“Because it’s there!”
Thanks to a stern letter from my landlord about parking on the grass, my strategy to save me future multiple falls on their WWII broken-up pavement where I’ve previously had multiple falls, I made adjustments. I keep a walker in my car. Now, I will use it to get to and from the unhandy parking spot since using a cane is especially problematic on icy, snowy broken-up WWII pavement. It is in the way in the house since I already have another walker to get around inside but landlords come across sometimes as fascists, eh?! One takes their threats seriously. For example, they evicted one elderly person for not having a “sauber und gesundlich genug” apartment. Sieg heil!
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My longtime friend who lives in the holiday-decorated apartment across the lane, her daughter (who broke her ankle on the WWII broken-up lane last year and had a long hospital stay and lots of pain and suffering), and I had a delightful, refreshing glass of Martini and Rossi Asti Spumanti wine and a long talk yesterday afternoon. We’d talked about revisiting this wine of our youth for a long time but only got around to it since we had other priorities anytime we tried to do it.
As anyone who follows this blog knows, Andy has this routine of several years where he examines the kitchen cabinets for “mousies”. We never have any in all my years here, even in the pre-kitty years between 2004 and 2009. My neighbor across the lane, however, says she’s been plagued with 20 “mousies” so far this year! Perhaps I should lend her Andy. Would he know what to do with any he caught? He’s so sweet, I bet he’d drop the kitty-mouth wet still-live rodent at Linda’s feet, a gift.
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Breakfast this morning was a success, even though I’m not a particular enthusiast for eggs unless I do lots of things to them to take away “egginess”. Specifically, I lightly sauté onion and green pepper in a skillet, then add grated cheddar cheese, a wee dollop of Dijon mustard, a squirt of Worchester sauce all whipped into the egg, poured into the hot skillet with the heat turned off, which gently soft-cooks the scrambled egg: perfectly prepared to my taste scrambled eggs! A light squirt of ketchup over the eggs helps further disguise the “eggy” quality of eggs. Peanut butter toast with grape jelly, a strong cup of French pressed coffee made with freshly-ground coffee beans, and a strawberry yogurt, the disguised eggs finished it off: breakfast was a delight!
Love the way that maintenance issues always end up being the tenants’ problem. Good luck.
Yes! And there never is money to fix it, so you know what has to happen if you need it fixed!
Perhaps your reply could convey your intention to stop when the walkway is repaired.
It is about 2/5ths of the length of the lane, perhaps 36-37 meters and the weather makes that unlikely as they’d have to dig out the cement, which isn’t totally disintegrated, just on the top. Then, it would be worse weather that probably would make pouring new cement problematic. They – the previous owner, now, the new one – should have taken care of years ago.
I’m sure that is true. But it may prompt them to leave you alone
True! My neighbor mentioned she was glad I took the landlord on in this manner because of this tendency to be a bit of a bully.
The ADA should have a few points to instruct your landlord ! The sidewalk sounds like a danger to any able-bodied person ! He needs a wake-u call from somebody’s lawyer !
My Mother hated “eggy” eggs too.(and she didn’t care for fishy tasting fish either). I have gotten so I can only do scrambled any more. Good for you for finding ways to cope – with eggs and landlords.
That eviction should be challenged in court. Grausam und ekelhaft!
Mr Andy looks cozy on the walker seat.
And no German landlord would get away with it – isn’t that ironic?
Theoretically, same here. Perhaps the fact that this is a place where residents frequently are subsidized because of low income or, like me, have adequate income to pay full price on rents but still have limited funds to contact lawyers, is what lets the landlord get away with this hazard. By giving the landloard a letter documenting my personal falls and the landlord’s awareness of my neighbor’s daughter’s broken ankle because of the hazard, a legal “adjustment” becomes a possibility if further mishaps occur there.
Andy fully approves of the walker because of the height off the ground and the padded seat!
This landlord should not have gotten away with it as well but he wasn’t challenged.
Grausam und ekelhaft, eigenlich!!!
Ich kann die Beschimpfungen älterer Menschen, die sich nicht wehren können, nicht ertragen.
Ich entweder.
Ich denke, wir sollten damit aufhören, denn es ist nicht höflich zu deinen anderen treuen Lesern, Doug.
