requirements for people to sign up on Airbnb, and so they figure, quite irrationally, that if a guest has verified ID, this must be a fine person, right?

No, actually,  not quite so.   Stop for a moment and think how Verified ID, which basically guarantees that someone’s name is what they say it is, or that their phone number is really their phone number, is going to ensure that your guest doesn’t leave the sink full of dirty dishes, or talk back and argue with you, or go into your bedroom and look through your private things while you are gone.  Verified ID does nothing to prevent any of that.  Verified ID can help to prevent serious crimes, because serious criminals dont’ tend to want to give you their name in advance (but some know how to provide “fake” Verified ID) but it won’t ensure that your guest doesn’t smoke in your non-smoking unit, doesn’t get stains all over your furniture or carpets, or doesn’t have a party in your house where you have house rules that clearly prohibit parties.

So what would-be hosts need to learn, is that when you sign up to be an AIrbnb host, you are actually in the property rental business, and hence, you need to learn the skills of managing rental property, such as how to screen potential guests.  Screening guests is not simple, because it requires imagination.  The less developed your capacity for imagination, the more trouble you will have in imagining what might possibly go wrong, and hence, the less likely you will be able to set up house rules, policies and procedures, questions and other measures by which to try to reduce the likelihood of having problems.  So, give your imaginal skills some practice, and sit down and start thinking of how you want things to go right, and what might go wrong, and how to draw lines to separate these two outcomes, one from the other.  And then, depend on your own skills to get good guests, dont’ depend on getting sent guests in packages from Airbnb, all neat and pretty and tied up with a bow on top.  

There’s another aspect of the Airbnb Baby.  This is the Baby we see who doesn’t screen their guests, doesn’t have adequate house rules, doesn’t realize that renting out a beautiful home to 8 young guys who are in town for spring break might not be the best idea…and who comes out to the host community and cries when they have a bad experience with a guest, who damages their property.  This Baby host then doesn’t realize that they have to document the damage and produce evidence, assuming quite irrationally that simply because they phone up Airbnb and say something happened, their word will be considered gold and the guest’s will be mud.  They may fail to get the required evidence, or have unrealistic expectations of reimbursement.  They then end up whining , crying and screaming, because they didn’t get compensated by Airbnb for all of their damage.

Hosts need to realize that there are two sides to every story, and if any issue gets taken to Airbnb for mediation, this is somewhat like a landlord tenant dispute being taken to small claims court.  A judge in court can’t start out being partial to either side — the point is that the judge is supposed to look at the evidence presented, and if you don’t have a good case, if you don’t have good evidence, you can lose, even if you are entirely in the right.  Because it is quite possible to lose in court when you are in the right,  is one reason why it is best to stay out of court — meaning, run your business in such a way, that you are unlikely to end up with guests doing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damage, which you then have to approach Airbnb to try to get reimbursed for.

So, I’m advising — dont’ be an Airbnb Baby.  Airbnb isn’t your Daddy or Mommy, or Santa Claus.  Dont’ expect that you can just click buttons on the computer and get sent great guests every time and not have to have the skillset to run a small business.  Be in control of what is happening at your own property.   I think hosting is ideally for those who actually live at the property where they are having guests.  It is more difficult when you aren’t there to see what is going on.

If you are far away from the place where you have guests, you really need someone close by who can pay attention to what is going on there, and intervene quickly if needed — like a property manager, friend or neighbor.  I have been surprised by the number of stories of hosts who come to clean up after the guests depart, and arrive to a trashed home. They lament and whine that they had no idea about what was happening.  Their neighbors will later be interviewed by the local news station, and say that they saw 50 people arrive to that house the day before, or 3 days before, and were bothered by people partying there all night, and I have to wonder — while the host’s neighbors were being bothered by noise and partiers, where was this Airbnb Baby?  Did this Baby think someone else would magically run their property and control it for them?  Why was this Airbnb Baby 50 or 100, or even 1000 miles away, with no property manger or not even a neighbor in communication with them?  Why are their relationships with their neighbors so undeveloped?    Why didn’t their neighbors have their phone number, to call and notify them of problems they witnessed?

Given the number of people who are hostile to Airbnb, who like to scapegoat Airbnb, who think that Airbnb rentals in neighborhoods invariably will bring problems, it does not take many out of control parties at an Airbnb, or trashed Airbnb homes, to have a huge effect on the regulatory landscape of short term rentals in any given area.  Consequently, it is better for all of us if Airbnb Babies grow up and start developing some skills in regards to hosting, so that they dont’ ruin other’s opportunities to do hosting in their region, and so that they dont’ come and cry to us over spilled milk.