Page 31 - AAGLA-APR 2022

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During 2021, the City’s CD4 staff worked tirelessly to assist renters and worked diligently for stronger protections against landlord harassment and unjust evictions, and empowering tenants in the district with information about their rights. The regulations imposed by the City during the nearly past two years, have created far too many challenges for small housing providers like me. As a result, I have now sold two apartment buildings (one in 2020 and another in 2021) in CD4, a district where Councilmember Raman continues to show her disdain for those of us who have only sacrificed to make investments in rental housing within the communities we live in as she most definitely and clearly has a anti-business, anti-landlord, and anti-property owner bias.
Councilmember Raman is truly a socialist as is evidence by her constant, anti-democratic policies targeting rental property owners. Seemingly, in her anti-capitalistic mind, renters in the City never at fault or responsible. In Councilmember Raman’s mind, renters would never cause damage to their rental unit, and the tenant who never pays their full rent timely and is acting out as a nuisance is never at fault – she blames it on the landlord.
As “stay at home” orders were in place and many business shut offices during the “pandemic,” our apartments became offices, businesses, day care facilities and schools for the City’s renters, and were literally subjected to non-stop overuse resulting in significantly greater maintenance issues and friction among tenants who were not use to encountering other residents on such a frequent basis. At the same time, rental housing providers suffered financially from lack of rent collection, added fees and costly new regulations, and increased insurance, property taxes and repairs, among other things.
The increased wear and tear on our units was tremendous, and as a result, our tenants began demanding repairs at what appeared to be never ending frequency for things such as cracked tiles, torn screens, chipped paint, stained or torn carpeting, broken fixtures, clogged toilets and sinks, and more, all caused by their overuse and requested to make their new work from home- or home-schooling situation more comfortable for themselves.
In the face of these increasing repair demands, some tenants that “called it in” then “denied” access to their units. My onsite manager was refused access by merely to visually inspect a situation my tenant felt needed to be addressed. Another tenant liked to take excessively long hot showers without venting the bathroom which repeatedly caused damage to the bathroom. My repair people always came in these situations and wrote-up the tenant caused need for repair for my insurance company. It is evident that many tenants treat their living space, my apartment units, very irresponsibly - they don’t own it so they just don’t care. They lack any desire to clean, maintain floors, not slam cabinets or drawers, or take too long showers.
My tenants have also blamed licensed repair companies for damage they themselves have caused. It amazes me when I look at carpets, walls, trims, cracked and dirty tiles and grout, moisture on the walls and clutter in a unit, and I wonder how in the “heck” do these people live like this! These conditions are not caused by the landlord because we rent the units in clean, rentable condition when our renters first move in. Conditions only change because the tenant lives there. Yet a tenant always expects the landlord to clean and replace items destroyed at the hands of tenant abuse and misuse. I usually have a handyman to repair minor items about twice a year for general repairs and maintenance. Tenants blocked access or said they have no repairs but when it’s convenient for them they demand repairs when they were given the opportunity at another time, and it always seems as though they need something done right away during the evening or on weekends - good luck finding someone to come over then. And why should the tenant care? So many had been on the seemingly, never ending government unemployment “gravy train” without of thought of ever getting back to work.
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