More Tenant Follies

I'm sitting here, sipping water, hopped up (or would that be down?) on Nyquil, wrapped in blankets, with a box full of tissues and a nose full of snot. It's about 40 degrees in my apartment and that's after bleeding all the radiators.

But though my landlady bugs the hell out of me, she's not even on the same planet as these poor folks landlady. I suspect it's only because my building isn't as old as Gloria Trembicky's. Give her time. Like Gloria, Millie, my landlady, prefers to hire near-retards to do any repairs. I can't even count how many times I've had my radiator "fixed."

After my refrigerator died, she told me she'd have a new one sent right over. "New" being a relative term. It was "new" to my apartment, but had been on this earth since the early eighties. To call it refurbished would be overstating the repair work done on the thing. The used-refrigerator men had simply smeared vaseline all around the rubber seal to get it to stick shut. Once the vaseline dried up or soaked in or went whereever it is old Vaseline disappears to, the door never quite shut again and so I got used to eating my food quickly and lukewarmly. Because I like my snacks chilled, I eventually  sucked it up and bought my own Vaseline-free model.

Millie also likes to hint about her "connections." She alludes to her mysterious mafia relations almost as often as she reminds us (the tenants) that Joy Behar (of The View fame) is her cousin.

Her make-believe cousins are probably her biggest source of lies. Before I moved in, she wasn't sure if I should get the apartment or if her "cousin" in medical school should. I don't know if she was hinting for a bribe or what, but I wound up with the apartment. Then, after she tried to illegally double our rents, she told us that our building wasn't stabilized because different cousins had lived in each apartment at one time. Not only was this untrue, but that doesn't destabilize a building! DHCR agreed with us and her conniving dishonesty came back to take a nice big chunk outta her butt.

Recently she's started answering every complaint about the building (like no fucking heat!) by threatening to sell it to someone who'll kick us all out and knock it down. Depending on my mood I'll either walk away immediately or let her ramble for a while, until she starts in on "the Jews" (said in whispered tone combined with knowing nod). I know enough to be long gone before she moves on to "the Blacks." Crazy bitch.

Comments

[Becky Summers]

Re:new database for bad landlords

As I have told other people who are having problems with BAD LANDLORDS, there is a place called usapublicrecord.com that has a BAD LANDLORD page where you can search a nationwide database that is focused on bad landlords. While they may take a while to get back to you, ( 7 weeks for me ) the information they sent me was a key factor in housing authorities taking action against a bad landlord my mom ran into. Its supposidly run by employees who are volunteering their own time and it is free . The landlord my mom ran into was a real bad one who had victimized many people. It was in the city newspaper. When you go to the address look for the Bad Landlords Page in the nav bar. Like I said, usapublicrecord.com has a database or has access to a database filled with nightmare complaints. Apparently this problem with bad landlords is widespread. If you need more information on a bad landlord for when you go to the authorities, information thats documented and stuff, go there.

Becky Summers

[susan staples]

Over 41 students at Yale New Haven College nearly met the fate of being burned to death in a bad fire. That all happened in April of 2001.

A lot of people were trying to run from the building in panic, some fell in the stairwell and were actually badly injured because they were stampeded by other students, some still half asleep.

Several students were stuck, stranded out on the back fire escape attached to the rear of the building. There was no ladder connecting the second story of the huge stone building to the ground like there should have been. Many were screaming, the hallways and rooms filled with dense smoke that blinded you.

The story of the fire is covered by The Yale Daily News.com which currently is-
www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=15588
and also covered in-
http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0104&L=ohiofire&T=0&F=&S=&P=4377
which is Miami University Fire Prevention of some kind.

The fire almost killed a few of us, some were students, some were only visiting. There were over 55 firefighters that came, the fire marshals name was Joe Cappucci. There were many complaints about Odis Coleman, the guy that owned the building. In my travels on the web, I am seeing the same group that was present in the building starting to come forward and give their account of the fire. It was a bad one. There was exposed wiring on all the floors that you could see in plain sight and the building in general was truly a death trap, a real disaster waiting to happen. That the owner, Odis Coleman was called many times, that he was responsible for the building and others lives, no one in authority cared in the least. As for Odis Coleman, I really don’t see how he was really able to avoid prosecution, he should have gotten in a lot of trouble because of the condition of the building. Hard to believe the death traps that landlords leave behind for others to live in.

Having a bad landlord database is something that is badly needed. A bad landlord database or record of some kind would save peoples lives.

The name of the building that caught fire was the Cambridge Oxford Apartments on High Street, New Haven Connecticut. It was housing for Yale New Haven students. Odis Coleman and the Odis Coleman type landlords that exist in the United States are dangerous persons and recklessly endanger many. A bad landlord database should be available for the public safety. There were some in that building and in that fire that were permanently injured, something very sad to see.

Susan Staples

Burn Specialist, Hartford Connecticut