Landlords are Masochists is based on a true story. It is a warning of what “could” be should you own rental property.
Renting apartments to people you do not know… people who lie on their applications… and everyone does… is an example of repetitive stupidity. I doubt Thomas Palmer was referencing landlords when he wrote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
My father left three apartment buildings to me in his will. The bequest was written on a card that made giggling sounds when it was opened. He had handwritten a note: “Soon you will know why laughter is the best medicine.”
I had no idea what he meant. Yes, he did laugh a lot when I was a kid and, sometimes, the laughing led to crying and wringing his hands, but I never gave his behavior much thought. My mother would say, “Daddy is being silly” as she rushed me out of the room. Then, she would give me ice cream. If my dad being silly led to me getting a treat, I thought it must be a good thing.
Now, I know better. Dad died two years ago, and I have done a lot of laughing since he passed. Not HAHA laughing. The kind that makes people back away from you in terror. Today, I laughed myself into a crying jag that went on for hours.
A few months ago, I began getting complaints from the tenants in one of my buildings. They were angry with another tenant… an older man who had moved in six months before. The biggest complaint was the smell coming from his unit. And the sounds. The tenants swore the man was running a zoo inside his one bedroom apartment. They claimed they heard a wolf howling.
I sent a representative of the maintenance company to check out the complaints. He confirmed that as he got close to the apartment, his eyes began to water and his throat closed up. When he knocked, he heard snorting and scratching from behind the door.
The tenant refused to allow him entry. I called my lawyer and filed the necessary papers to force an eviction. After a lot of rigmarole, my lawyer sent a “vacate premises” letter to the tenant. On the day he was to leave, I asked for the police to accompany us in case there were problems. You know… like there really was a wolf inside.
Anyway… problems? There were plenty.
Masks tied over our noses and mouths… and not because of covid; we entered the apartment. We had to push our way in as the door was blocked by bags of garbage. Trash, bagged and unbagged, was everywhere. So were animal feces, the result of three dogs, no wolves, two cats, two ferrets and a lizard, all with roaming rights to the apartment. They were not aggressive. Just stinky.
The kitchen was a disaster. The extent of the disaster we learned as we opened cupboards and appliances. A dead parrot resided upside down in a cookie jar. There were five dead puppies, laying head to tail in an ice cube tray, in the freezer. Cereal boxes, no longer containing Cheerios, held the remains of some small animals we could not identify. The stench was everywhere!
The tenant himself was filthy… not his clothes… his body. His dirty clothing, that which he had worn, was thrown on top of various piles of trash. There were closets full of clean clothes, both outerwear and underwear. His body was a different story. The animal smells were perfume compared to the odors coming from this man.
He had, obviously, not bathed in the time he had been living in the apartment. How could he? The bathtub was piled with broken appliances, pieces of furniture, dirty pots and pans, and God knows what else. No one was willing to dig through the mess to see what was hidden underneath.
The police called for Animal Control to rescue the menagerie. Uniformed officers told the man he had to leave and that they would take him to a shelter. He said he needed to put on socks as his feet – he was not wearing shoes -- were cold. We thought he was already wearing socks. His feet, from his toes to his knees were so discolored and blotchy, he appeared to be wearing yellow and gray argyles.
I had to hire a company that did cleanups for the police department to scrub the unit. They specialized in murder scenes. Cost a fortune. Then, there was the fee to haul away the trash. Another fortune. Despite all the sanitizing, it took three months to rid the apartment of the smell. The hallway stink was not a problem. It went away the first time another tenant cooked fish.
Landlords are masochists, but we are not stupid. The risk of getting the occasional weird tenant who runs a combination city dump/animal shelter out of his apartment does not outweigh the importance of the monthly rent checks.
If only potential new tenants came with a warning label: DANGER: Dirt and death follow wherever I go.
Donna Carbone is the Executive Director/Playwright in Residence at the Palm Beach Institute for the Entertainment Arts, where education through entertainment is the mission statement.
Please visit: pbinstituteforentertainmentarts.com