In a college town replete with students needing somewhere to crash, the landlords have a slight advantage. If you object to your landlord’s practices, what does he care? Pfft. There’ll always be an endless supply of Johnson County brats, ready with their parents’ credit cards, to sign leases without a second glance. It’s changing slightly now, especially this year, as there is a surplus of apartment units compared to the amount of interested renters. Still, though, the court system and city greatly favor the landlords over the tenants. Meaning that us students, already busy with school and work and drama, are more likely than not to get screwed.
The place I’m living now is pretty crummy. I’ve heard of worse, so I suppose I lucked out as far as apartment horror stories, but it’s no dreamboat. There’s giant stains on the carpet, roaches (which I’m convinced come up the vents from the neighbors downstairs, but I’ll get to them in a minute), and maintenance gets taken care of oh, maybe twice a millenium. Somebody told me that my landlord, David Gage, is a lawyer, but maybe they were actually saying “liar” - Lionel Hutz is more scrupulous than he.
Here’s one example. In our lease, it mentions that if the previous tenants do not get the carpet professionally cleaned, the complex will take care of it. When we moved in, it didn’t even appear as though the carpet had been vacuumed. Giant irremovable stains notwithstanding, the carpet was filthy. I went to the complex office and complained to both the secretary and Gage. Both insisted that it had been cleaned (”bullshit” was the word that came to my mind). Gage went into the back room while the secretary leafed through some papers, looking for evidence of a receipt of professional cleaning. Just as the secretary was pulling out a copy of the receipt, Gage comes back out. With another receipt. Written on a receipt pad that was in his hand, a pen in his other hand. The ink on the “receipt” looked suspiciously bright, as if it had just been written, and it wasn’t signed. Hmm!
In addition to the dishonest landlord, we also have the pleasure of dealing with our white trash/ghetto neighbors downstairs. There are two apartments below ours that, between the two, house: a young mother, probably a year older than me; four grubby street children; two cats; two dogs (recently acquired); various boyfriends of single mother; various friends of the boyfriends of the single mother; an old, large woman; a young large woman; two large kids; random old men; random ghetto gangsta-type people that attempted to steal a license plate off of a friend’s car in the parking lot. Said friend gets the misfortune of living in the third apartment on the lower level. My roommates and I know who lives in his apartment. We haven’t figured out the others yet. Now keep in mind that these are all three-bedroom apartments. I don’t quite understand how all of these people fit in those two apartments. I guess they work like clown cars.
So with the new place that we’re looking at for August, I’ve taken advantage of Legal Services (hey, free lawyer), looked at like fifty billion of the Kansas Statutes, and consulted the advice of friends. I’m dotting every t and crossing every i, and basically being a giant pain in the ass, and if you are a student looking to rent an apartment, you should too. 99% of landlords are there to take your money (according to a super-duper unbiased survey, taken by yours truly). Do NOT just sign a lease after skimming it. DO take advantage of free legal service (if your campus has it). If you don’t, then when shit happens, don’t blame the thieving landlord; blame yourself.