Make My Bad Landlords Sad Landlords

The TL;DR version is below if you want to know the full story, which is NUTS. But the basic gist is that I want to hire a lawyer, private investigator, and inspectors to make the landlords who tried to illegally evict me from the dump they inherited choose between potentially spending every dollar they've ever saved by illegally cutting corners for years on repairs, fines, and compensation for forcing me to deal with the mold, vermin, junk, and yard work that they were responsible for, or just selling it to me for my rent times 30 years with the understanding that I will refinance through a bank after three.

 

Then I can arrange to have affordable housing for over a dozen people built on the half-acre lot, and bake the cost of rebuilding it into a duplex with a basement rec room for the whole community into the sale price of the other units. I was thinking we could later form a non-profit and try to find a way to acquire the vacant lot behind this place, and then we would have two full acres right next to two major bus lines and a big bike trail. The whole parcel is open and flat with full southern exposure for solar I'm looking at somewhere between $3000-$5000 to get going, so I am setting the goal at $4200, for as a wise man once said, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

With your help, I can turn a property which has been a source of neighborhood strife for more than 20 years into one that will become its pride and joy. My goal is to eventually provide homes for at least a dozen other low-income Portlanders who had given up on ever being able to own a home in our beloved city. And then I'll never again lay awake at night worrying that I'll have to take my cats back to the shelter and try to find one myself.

 

The story thus far:

 

In 2018, my former landlords started purging long-term tenants in anticipation of a new rent control law, and so I got evicted from the apartment I'd been in for so long that it was affordable for a partially disabled poor person despite this being Portland.The eviction ended up costing about 25% of my annual income, and I've been teetering on the brink of homelessness ever since. Thus I was afraid to complain too much about this house, because if I got evicted a second time, I'd never again be able to rent a place and recruit roommates, but would only be able to rent a room in someone else's place, which would mean giving up my four cats, who had to stay in one tiny room for 18 months after we got evicted. It's a miracle we're still together.

 

 

 

The only reason we are still together is because I happened to meet an alcoholic mom who was falling apart, because her alcoholic husband had been killed jaywalking home from the bar and her teenage daughter had moved in with a middle-aged man. She was offering her daughter's room in exchange for help so that she could drink unimpeded by domestic duties. Because she was drunk, she thought "four" meant my two cats and her two cats and did not discover her error until a week after I moved in. After COVID began, she had to combine households with the rest of her family to stay afloat, and I took over the lease on this place, which is such bad shape and so overpriced that it's been on the market for most of the last two years and only five people have come to look at it.

 

The landlords said if the mold bothered us, we didn't have to use the basement. When I told them there was standing water down there on a regular basis, sent them pictures of multiple foundation cracks, and said that the concrete was so deteriorated that you could crumble it with a sneaker, they told me not to kick it. We eventually scrubbed and boraxed it as best we could, because the stench came up through the vents. I still run four air purifiers 24/7.

 

They said if I was worried the enormous pile of old asphalt shingles in the backyard had asbestos in them, I should just stay away from them. When I sent them evidence of out of control vermin and asked for bait traps, they said there was no point because of the hoarders next door and the homeless camp down the block. They destroyed the 10-foot wall of blackberry bramble that surrounded the property despite us literally begging them not to and offering to keep it under control ourselves, then just left the mess, which I've been cleaning up one yard debris can at a time for a year.

Then just weeks after those rural Washington MAGAs assured me me that they were not going to evict me in the middle of a pandemic for no reason other than they hate my libtard ass for doing things like having a food pantry out front, (which they made me take down) and doing laundry for people from the camp and letting them shower (which they forbade me to do anymore), they sent me a notice to vacate without realizing that down here in Portland, landlords have to give tenants 90 days instead of 30, plus relocation costs. Once they found out they had to pay me to leave, they started backpedaling, and I started pushing, saying I would not get new roommates and start paying rent again until they did something about the mold and the vermin and all the ugly piles of old building supplies all over the damn place.

I found out from neighbors that when the landlords' uncle and aunt lived here with their three kids, this place was a notorious drug house, as they were both addicts. They fought with people up and down the block, and later died here within a month of each other. Their son burned down the garage where the basketball court is now, tried to burn down the giant cedar, and attacked neighbors and their vehicles with rocks. He later grew up to rob a pharmacy at gunpoint and go to prison. He was here recently to help paint the place, and said that it was the government's fault that he'd gotten addicted to OxyContin.

 

After his parents died and he and his sisters went to a relative, the house was half gutted and full of syringes and pot plants and totally not fit for habitation. So the landlords' father rented it to someone for only $300 a month in exchange for fixing it up. He's the one responsible for the house's non-Euclidean qualities, as pretty much everything is crooked or loose or both. The electrical and plumbing are pathetic, as is the roof, and there are no permits on file with the city for any of it, although there are several nuisance complaints. He later went to prison for molesting the female relatives he lived with. After that, there was a woman who had a stripper pole in the living room and an unusual number of male visitors.

 

Then the landlords' father died, and they inherited the house. According to the neighbors, a property management company used to handle it, only to either quit or be fired over a dispute about resolving code violations. Thus they clearly have been aware of the myriad problems with the house for a long time, despite their protestations to the contrary. The whole time I've been here, they've been telling me what a huge favor they were doing me by allowing me to live here at all with an eviction on my record, and that if I had a problem with the problems with the house that I could just leave, knowing full well I couldn't, because of that eviction.

 

But now I am coming for them.

Take care, everyone, stay safe! Please get vaccinated if you haven't already, and please wear a mask a while longer. Even my cat understands how important this is, unlike millions of Americans.