RANT ON: At our wit's end with the property maintainer

If you all want background, I'll give it later, but I NEED to get this out of my system. Oh yeah, NSFW language ahoy!

RANT ON:

What Grinds My Gears: Scrap metal thieves. Stealing scrap from the dumpster that's holding all of the E36 M3 from our demolished porch IN BROAD BERKELEYING DAYLIGHT, then telling us it's somehow not illegal to take it out of OUR property because it's in the dumpster? Berkeley you and the horse you rode in on. Be thankful for the next part...

What Also Grinds My Gears: Police who never show up or even call for a follow-up after we called them to report the incident. The jerkoff was casing the neighborhood for the past two days AND I caught him dumpster diving and making a scene at another neighbor's house this same morning he dived at our house. Shouldn't you at least have sent a cruiser to keep tabs on him? Next time, screw tying to not be a bother and calling the non-emergency line. If that jackass or anyone else steps foot on the property to go dumpster-diving again, it's 911.

What Will REALLY Grind My Gears: Having to listen to the psychopathic asshat that is our landlord's son/property maintainer scream at us for letting a scrap thief get away with an old roof antenna and old flashing, even though HE left the damn dumpster full of junk for weeks and in plain view of the main road. Thank FSM the thief only took old scrap and not the new building material for the porch, which was also left in pain sight. But nooooo, it's my family's fault for not emptying it ourselves and for leaving the antenna in plain sight where he left it, just like it's our fault the porch is crumbling even though we've warned the landlord about it multiple times for YEARS and nothing was done until this winter. The exterior was NOT our responsibility as per the rental agreement and the law, and it took the town coming down on us to finally get some traction. We've maintained the interior, as per our part of the agreement (which the son HATES because it doesn't look like it did 20 years ago when he was a kid and living there. Sorry, but you never showed up to fix ANYTHING until the town ordered your dad to have the porch fixed, and now you berkeleying care? EABOD and DIAF). Do your part: shut the berkeley up and stop acting like a petulant, threatening manchild when you are working, stop having loud-as-hell picnics with YOUR family in our front yard during the weekends you have virtually stolen from MY family, stop testing keys in our locks, and FIX THE DAMN PORCH! NOTHING else, not the roof, not the windows, not the electricals, not until we leave!

We are moving soon, and I keep trying to tell myself that we'll be moving soon to keep my heart rate down, but in between today's incident and the rampant douchebaggery of the landlord's son, I'm about to lose my E36 M3. I don't know how much more my poor parents can take. I know the landlord's kid scared my sisters back to Vermont because of him trying keys (unsuccessfully, thank FSM) in the locks.

RANT OFF

And you wonder why owning is the American Dream.

Well I hate to tell you this but for the most part any thing in a unlocked trash can or dumpster is free game. I have picked scrap metal out of dumpster before with the police watching me. As long you are not littering (making a mess) or trespassing I do not think there is much the police can do about this.

I seem to remember a case going to the Supreme Court many years ago about people going through trash cans and such. The court said there was no issue.

As for all the other stuff going on that suck. Hope you find a better place to live.

Paul B

as long as that trash is on the curb, its not considered private anymore.

The problem was that the scrap was NOT on the curb. The dumpster is IN our backyard. There were some bushes between the road and the backyard but they were cut down so the dumpster could be put in place. Unfortunately, that means that eyesore is very visible from the street.

We don't care about the old antenna aside from the flak we are going to get from our idiot property maintainer. We don't like shiny happy people who have been told multiple times to stay off the property brazenly walking onto our backyard.

That would be trespassing though, no? Especially after you've warned them a couple o' times?

That's trespassing I don't care who you are. If it's in the BACKYARD, yeah strangers don't belong there.

In Illinois, the only people that can legally come onto your property without permission is the Utility companies and Cable if the easement can only be accessed from your property for where they need to work.

sounds like the problems I have here. Not the trespassing.. but the maintainer not doing his job. In the 5 years I have been here.. the only thing the landlord has done is replace some fencing that was rotted and blew down in a storm (I think the township got on his case) and cut the grass.

When I complained about a roof leak.. I was told that it was a new roof (I patched it myself) Same with the windows.. I caulked them myself.

The place is falling down around my ears and I have not had a lease in two years.. and with no security deposit.. I can walk as soon as I find a new place.

I'm having the same issues, been here for 4 years. The upstairs unit had a toilet that leaked and it came through our front bathroom ceiling. That was two years ago. I showed them the mold that had started to grow a year ago. Yeah, it's still there.

I also found out that the builder that built our condo didn't do a very good job. Half of our windows leak water through the frames, the front roof over our foyer leaks. You can hear my neighbor upstairs like she lives on the same floor as us.