What do you think?
You may be right about that. When I run into another language in my posts, I have no problem reading it but verifying what I read in Google translate. I have some readers who don’t have English skills who comment in their language of choice. They must read my simple posts in translation, just as I read theirs that way. Some, like you, are bi- or multi-lingual, able to maneuver in any of their languages. In consideration of English-speaking readers, the majority, I’ll try to stick with English or help out with translated non-English comments. This comment, for example is in response to your German comment, which translate as:
I think we should stop doing this, because it’s not polite to your other loyal readers, Doug.
Dear friend, I meant myself, not you. It’s your blog, so you have the right to do whatever you want, in any language. I have to stop showing off. It’s not seemly and not polite to other people.
I think it’s a reasonable thing to do. I have no problem getting translations when my skills ae too limited. I confess, though, I am amazed how often on Facebook people seem unable to hit Google or Bing to ask questions they could ask to answer simple questions. Another thing, people write about things that could be further expounded on with a link to a resource or video. A big irritation to me is posting photos of birds or animals without identifying them or leaving off other things like those videos or links to resources. Sloppy and lacking curiosity!
Perhaps, simply lazy. I get that with my students. I load the Class Resources page with materials, but hardly half of the students even visits the page. I attribute it to laziness and/or lack of curiosity.
I believe it!
The broken concrete likely qualifies as a violation of the ADA. As other commenters have said earlier, it sounds like your landlord is headed for a lawsuit (and talk about low hanging fruit, I’m surprised you haven’t had ambulance chasers knocking on your doors). I’m guessing however that they’re used to pushing people around with no consequences.
Eviction is truly cruel in that once you have one on your credit history, it’ll be impossible to find a new place to rent. Landlords automatically reject your application if they see an eviction on your file. One reason why homelessness has jumped in the US is because so many people lost their apartments when they lost their jobs or their rent was raised to insane levels, and with the eviction on file they can’t find another place that will take them. My landlord is supposedly a benevolent nonprofit but I do not trust them in the slightest.
The units no longer have to meet federal standards for housing under certain rules since they no longer get a subsidy as a non-commercial entity, which they were when Good Samaritan Society owned them. Now that they are a commercial entity, I’m sure ADA standards still apply for utility by handicapped individuals. The owner, furthermore, is a medical doctor!
Yes, there is an element of bullyism involved with this one. I was congratulated for confronting the landlord with documentation of my falls, which included a letter explaining why I started parking on the grass after a hospitalization that left me very weak. Attached to the letter was a copy of my post here last December of just eight places I’d fallen in the then previous few months, fear for continuation of which prompted the parking on the grass.
Yes, landlords belong to an asshole clique when it comes to such matters! Money is at the root of it. Gran6ed there are bad tenants, but…!
Eggs are delicious! From my perspective, it sounds like your landlord needs a smack in the face with a letter from an attorney. I get the grass thing, but the pavement sounds like it’s a war zone and needs repair.
John, the pavement was that bad from as long as I’ve lived on this lane and before! I’ve lived here since 2004. It was a tripping and falling hazard for me the whole time and they did replace the pavement up to my sidewalk under the previous management after I mentioned to the complex manager I’d had several falls getting to my parking spot on the opposite side of the lane! (Another resident further up the lane had several falls there, too, but she was in the process of moving out to a care center.)
An attorney’s letter could be in the future. Before I realized the other person in the room was the landlord and person who writes the threatening letters – my friend across the lane is the landlord’s receptionist! – I’d mentioned the possibility of contacting my attorney about this hazard!
Oh boy, that’s an odd triangle! ☹️
The walker seems like a good idea and, useful to Andy, too! Yikes on those landlords! Sounds like they’re really cold-hearted.
Leah, it’s all about the money. That tends to harden landlord hearts. That’s why attorneys get to drive Mercedes Benzes, Cadillacs, and BMWs!
It does sound like intervention from the State is needed to get this landlord, or corporation as it may be, working for the residents again. It takes time and energy away from other things, but sometimes becomes necessary when people are getting needlessly injured.
It easily could come to that.
The daughter who broke her ankle should sue. Ad you need to write to whoever oversees elderly or handicapped rights in your state. The walker is a great idea, but should not be a necessity because of their negligence.
