In September of 2005 I lived in a warehouse. It was illegal. I paid rent, of course $325 a month for a spacious bedroom with cement block walls, a cracked cement floors and shelves that used to be used when the warehouse was a fur storage warehouse. Now this warehouse had a history, originally a fur storage warehouse, it was a boozecan for a few years, and then, when some sketchy punks I knew got kicked out of the warehouse they were squatting in, they decided to use the warehouse to go legit. Well, kind of. This warehouse, affectionally called the cube, was leased as a commercial building that was illegal to live in. Immediately the leasee had a party, invited a whole bunch of sketchy punks over and in exchange for their labour, allowed them some alcohol and a place to party for the weekend. What resulted was a four unit living space with a practice space, a kitchen composed of a microwave and a fridge and a toilet not quite anchored to the floor and a shower in it that would fall over if you leaned on the walls too hard. How did they get around the commercial space problem? Well, they ran their own silkscreen business and always paid the rent on time and the landlord really didn't notice or care that her punk rocker tennents seemed to sleep at their place of work.
When I moved in it had been decided that the place should be fixed up. Unemployed at the time and only eating once a day at soup kitchens, I played guitar on street corners and did plaster, wiring and painting at the cube to raise money for rent. I fixed up my room extra ordinarily well, putting in carpet that I found lying out in the street, sanded and painted the two by four shelves that had been there for etentity and were sunk into the wall with nine inch stakes which made it impossible to remove them. I painted, put in new lights (from ikea that I found at goodwill). By the end I thought this warehouse was lovely.
My dad told me it was less than a step up from living on the streets. My cousin from scotland was afraid to stay there because of the huge cockroaches, my brother said it reminded him of one of the places they would hang out in in the movie trainspotting.
Bands would practice in the room next to mine. Loud bands, angry bands, punks that had been playing in the same band for twenty five years and were pissed when they started and still hadn't sobered up. It was great.
After almost a year of unemployment, spending all my money on beer and rent and beer and scotch, I decided it was time for me to get my act together. I aranged to move into a three bedroom appartment with a friend of mine. The rent would be five hundred a month which was only a small increase (although not really so small if your unemployed). The only problem with this new place was that it wasn't anywhere near as central to Downtown Toronto as my humble room in the cube. I moved anyway. I must admit, it was mostly to get a kitchen. You don't realize how important a stove is until you don't have one.
When I moved, I gave my place up to a girl I had known for a little while who really needed a place. Now although rent was paid on the 15th of the month at the cube, I was to move into my new place on the 1st of October. The girl who was taking over my place at the cube also had to be out of her old place by the 1st of October. To help her out I said, just move in, I've paid for two weeks that I'm not going to be living there, but we can sort that out later when you have some money. You see, when it comes to living accomodations I like to help out whoever I can. I can only think of a handful of nights when living at the cube I didn't have someone else passed out in my room (no not a boy). Kids who slept under bridges would show up to hang out, and I couldn't just say "Ok, bye. Go sleep outside." The room was mine alone, but I had a varried list of temporary room mates for the duration of my residence in the cube, and I thought it was important to continue in this spirit when I moved........ That spirit was destroyed when the girl later refused to pay me and to justify it told the world that I owed her money. Whatever. I moved on.
After a few months of living with my friend in her three bedroom (enjoying the kitchen very much), another friend told me she was buying a house, but her landlord wouldn't let her out of her lease. I asked what her place was like..... Two bedroom, 134 foot back yard, fireplace, as central as they come, laundry on site, on the first floor, old wood floors..... I had to have it. I got three people together to help me pay the $900 a month and I was suddenly paying less for this wonderful new place than I had been for life in the warehouse.......AWESOME! Talk about bigger and better.
Then my landlord started to indicate that she was psychotic..... Then the friend who had assigned the appartment to me confirmed that part of the reason she bought a house is because my new landlord was so psychotic that my friend didn't think she would ever be capable of renting again..... AWESOME! It suddenly looked like my new place wasn't better at all.
