Small progress with bad neighbors
Last week i posted about the latest batch of shitty neighbors in the house behind mine leaving a big heap of garbage behind when they moved out.
Yesterday we had a very productive meeting with the manager of the property, and i learned that the landlord is also fed up with his inability to attract renters who won't destroy his property, and is willing to sell the house.
So that's the good news. Hopefully, there's someone out there willing to make the investment in a fixer-upper on a transitional block that's not too far from downtown Durham, but that hasn't yet attracted the attention of folks looking for these kinds of opportunities. I don't know if the house is listed yet, but if this is the kind of thing that appeals to you, drop me a line at DependableErection at gmail dot com, and i can hook you up with the listing agent.
Which leads me to thinking. I've actually been a renter for the majority of my adult life. I've always paid my rent on time, and never been a burden on my neighbors, either by bad behavior or neglecting my house. (Well, maybe that time in Phoenix when i had a dog who absolutely refused to stay confined behind the fence. He was pretty big - 130 pounds - but goofy, and never hurt a fly. Except for the time i came home from work and found a mallard with it's neck wrung wrapped in his chain. It took him a couple of days to pass the feathers that he had tried to eat. Even though he was a yellow lab, he never so much as looked at a waterfowl after that. And one time when he got loose, i got a call from a friend who lived 8 miles away on the other side of town asking when i was coming to pick him up after he'd been hanging at their place for over a week. But i digress. That was a 6 month period of my life 30 years ago. Mostly, i was a pretty good neighbor.)
Is it just that so many more people are homeowners these days, leaving a smaller and more ill-mannered pool of the population to be renters? You'd think, as prices of homes have continued to skyrocket, that fewer people would be able to afford them. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And certainly, i know people now who have rented their homes for a decade or more, are comfortable being renters, and contribute to the well-being of the neighborhood.
So what's it like where you live? What's the mix between renters and homeowners? Is there any friction? How do you deal with it?
Yesterday we had a very productive meeting with the manager of the property, and i learned that the landlord is also fed up with his inability to attract renters who won't destroy his property, and is willing to sell the house.
So that's the good news. Hopefully, there's someone out there willing to make the investment in a fixer-upper on a transitional block that's not too far from downtown Durham, but that hasn't yet attracted the attention of folks looking for these kinds of opportunities. I don't know if the house is listed yet, but if this is the kind of thing that appeals to you, drop me a line at DependableErection at gmail dot com, and i can hook you up with the listing agent.
Which leads me to thinking. I've actually been a renter for the majority of my adult life. I've always paid my rent on time, and never been a burden on my neighbors, either by bad behavior or neglecting my house. (Well, maybe that time in Phoenix when i had a dog who absolutely refused to stay confined behind the fence. He was pretty big - 130 pounds - but goofy, and never hurt a fly. Except for the time i came home from work and found a mallard with it's neck wrung wrapped in his chain. It took him a couple of days to pass the feathers that he had tried to eat. Even though he was a yellow lab, he never so much as looked at a waterfowl after that. And one time when he got loose, i got a call from a friend who lived 8 miles away on the other side of town asking when i was coming to pick him up after he'd been hanging at their place for over a week. But i digress. That was a 6 month period of my life 30 years ago. Mostly, i was a pretty good neighbor.)
Is it just that so many more people are homeowners these days, leaving a smaller and more ill-mannered pool of the population to be renters? You'd think, as prices of homes have continued to skyrocket, that fewer people would be able to afford them. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And certainly, i know people now who have rented their homes for a decade or more, are comfortable being renters, and contribute to the well-being of the neighborhood.
So what's it like where you live? What's the mix between renters and homeowners? Is there any friction? How do you deal with it?
Labels: bad neighbors, Durham
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
7 Comments:
we're actually trying to buy up 2 homes in our neighborhood (homestead heights) in order to keep out the property owners who buy cheap, don't fix anything and then rent to anyone.
they've ruined a good stretch of broad street (north of guess), and have been sniffing around our hood.
in my experience, the cheaper a place rents, the crappier the tenant. of course this isn't always true, but we'd prefer to live amongst owners who take care of their things and ours.
