Do you get along with your landlord? Have you gotten along with past landlords? Have you ever heard of a landlord giving someone a hard time about a DSL connection? Have you ever had a 20-page lease like mine?

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Answers

I haven't had too much trouble with landlords. Even in Chicago, where I dealt with K and G, they weren't so bad for me. I once lived above a bar and that was pretty good, because my landlord was the bartender and I always knew where to find him. I also once had a shop teacher as a landlord, and he fixed everything and hung up all my drapery rods and stuff for short me. I really dug him. The only landlords I didn't like were in the college town of Ann Arbor Michigan, where everyone goes around expecting to get ripped off by their landlords. I really hated that. I have new landlords now because I'm moving and I'm totally thrilled with them. They live upstairs, but are ultra-cool and lefty and have flowers planted all over the house and are going to tune the piano in the apartment for me. I have never had a lease that forbade candles, but I got lucky here in NYC. I am sure there is worse. Good luck Jen. I'm sure he won't mind about the DSL because he can then use it as a selling point.

Though there was a scary story in NYC about landlords not allowing the cable to be upgraded for cable modems because they wanted to get some money on top of it....

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Never had a 20-page lease, but I've seen them. I've always had problems getting landlords to fix things they should be fixing, but never had any that were truly anal-retentive. But, I came to talk about the DSL line :) - when I called for installion on our DSL line, the first thing they informed me of was the fact that they would have to contact our landlord for permission to install the line. Apparently this is a common theme. Our landlord didn't have a problem with it, but perhaps you might want to discuss it with yours (and maybe have your installer explain the insignificance of the added line to the landlord) since they apparently do have the right to revoke the use of the line later on if their 'needs' change. :(

cheers, Forrest

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Did I mention that my lease specifies that I must dispose of all my garbage "on a daily basis"? Also, I'm not supposed to dispose of batteries in the building trash cans, and I'm supposed to defrost my refrigerator and clean my stove monthly. And these are just a few of the highlights...

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I think you're going to get lots of geeks talking about their DSL lines here. Since I got mine through US West, the DSL service is piggybacked on the regular phone line so nothing really had to be done to my end of the phone line other than plug the modem into the phone line and put filters on all of the phones. The phone company won't share a phone line with a competitor so they're making you put in another phone line. I'd be very surprised if your lease prohibited you from having a second phone line installed but if it does, it's somewhere in that 20 page document.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

My lease doesn't prohibit a second phone line being installed, but it does state that I have to get written permission before doing so. I dropped a note in his mailbox a couple of days ago, but I'm still waiting for the go-ahead, and I think that given his control-freak tendencies, there's a chance he might say no.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Would he give you the boot if you blew him off? That would suck...I've heard about real estate prices in San Fransisco...would you ever consider moving, just out of curiosity? What is there to love about San Fransisco?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Actually, Jen - you're not supposed to dispose of batteries in trash cans period. It's very, very bad. Especially Ni-Cd batteries. You're supposed to recycle them.

Some info here.

I nformation about your estuary

San Francisco recycling info

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I'm really bad about recycling, but I honestly don't think that alkaline batteries are that terrible for the environment--as far as I know, the only really bad thing in them is an infinitesimal amount of mercury. I've never used nickel-cadmium ones. I figure that not having a car more than makes up for my recycling negligence.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I had my worst landlord about my second or third year of college. I lived in an historic neighborhood and the house was owned by an old woman with alzheimers. She would literally call every few days, asking for tenants who hadn't lived there in 20 years, and yell at us about not getting the rent to her on time, or not paying enough. Often we were accused of being guilty of long ago indiscretions. You never knew from day to day what was going to happen. Fortunately her son knew the situation and we could appeal to him for help. Beci

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

My evil landlord, The Gus kicked me out of my cage.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

My worst landlord was when I very briefly lived in an apartment in South Central Los Angeles while attending USC. The landlord swore up and down that he only rented to USC students. The three times I was there, this seemed to be the case, but then he rented the empty apartment next door to me to a drug dealer.

After the drug dealer shot up his apartment, I broke my lease, moved into my sorority house, and fought him over my deposit for nine months. I had documented everything, including getting my hands on a copy of the police report from that night.

I finally took to calling him twice every single day for six weeks, and leaving notes on his car at his office in Century City. After the second note, he caved. I guess I just wore him down. Either that, or he was worried about what I'd do to his car.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I understand all the things that you are saying,but my landlord is much worst. She goes through the parking lot at night with a flashlight looking at people's tags on their cars. She is trying to see if other people are living with us. When a person has visitors she will run behind them and asking them who they are. She does not want women to have their boyfriends over, but she has her's living in an apartment and sneaks over their every night. What do you think about that?

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2002