Now to list just a few of my landlords strange actions..... She looked in my windows, rang the doorbell at least five times a day, was at my house five times a day although she lived elsewhere. She turned off the heat in march because it cost too much, she asked me to carry heavy things out of the basement to a dumpster in the front of the house for ten dollars an hour then didn't pay me. She then started stalking me. Coming to the new job I had just got. I put soil into the back garden beds so I could grow vegetables and because she didn't like that she went and yelled at my boss. She would follow me around the supermarket I went to every morning, after waiting outside for me until I got there. She would come into my appartment when I wasn't home, steal my things, she had my car towed and impounded from the spot which was mine and eventually I lost my job because my boss couldn't deal with her. Now this might sound one sided, its not. This is what happened, the police were involved (when i had to call them to get her to leave me alone, and then again because she assaulted me). Oh, did I mention that all of this happened in the course of three months? Or that I personally had never had a problem with a landlord in my life, but I found out from other tennants and former tennants of this woman that she did this to everyone?
Around the same time, one of my roommates decided to move because she couldn't tolerate the landlord. Now when this girl moved in with me, she was supposed to pay first and last, but didn't have enough money, so I covered it for her. Once again in the spirit of making things easy for everyone I can when it comes to accomodation. Then when she decided to move, she didn't have enough money to pay for the month of June and pay first and last at a new place. I said, "No problem, I just got a new job, live here in June without paying rent and pay me back after you've paid first and last at your new place." Of course, I wasn't about to get messed around again. This time I got her to sign a letter saying she owed me $300.00 and she would pay me by September. She changed her phone number as soon as she moved and I never did get my money for that act of charity either......
Ah well, I'm still a sucker for someone in trouble. (I mean, considering the fact I used to play guitar on street corners for rent, I know how important the charity of others can be). So when my little brother told me that he had been kicked out of his house, he didn't have a job or a place to go, I told him he could move in with me and pay me back later..... It was my brother, I had to. So, with one roommate having screwed me over, a crazy landlord who had my car impounded (it was auctioned, i couldn't work up the money to get it out in time), no job because of my crazy landlord, and a little brother who was suddenly my dependant (have I mentioned that I'm only 23), I decided it was time to move on. I got another job, right away and moved.
I took another hit as far as location goes and moved in with my boyfriend a good 45 minute bike ride from the area I was used to. This place is half an hour away from that three bedroom appartment that I previously thought was far from the action of Downtown Toronto. I moved into a basement appartment for $700 a month, utilities included. After I moved in my landlord informed me he was doing renovations upstairs. I got wakened up most mornings around eight by banging on the pipes. In my first week of residence there was a leak in the pipes, because this man doesn't know how to do construction and is working alone without a permit doing sub par work. The leak destroyed a bunch of my belongings. He didn't even appologize. I came home from work the next week and he was in my appartment without permission doing repairs. For some reason he had taken out three of the ceiling tiles (they still haven't been replaced). He also cut a large hole in the drywall of my living room to get access to wires. (the hole still hasn't been fixed). Then my toilet stopped flushing. I tried plunging it and brown water started coming out the back of it. (I had had a party and my drunk friend choose to use the toilet although he had been informed it didn't work). I told the landlord about the water coming out the back and he informed me, as if it was no big deal, that I would just have to be careful because he hadn't sealed the base of the toilet with silicon. Then my wonderful landlord started coming to my door to talk when he was drunk, he would call me sweetie and talk about how hard it was to own a house and be a working man. (My boyfriend wants to kill this man). I pointed out to my landlord, that he had owned the house for over ten years, living there himself with tennants on three floors he should have been able to pay off the mortgage already. He admitted he had paid it off, but didn't understand when I told him it was much harder to be a working girl renting than it was to be a working man owning his house. Now it is winter and the heat doesn't work.... I can see my breath in my appartment constantly and the landlords reply is always "It's warm upstairs, I don't know why you would be cold down here." Oh, he also wants to make me pay hydro now that the winter's here without dropping my rent. Yeah right.
I NEED OUT. I NEED A PLACE OF MY OWN. I HAVE TRIED TO BE NICE. I HAVE HELPED AS MANY PEOPLE AS I CAN. I now need to get a place of my own. I would live in a tent in a parking lot if I could only own the lot. I'm not picky. I just want to be left alone to live my life and live in relative comfort. Relative comfort can be a warehouse, or a tent, or a trailer. I don't think that I can tolerate any more unpredictable turns in my life due to other people that in an ideal world I would have very little interaction with..... Friends of mine have lived in places for ten years or more and have never even met their landlord...... Why am I having this bad luck?
I've decided it's because whatever gods may be, want to push me, as hard as they can to get my own house...... And with this blog, I'm going to try.
