April 22, 2003
I got a letter a little while ago from my landlord asking if I wanted to renew my lease. Now, let's see here...
· I have a front window that doesn't open, thereby making the air in the apartment rather stagnant during the summer.
· I have a side window that does open (thankfully) but has broken glass covered in duct tape.
· I have a carpet that smelled like cat piss for more than a month before it was dealt with.
· The leaky bathtub that they supposedly fixed is leaking again.
· I still don't have a doorbell, even though I told them it was broken in October.
· I fixed the shelf over the fireplace myself, rather than wait for them to take care of it.
· The house leaks heat like a mofo (to the tune of a $190 gas bill in January).
Now I'll grant you that I knew going in this was going to be a less-than-wonderful apartment. At the time I was looking for cheap, not nice. But after all this, they want to raise my rent by $10 a month.
Now ten bucks isn't all that big a deal, even though it adds up to $120 over the course of a lease. But how, after all that, can they even come close to justifying raising the rent?! Leaving it the same, fine, but raising it? Oh, hell no.
So I'm going to wander around Shadyside, Bloomfield and Friendship for the next several weekends, looking for rental phone numbers. I need the exercise anyway.
