Moving

"Are you moving?" she asked as I looked up in panic, doe-eyed and ready to bolt.

I had seen her on the street and ducked back into the house, hoping to avoid a conversation, hoping to avoid this conversation, but she followed, knocking on the door.

"Are you moving?" she asked as I knew she would.

The realtor had checked all of my references, my credit history and employment, my former landlords. They had called her.

"Are you moving?" she asked.

It was a conversation I didn't want to have until I had signed the lease because anything could happen.

"If I offer you a cut, will you sign a one-year lease?"

I looked up in disbelief. She had recently raised my rent 27 percent, which might have served as the back-breaking straw, but that wasn't the problem.

I had complained about mold for a year and a half, sending photos before anything was fixed. I lived with a hole in my ceiling for four months while the workman required I keep the bed clear. I had lived with mold three feet from my head, a non-functioning hood vent, dishwasher and air conditioning. No air conditioning. In DC. And my windows were both painted and swollen shut.

It took four years before she replaced the handles on my bathroom sink, the ones that spun ceaselessly and required surgical precision to cut off. With far less grace, my cable was cut by the neighbors as was the water when they forgot to pay. For three months.

The freezer door didn't seal. The inefficient furnace cost something close to $300 in electric bills for a month I was gone. I had to buy a dehumidifier and a ShopVac when the apartment started to flood, which never quite ceased – flooding so many times in five years that I had lost count. Three times from upstairs (two washing machines and a dishwasher) plus a burst pipe and at least 8-10 times from outside.

I still have to pay $150 for the cleaning of my 70-year-old, hand-knotted Turkish rug that was ruined by the last flood, by rot and mildew and the plant-based dyes of 70 years ago that ran.

She didn't offer to make any of the repairs I had requested, that I continued to request, and by cut, I could only assume that she meant something less than the increase she had so recently imposed.

"If I offer you a cut, will you sign a one-year lease?"

"No," I said.

Here's hoping all goes well with lease signing.


Tag: Moving Landlord Renting