The daughter’s mother is the landlord’s receptionist. The landlord is a medical doctor. I don’t know if some deal was worked out in this matter and I didn’t ask about it. I do know she had a long hospitalization, more than one surgery, and a long recovery from her injury. They got my letter outlining my experiences with the hazard, so there is no denying it now. My friend across the lane is their receptionist, and I let her read it first in front of the person in the room who I didn’t realize was the landlord!
I am hoping the landlord, her mother’s employer, paid for all of that.
Me, too. I haven’t heard one way or another.
Neither the city or residents where I live seem to see broken pavement as an issue either. I wish that the mayor and city council would all break their ankles so they’d see what the damn issue is.
This is a money-driven society. Until someone is injured or killed by a hazard, nothing is done if the cost-to-do isn’t minimal!
Where I used to work, people would get a shock on a stretch wrapper. After many complaints to management, a worker complained to OSHA. OSHA sent an inspector out, several other hazards were found, a large fine charged (moderately large compared with some I’ve read about!), and the problems were taken care of.
The person who complained, though, ended up getting hassled because one correction was removing automation from a box used to coil hose, making manual (harder!) work of coiling from then on. She eventually quit because of the shunning by her fellow workers.
I did OSHA and DOT compliance at my center for a couple of years, and the Union saw them as being the white knights. They viewed the compliance as being management damage control. One of my most important jobs was getting them to see it as a tool they could use to prevent lost time injury, and serious damage to there body.
Too bad the attitude where you worked was so bad. The UPS workplace is very dangerous, without compliance and safety training people get hurt. I almost lost a finger due to a nit not operating safely.
The management emphasized the OSHA visit came because of an employee complaint- and named the employee! They also emphasized in the same company meetings the cost to the company and how that impacted employee benefits. Never mind the improved safety saved the company a hell of a lot more in insurance costs for injuries, death benefits, or simple good employee attitudes that come from work issues being resolved in a timely manner. Everyone who operated the stretch wrapper worried about electrocution or just getting a shock if not careful.
They really were pretty dumb. Harassment after the complaint and visit is actionable. Too bad they were allowed to get away with that. I remember someone who won a handsome claim for that sort of harassment, I don’t remember if it was UPS or somewhere else. But at UPS we were told that harassment like that was not allowed. Of course it happened, but it got stomped on because Teamsters don’t put up with that sort of crap, and smart managers shouldn’t either.
I have a friend who worked for UPS till he retired. Though pay and benefits are good, it seemed like the company put employees through a lot of hassles for those good things. Of course, he had a supervisor who was a terror.
People used to ask me why a lot of the BS at UPS ( and there was a lot) didn’t bother me. I replied that compared to working for the Gov UPS BS was just lowercase. When a rotten manager was harassing me before retirement I “accidentally” left out a lawyers letter outlining my case against him. It was just so juicy watching him squirm. The thing was that sooo much of the shit could be turned back on the source if you did what they did – document everything.
Yes, I learned to do that where I worked because a manager who habitually did that, had a major health issue come up, got “released” from his job, took his saved file on everything done or said to him to an Omaha labor attorney. He disappeared from the seen for a time, his circumstances and end results unknown. Then, one day I ran into him at the Ford dealership. Seems he was there to pick up a custom fitted van that he and his wife were going to use to see America and stop by each of their kids in the rest of their lives. Seems they had a very, very productive outcome in his suit against the company for forcing him out of his job in his mid-fifties.
What goes around, comes around.
They evicted an elderly person? That seems unreasonably cruel.
I don’t know the full story, but it struck me as cruel, too.
I hope there was more to it than just that.
I hope so, too. Voodoo rituals; sacrifice of babies; 57 living and dead cats stinking up the apartment and shredding the blinds; real fires in the living room to keep warm in winter; refrigerator full of human remains. You know, real horrors other than messy housekeeping or whatever the issue was.
Well, quite! If there were a public safety issue or criminal activity or some such thing, fair enough. But not just messy housekeeping!
I believe the issue was he was a bit of a hoarder, but I’m not sure about that. Cruel? Of course, it was!
I’m pretty sure you can’t evict for that reason, unless there is a health and safety issue? I hope the poor person found somewhere else, anyway!
I don’t know the full story.