Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 3)

I could probably start a blog devoted entirely to the crazy people I've encountered over the years in the rental business, but I'm highlighting three in particular. What they all have in common is that they arrived in the late fall/early winter and I let them in. Inherited crazy people are one thing--you can always blame the former management. Having to take responsibility for knowingly lowering the bar to infest the community with crazy people is all kinds of humbling.

I did this to us. I did this to my nice, normal, wonderful residents who I worked so hard to attract and retain.

Now that I've announced my shame, let's jump right in to the story of Crazy People #3. A couple we will call Crazy Woman and Crazy Man.

They had just moved to Omaha from Utah. She, a Mormon, he, a pack a day smoker, not even pretending to be Mormon. They applied for the apartment on the end so he can go straight out the door to light up (being that we have a no-smoking policy).

Let me pause and say now that though it is illegal, it is almost impossible not to stereotype people who are applying for an apartment. That is why we have a tenant selection policy laying out the criteria for applicants. We screen everyone the exact same way every time. We verify that the applicant's income is at least three times their monthly rent, we ask standard questions to their former landlord, we run a credit check and we do a criminal background check.

My problem is not that I form an opinion and want to turn people down, it's that I form an opinion and want to give them a chance.

Crazy Woman played the Mormon card. We rent another apartment to the Mormon church (actually we rent it to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Utah Corporation Sole) which is occupied by various young men on their mission. They are some of the best residents ever. They are polite. They are tidy. They are always asking if they can help me with anything. The only complaint I have ever had about them was from another one of my inherited crazy neighbors who called to see if they had asked permission to use our basketball hoop. You know, the basketball hoop that is right out in the parking lot for anyone to use. (Tattle tale is gone now, by the way.)

Anyway, since I'm on this rabbit trail let me burrow a little deeper. I'm not trying to enter some discussion or debate about the Mormon faith. This is not a theological comment. I'm just saying that I have never met a Mormon that I didn't like. I was the coordinator of a Mormon Youth Conference one summer in college. Great people. All 500 of them. Wonderful, respectful young people and a joy to work with.

I was hired by a quasi-famous Mormon once. Mitt Romney's son Taggert was at a career fair in Boston and he hired me to work for a pre-explosion dot-bomb for a few months while I was looking for a real job. We traveled to a conference once where we were trying to get graduating seniors to give us their email address by offering a trip to Europe. Tagg was amazing. Nothing dissuaded him from asking the next group who wandered by, "Would you like to win a trip to Europe?" When I got a negative reply, I became rather passive and gun shy. Not Tagg. He was relentless.

I asked him about that on our plane ride back to Boston and he told me that after being a Mormon missionary for two years, no rejection even comes close. I saw his point. There is no repellent stronger than a pair of clean-cut 19-year-olds wearing shirts and ties riding on bicycles. I've always kept this in mind when interacting with my missionary neighbors. Thanks Tagg.

Anyway, I must have had all those positive Mormon thoughts swirling through my mind when going to bat for Crazy Woman and Crazy Man. OK, so they've had their car repo'd. Their landlord said they always paid the rent. I have all kinds of apartments vacant. Did I mention my phone never rings? Let's give 'em a shot!

And we did.

At first I was so proud of my good instincts. Things were great. He was handy, a mechanic, and he kept our lawnmower in working order. They asked if we could help with anything. Genuinely nice people.

I'm not exactly sure when things started to crumble. The first thing that was mildly alarming was that he traded his truck (he said it was a gas guzzler) for a Batmobile. To be more precise, it was an old Trans Am or something like that. It was hard to tell being that it was spray painted black with a spray painted Batman symbol on the hood. Crazy Man was always working on that thing. We probably have some rule against it, but since I had allowed him to repair our lawnmower I kind of felt weird not allowing him to work on his car. It wasn't too big of a deal except in the heat of summer when he worked shirtless.

I haven't yet described the Crazy Couple. Lest you envision some hunky mechanic sweating away under the hood with his shirt off, let me give you some visual realignment. Crazy Man had some teeth issues. I don't know that I can provide much detail because I tried not to look at them, but I have a fuzzy notion that there may have been some missing and I'm fairly certain that none of them were white. Now move your eyes down the torso to the beer belly. Now cover everything with a filmy sort of grime that never washes away. Add the smell of B.O. and you pretty much have the picture.