Landlords suck.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

If you have mold in a rental, it is grounds to not pay rent until it is fixed. You can call the city and they will issue a violation for it. I work in property preservation and see it all the time.

Donebrokeit wrote: Well I hate to tell you this but for the most part any thing in a unlocked trash can or dumpster is free game. I have picked scrap metal out of dumpster before with the police watching me. As long you are not littering (making a mess) or trespassing I do not think there is much the police can do about this. Paul B

BULL36 M3!

It's on PRIVATE PROPERTY, not your property.

Perhaps the dumpster is a storage facility. Until the trash moves to the curb, it's still owned by someone.

I hate thieves, dishonest scrappers too.

Shawn

Anything in my backyard may be where I take target practice.

It's been an up and down day, what with the scrap thief in the morning and the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup at night.

Basically, my family and I have lived in the same house for the past 20 years. Rent was cheap and the landlord and landlady are nice people, and according to the original rental agreement and the law, we were only responsible for interior and lawn maintenance. Tree and exterior maintenance was supposed to be the landlord's responsibility. My parents would report any exterior damage to the landlord, but he never did much of anything, not even dropping by to have a look at the property to see if we were keeping up. While my family and I can handle most interior jobs, the porch began to deteriorate over the past 3 years. We've called the landlord and he didn't do anything until this past winter, when the town's health inspector sent him a letter ordering him to fix the crumbling porch.

This is where his son comes in.

The landlord's son was named the property maintainer because he has done some contracting work but they cannot afford an actual contractor. He is 32 going on 12. He is loud, stupid, infantile, obnoxious, hostile, and swears up a storm over the slightest thing. His parents have promised him the property once my family moves out, and he immediately started to yell at us for not maintaining the exterior, with our own money, despite the fact that a) the exterior is his dad's responsibility, not ours, b) he had not been anywhere near the house since we moved in, and c) was never sent by his parents to fix or even look at anything until they got the letter from the town. The idiot has even chewed us out for replacing the disgusting, decades-old horsehair rug he remembered so fondly from his childhood 20 years ago.

The property maintainer can only work weekends, and so has pretty much obliterated any chance of us leaving the house empty. He has tried keys unsuccessfully in all of the exterior door locks, made catcalls at my sister once while she was in her room, and has sworn both at us and at our neighbors for parking wherever he wants to park. He told me to donate both of my RX-7s to charity or scrap them because they were taking up driveway space he wanted for materiel storage. I've stored the inop turbo RX-7 (at great expense) because he had a point, but I've kept the non-turbo on the property because it runs and drives just fine. He even sent us a bill once for him clearing snow off the roofs and ripping out perfectly good gutters that were simply dammed up by ice- which is very illegal and constitutes fraud. Needless to say, that letter is in our lawyer's hands and we have not paid it.

His parents don't get that he's a complete shiny happy person and think we are complaining about the work. No, we understand that the work must be done. But he could do it without having the radio blasting at full volume from 7am-8pm on Saturday and Sunday and swearing and carrying on like a psycho all day long, embarrassing the hell out of us. Not to mention he needs to stick to the porch, even though he has decided to work on the roof instead, which wakes us all up earlier than we're used to. Or, he could have a picnic with his family on Memorial Day at a park instead of on OUR FRONT LAWN, which we can't even use or see because we keep the shades down so we don't have to look at his ugly mug or the festering dumpster. We've been more than accommodating, even letting him work on Sundays when, by law, work is not allowed. Our lawyer is aware of everything but has advised us against calling the police unless the landlord's son tries to step foot in the house, because it will destabilize everything while we're in the middle of closing on a new house. And needless to say, the son is not allowed to step foot in our house for any reason until we have left for good.

I'm sorry for the walls o' text but I can't keep this E36 M3 bottled up anymore. I've lost valuable time and money I could have used doing something else like racing, working on my cars, or catching up on much-needed sleep (I work 2nd shift) because that jerk keeps lording himself over our lives.

you need to own your own home, it's worth the piece of mind

Datsun1500 wrote:

fasted58 wrote: you need to own your own home, it's worth the piece of mind

After 20 years of rent, he could have. I just can not imagine 20 years of rent, then this hassle...

After 20 years of rent they did buy it. For the shiny happy person son.

RexSeven wrote: It's been an up and down day, what with the scrap thief in the morning and the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup at night.

I just thought I'd point this out (and can now understand why your day is going so badly), sounds to me like it was a down and down day

HiTempguy wrote:

RexSeven wrote: It's been an up and down day, what with the scrap thief in the morning and the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup at night.

I just thought I'd point this out (and can now understand why your day is going so badly), sounds to me like it was a down and down day

Check my location, chief.

RexSeven wrote: Check my location, chief.

Oh I know, just sayin', down and down day