By
libby, at 2:10 PM
It's almost always the landlords fault when a property only attracts awful tenants. When a landlord obviously doesn't care about a place, the tenants cartainly won't--it's not their property after all. The good tenants who want to live in a nice place will flee quickly when a landlord lets a place go downhill, and soon the only people who will come in are those who either can't afford better or who just don't give a damn. And if the place is a dump to being with, why bother making sure the trash always makes it into the bin?
I though it was very telling that the property owner's response was to sell the property rather than put some work into making it the kind of place decent tenants would actually want to live. True slumlord mentality.
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Lisa B., at 2:17 PM
I've been renting for ten years, and my neighbors all still like me. At least I think they do. :) OTOH, the folks who owned my last house didn't want to do much of anything to it, like fix the leaky roof, put in washer/dryer connections, or even trim back the bushes (when they were explicitly responsible for yard maintenance).
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Joseph H. Vilas, at 12:25 AM
No doubt the landlord and property manager bear the brunt of the responsibility in this case, not only for continuing to rent their house irresponsibly, but for the ongoing poor maintenance which discourages tenants from putting any energy of their own into the house. And which discourages tenants who might want to put any of their own effort into the house from renting it in the first place.
It wasn't only that the landlord would consider selling that made the meeting so productive, however. Even if the property is not sold, and continues to be rented, we've set some guidelines about the expectations we have as neighbors, and opened some lines of communications for dealing with issues that arise when those expectations aren't met.
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Barry, at 7:27 AM
Old West Durham is over 50% rental, I think, but the vast majority are pretty good people. It helps that a huge chunk of that is owned by a landlord who, despite his affection for wrapping everything in vinyl siding (he is the owner of Aluminum Company of NC, after all), takes care of his properties. He frequently performs non-"essential" updates, like kitchen cabinets, rips out ugly vinyl flooring and replaces it with hardwood, installs central air, and so on and so forth. It makes the rents go up, but the rental market so close to Duke can handle it.
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Anonymous, at 1:48 PM
Northgate Park varies block to block...ours is probably a little better than 50% owner-occupied (including us) and you can generally pick the rentals out without trying too hard.
The best tennants on the street just moved out, but as the owner has been very good about upkeep, I imagine the next ones will be good, too.
As far as tensions...as an example, my nextdoor neighbor and I have just taken to periodically picking up the trash that accumulates by the street (overflow from cans, inappropriate things in the recycling, etc.) in front of the house on the other side of him.
Frankly, we have more incentive to do so than the tennant does, so this seems to be the path of least resistance for now.
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Brian, at 3:09 PM
I'm in Northgate Park, too. I'm a renter and I'll confirm what Brian said about it being 50/50 and you can definetly tell between a rental and an owner. The houses are all pretty small here so this tends to be a community of single people and couples with no children. Not a whole lot of families around here. I'm here because I want to live on this side of town and it's all I can afford.
The neighbors are real nice and as I look out my window I can see the homes of two lesbian couples, a crazy-fun redneck and his friend, a very unfriendly old man, and the house of a single mother, her daughter, and any number of cousins...they recently moved out (we all miss them). The redneck, and the single mother and I (and my roommate) all rent. The others own. In fact, my next door neighbor who had lived in her house for about 40 years recently died and a local realtor (whose name I forget) swept in, bought it, "flipped it", and sold it to someone who made additional upgrades. I can't tell you how glad I am that realtor got hold of it.
Anyhow, most of the rentals are kept above the squalor line by the tennants, but a few have slipped through the cracks.
Many of the rentals in this area are owned by Southeast CMB, including mine and I'll tell you, they don't put squat into maintaining their places. I often call them for electrical work and its a real crap shoot if their contract electrician actually gets in touch with me. They don't care.
Now, I could take the high road and put some effort into this place like landscaping or just putting in better light fixtures on my own no matter what they do... but I'm not. I'm weak. I put as much into this place as they do, so it looks run-down and lame. If I owned this place it would be on the way to having a new roof, new wiring, new windows, an exterior paint job, and a dozen improvements on the inside.
Southeast owns a bunch of places on Club Blvd. right in front of the park that are for rent and they could be real nice places..real nice, but obviously they're not doing anything about it. Those three or four houses are the "transitional" houses between NP and the drug and hooker flea market at the intersection of Club and Roxboro Street. Putting some effort into those houses would make a difference. Would.
By
Anonymous, at 3:40 PM
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