Crazy Woman was stout and appeared to have razor stubble...on her face, poor dear.

When I met them I really just had that heartwarming thought that there is someone out there for everyone and these two found each other. I realize that my descriptions probably sound rude, but that's not my intention. I just really think you need to have the picture so you can experience the full shock of what happened with these two.

At this point, nothing had transpired that would be considered a lease violation. They were a curiosity, but harmless. I did have some concerns about our property giving off a slight "white trash" vibe, but sometimes he would be at work and there would be hours with no Batmobile visibility. A few times the rent had been late, but there was always a bailout from the Latter-day Saints. As long as the rent gets paid, we are not particular about where it comes from so as far as we were concerned, they were in good standing.

Then the fighting started. Turns out that the Batmobile was evidence of a mid-life crisis and Crazy Man was out picking up chicks with his sweet ride. I could hardly believe it myself. Not just one, but at least two women find this man attractive. And then it occurred to me...Crazy Man may have been hitting on me all along.

I'm generally naive about such things, but in this case the idea of it is so far fetched I think I just did not see it. At all. But there was this one day that he said something kind of weird and it struck me as funny at the time. I even told Bo about it because it was so odd. I was trying to install an under-the-cabinet microwave and I had reached a point where I needed some help. I'm not that strong and you have to be able to lift a dinosaur of a microwave (circa 1988) up into the slots before screwing it in. I didn't want to make the tenant wait for her awesome microwave and our maintenance crew was busy dealing with air conditioning issues and other more urgent matters so I was taking the task into my own hands. Crazy Man was around so I asked him if he would help me a minute just lift the microwave up so I can get it screwed in.

Our kitchens are small and it's kind of awkward craning your neck under the cabinet and reaching around a sweaty guy to get the thing plugged in and attached. What made it more awkward is when he looked over at me, smiled and said, "We make a great team."

I honestly don't even know what I said in that moment. I was completely dumbfounded.

But when I found out that Crazy Man was a ladies man, it occurred to me that he may have been trying to test the waters, which I'm sure he found quite frigid in this case. At any rate, whether or not he was trying to hit on me is beside the point. Crazy Man was a cheater.

All of a sudden, things got all Jerry Springer on us. The poor woman who lived above them reported that they had slammed doors so hard her picture had fallen off the wall. She also indicated that she's not that big on listening to people yell, "You had sex with her and then came home and had sex with me?!?" Then the police came and took Crazy Woman to jail. Her emotional stability was definitely in question, not that she didn't have a reason to be an emotional wreck, but she was out of control.

And then Crazy Woman told me she is scared because Crazy Man owns a gun.

That kind of stuff is definitely not OK.

So we issued a 14-30, which basically says, "You have 2 weeks to stop doing what you're doing or you will have to move in 30 days."

You just have to love the legal process. Go ahead and keep doing what you're doing for the next two weeks, but as long as you stop on day 15 you can stay.

Well, they stopped. For awhile. Then there was one more incident involving the police and we had a decision to make. We now had grounds to file for eviction based on the 14-30.

She is emotionally unstable. He has a gun.

I will admit, I weighed these options very carefully and decided not to evict them. Instead we waited them out. Things remained quiet, but when their lease expired, we did not renew it. They were given a 30 day notice to move for no reason.

Crazy Man and Crazy Woman were not at all happy with me. They did not understand our decision. In some ways it was hard, but the look of relief on the face of the woman upstairs was worth it all. I know it was the right thing to do.

So this fall I chose a mantra, "Vacant is Better than Crazy," to remind myself that crazy never works out. Sure, you might get some rent for awhile, but the drama is most certainly going to outweigh the benefits. The unfortunate thing, and I hope I am not writing about more drama a year from now, is that sometimes crazy people find normal people to rent an apartment for them. Sometimes crazy people have perfect credit and good jobs. Maybe I'm just negatively stereotyping, but I do believe that I have moved three crazy people into the same hallway in the same month.

Oh Lord, I hope I'm wrong...but I will keep you posted.