Anyone who’s ever lived in a Mansion (or Apartment) (or Shack) (or House) has probably dealt with some crooked owner action. And while many landlords are law-abiding citizens like you and me, some are also dodgy motherfuckers like you and me. It’s next to impossible to know when you’re picking a place to live what levels of crazy you might encounter — some landlords seem perfectly reasonable at first, and it’s not ’til later that you learn there’s a clause in your lease that restricts male visitors after 8pm on weekdays.
In a recent ridiculous situation, a San Francisco renter wrote into the San Francisco Appeal‘s Tenant Troubles column about being harassed by her landlord because of plumbing problems in her 68-year-old apartment building.
She queries:
The building has some plumbing issues for which I have been repeatedly blamed (they have been going on since I moved in).
My landlord has started calling me once or twice a week to tell me how I have cause the problem and how stressed I am making him. I’ve been told I am using too much toilet paper, that grease has been leaking out of the pipes when the plumbing backs up, and other disgusting things that I’d rather not include.
Recently I was told to hang a sign in my bathroom that stated “Do not flush tampons”. I told him no, but can they request or force me to hang signs like that? And am I at risk for losing my entire deposit because they believe I have ruined the plumbing system for this building? This is being directed solely at me, not at anyone else in the building.
Oh yes, this is clearly her bleeding vagina’s fault and the fault of the bleeding vaginas who descend upon her pristine toilet.
Presumably, her fool landlord passed on these sign ideas:
- No Menstruating In Common Areas
- Keep Your Menses Off These Premises
- When You Signed the Deed, You Agreed Not to Bleed
- Your Aunt Flo Has Got to Go
- As a Courtesy to Other Tenants, Please Suppress Your PMS
- Just Use a Fucking Moon Cup Already, God
- When Your Uterine Wall Releases, Start Looking for Other Leases
- Smile, You’re on Camera
Her question is — is this a ridiculous request, and is she being pushed around?
The advice from Tenant Trouble’s Dave Crow, an attorney who specializes in San Francisco landlord tenant law? Tell him to fuck off, and do so in writing. Also, make him fix the plumbing, and if he refuses, contact the proper authorities.
Your landlord is just a penurious troll who doesn’t want to pay to fix the pipes. Evidently he also has too much time (or something else) on his hands as well. How does he know that it’s your toilet paper that’s clogging the drain rather than his own or another tenant’s? Nasty…
It’d be interesting to know if she’s the only woman with her name on a lease in the building. She mentions that there are only two or three units besides her own, so it wouldn’t be surprising. If that’s the case, this could be a much larger issue, right? Why is he continually calling her out? Something stinks in San Francisco — and it’s not just this building’s sewage.
Either way, as Crow expertly advises, that landlord can stick a tampon and that sign where the sun don’t shine.
Image via Richard J Ashcroft/Shutterstock