Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Feeling blue

We have some landlord/tenant drama going on right now. We live in the upstairs of a house, and there is a suite downstairs as well. It turns out that the suite is illegal, and the municipality has become aware of the situation. Now, our landlord has decided that he will be building a staircase from our suite to downstairs and tearing out the kitchen down there in order to make it look as if we, the tenants, have been subletting the downstairs space to our neighbors. There is a fat chance the municipality would ever beleive this: a staircase with a locked door on either side does not a single suite make. In addition, the suites are seperately metered for Hydro, and one is heated with baseboard heaters while the other is heated with gas. Don't ask me why. The neighbors are totally on board with this whole situation, but we are totally not. It just seems all kinds of Illegal - capital I. Our neighbors downstairs are [recovering? maybe?] drug addicts whose main forms of income are welfare and scavenging recycle bins for returnable beverage containers and cigarette butts. They don't seem to eat much anyway, and therefore seem to be okay with the removal of their kitchen, as it's probably their only alternative to homelessness.

Sorry - that was a bit on the judgement. I try to refrain from this usually.

Anyway, there are a few courses of action we might be able to take, but all of these seem to end in one place: We are going to have to move.

Despite the neighbor thing, our house is actually quite nice and there are a lot of things I have really enjoyed about living here. One of those being that this might well be the only rental in town that will allow us to have a dog.

I'm very, very worried about the possibility that our Luna Bear might have to find a new home. Not only because I will miss her silly hound face to death, but also because hound dogs are known for bonding very strongly to one person, and having difficulty adjusting to new homes once this bond is established.

I'm absolutely sick to my stomach at the possibility of having to give Luna up. A dog is a dog for life.... right? We really and truly planned on staying here a good long while, until we either left town or were ready to buy. But a circumstance like this... I just don't know what to do. I'm probably getting ahead of myself. There is probably a lovely little home out there for us to live in and bring our pup. Then again, I am doubting that we will get the best reference from a landlord who is pissed that we don't want to be involved in his little slumlord scheme, and references seem to be an important part of allowing a pet.

I can't sleep when I am stressed out like this. Feeling insecure about living situations so very distressing, and I really wish I could just close my eyes and make this go away.
So, at 2:20 in the morning, I decided to blog about it.
Thanks for listening, Internet.

2 comments:

  1. Well that just sucks! I'm sorry your going through all that! I can defintely understand why you would want to avoid being involved in anything your landlord is wanting to do. By being part of his little scheme you might be doing something illegal and you dont need that kind of trouble! Maybe you should look into buying...its a great time to do it if you can.

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  2. Sarah - I sincerely wish that buying was a possibility for us right now. But with a wedding in may and me graduating University around the same time (with a pile of student loan debt), it's just not in the cards. The market in our city barely softened at all during the recession, and has in fact been rebounding over the past few months. Plus, there have been/will be health care cuts in BC, so I may find that I have to look for work elsewhere when I'm done! ack. Uncertainty blows.

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