EYEHEARTZOMBIES

I haven’t written anything about our recent ordeal with our landlord in hopes that everything would be resolved correctly and we could all just go on with our lives. As this is apparently not the path that will be followed, I guess I’ll go into all of it.

First off, we’ve been renting this house over a year and a half. In that time, we’ve never been late with rent, never had any major problems. The washing machine broke (didn’t belong to the house, so we replaced it) and the shower stopped working (landlord called a plumber to fix it after we called them several times). As far as we’re concerned (and they’ve said this, too) we’re great tenants. Which makes what happened all the more frustrating.

About three weeks ago, we came home to find the house next to ours (which our landlord also owns and rents out) stripped of it’s bushes on the side we could see. We could also hear mowing in the back yard. We go to investigate and it’s a 20- or 30-something man and woman. We ask what’s going on and they tell us they were hired by the landlord to “clean up” the two properties. We explain that we live in this house and we didn’t know they were coming. They tell us they hadn’t been told anyone lived at either place. He said he’d start on our place the next day. My wife explained that she didn’t want him to mess with some plants that she had planted, pointing out the tomato plants, her rose bush, a squash/pumpkin vine growning near the compost pile, and a general garden area. I went inside to put stuff up while she finished showing him everything. He apparently said “OK” and went back to work on the other place, as she came inside and seemed satisfied.

The next day we came home to a different house. There were awesome crepe myrtle bushes on both sides of the house — gone. There was a flower garden in front of the front porch — gone. All the grass was mowed down to about an inch above the ground (this during the hottest time of the summer. Brown grass apparently looks better than long-ish green grass). That was just in the front.

In the back of the house, they had cut down the sage and other herbs growing in the same garden as the tomato plants. Luckily, they left the tomatoes alone. Now, let me explain the garden. It’s a roughly 10-foot by 2-foot plot of ground butting up against the back porch. It’s seperated from the yard by concrete paving stones we buried half in the ground. It’s very obviously a garden and not grass or weeds. He mowed down the herbs that were inside it.

Where the flower garden and rose bushes were, he left one rose bush (not the one Elaine pointed out to him) and some few other plants that he apparently decided were real plants and not to be mowed down. The guy also bent and ruined a trellis that was back there. He, by the way, didn’t just cut down the rose bush, which might grow again if that was the case — it was ripped from the ground.

The squash/pumpkin vine? Cut to pieces. Other flowers throughout the yard that Elaine had put bricks around to keep me from mowing over, gone, with the bricks left in place. It just made no sense.

That was a horrible night. The house felt naked and exposed; vulnerable. Elaine actually broke down into tears for awhile over it. I tried to call the landlord (who happens to be a dentist) but no answer at the office, not even voicemail.

The next day I called and got some silly git of a receptionist who took my complaint and said someone might call me back. We called back a bit later and got someone more official. I’ll call her M. M is actually the only person we’ve had official dealings with concerning this property. We signed the lease to her, we give the checks to her. We’ve never even met the actual landlord. Anyway, we explain the situation to her and she says to just bring her a list of what go destroyed and she’ll take care of it. Great, solved, I think.

We take the list to her (totals about $110) and wait to hear from them. A few hours later, a call comes on Elaine’s cell phone (we were at work). It’s the guy that did the cutting. He says the landlord wants him to pay for the damage and he’s not happy about it. We tell him we’ll either accept the money or replacement plants.

I’m not happy that they pawn the debt off on that guy (he was, after all, just doing what they hired him for) so I call back. I’m told by M that the doctor is going to come by the house sometime and set this all straight. Again, I think I can trust them.

Well, as I said, that was 3 weeks ago. We haven’t heard from the mowing guy or the landlord. I call today to see about us just taking the $110 out of the rent and I’m informed that they’re not going to make good on what they owe us. They talked to the mowing guy and he told them that he left what he was told to leave and if we had kept the lawn mowed anyway, they wouldn’t've had to do it.

First off, he didn’t leave what he was supposed to, but that’s beside the point. As for keeping the grass mowed, we did. We both work all day at a job that’s an hour’s commute away. I can’t exactly zip around the yard when I get home, as all sorts of other things need doing. I do, however, mow on weekends when I can. No, I don’t keep the grass at one inch, but that looks disgusting and it’s bad for the grass. A few inches of nice, green grass never hurt anyone.

Beyond all this, it’s actually illegal in the state of Oklahoma for him to change the property that we’re renting without our approval. And if he wants something changed, he has to notify us, in writing, and give us 30 days to change it. And, of course, there’s the destruction of private property to add in.

After their refusal to pay, I informed them that I would be contacting a lawyer and they were unbuffed. I did contact a family friend who’s a lawyer and tell him this whole spiel. He thinks we have a case and it’s definitely sue-able. It costs about $100 to get a case into small-claims though, and we’d only be suing for about $110–$150 worth of stuff, so we’re not sure it’s worth it. There’s the principle of the thing, of course, but you can’t live on principle. I worry about living ’cause suing the landlord is a good way to get evicted.

I’m really not sure what to do. We want to get out of this house ASAP but there’s no way we can get out in 3 days (rent’s due by the 5th). I think we’re going to pay this month’s rent and try to get out before next month’s comes due.

Anyone have any encouragement, advice, or want to pay for the court costs? Thanks for listening to our sad story that we’ve told everyone lately.

UPDATE
Something I forgot to post before. When I called the landlord’s dental office about not wanting the lawn guy to pay, the secretary told me “I was out of town, so [the landlord] took care of it himself. He (landlord) told me that if I had been here, he would have had me call you guys and do it the right way, but since I was go, he went ahead and did it this way.” And, last night, when I called about shortening the rent, she said “[the landlord] isn’t going to make good on the destroyed plants…” Now, aren’t those both admissions of guilt?