In search of the bad guys...
I'm still chewing on this apartment fire situation in St. Paul...
As a rental property owner, I'm irked by the tone of this article which clearly indicates that the landlord is the bad guy for allowing overcrowding in the building. How is the landlord supposed to know, for crying out loud? I mean, *I* would notice, since I live in my building, but for someone who does not (which is most often the case) and has a maintenance company mowing the lawn, doing repairs, etc., how the hell are they supposed to know that grandma let her kids and grandkids crash in the place after signing the lease? (I'm making this up as an example, I don't know who signed a lease for what at the St. Paul place.)
I mean, okay, it is ultimately the property owner who pays the piper for damage and some degree of lease violations, yes. But why do we make them the demons when half the time they don't know what the heck is going on?
And please don't tell me that landlords ought to be more aware of what's happening in their units (in a building where they don't live) because I have seen landlords who were omnipresent and they were accused of being nosy and invading their tenants' privacy. In fact, I know one owner who was accused of racism for wanting to install cameras in the common areas of her building to address claims of drug dealing there...
But I digress.
Back to the over-crowding thing:
Another part of me says who the heck cares if people want to jam up into an apartment? So? They want to save money? They don't mind sharing bedrooms with one another? Who cares? It happens in plenty of other countries...
Yeah, maybe there would be a fire. Okay. But guess what? A single guy in a 2br who falls asleep with a cig in his mouth can start a fire too. I know because it happened before in a building I owned.
Sigh. Whatever. I guess we just need to have a bad guy.
Can't it be the Mayor or something once in a while though???
As a rental property owner, I'm irked by the tone of this article which clearly indicates that the landlord is the bad guy for allowing overcrowding in the building. How is the landlord supposed to know, for crying out loud? I mean, *I* would notice, since I live in my building, but for someone who does not (which is most often the case) and has a maintenance company mowing the lawn, doing repairs, etc., how the hell are they supposed to know that grandma let her kids and grandkids crash in the place after signing the lease? (I'm making this up as an example, I don't know who signed a lease for what at the St. Paul place.)
I mean, okay, it is ultimately the property owner who pays the piper for damage and some degree of lease violations, yes. But why do we make them the demons when half the time they don't know what the heck is going on?
And please don't tell me that landlords ought to be more aware of what's happening in their units (in a building where they don't live) because I have seen landlords who were omnipresent and they were accused of being nosy and invading their tenants' privacy. In fact, I know one owner who was accused of racism for wanting to install cameras in the common areas of her building to address claims of drug dealing there...
But I digress.
Back to the over-crowding thing:
Another part of me says who the heck cares if people want to jam up into an apartment? So? They want to save money? They don't mind sharing bedrooms with one another? Who cares? It happens in plenty of other countries...
Yeah, maybe there would be a fire. Okay. But guess what? A single guy in a 2br who falls asleep with a cig in his mouth can start a fire too. I know because it happened before in a building I owned.
Sigh. Whatever. I guess we just need to have a bad guy.
Can't it be the Mayor or something once in a while though???
posted by Rantirator at 8:02 PM
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