Scarborough Apartment
We gave our 60 days notice to our landlord (our 1 year lease having expired. Since then he has provided a constant source of harassment. Here’s what an ad for the apartment SHOULD look like:
$850.00 plus hydro.
Features include:
• T24 hour 501 streetcar TC stops right outside the front door with as much noise at possible so you always know it’s there – morning noon and night.
• Scarboro Beach and the boardwalk just steps away provides you with endless hours of entertainment along with free-spirited drunken teenagers and trashy domestic quarrels screaming things across the street at all hours on the weekends)
• No nosy landlords – these ones are in Thornhill and like to pretend you don’t exist. PLUS – they’ll take off to Florida for the entire winter without a forwarding address or phone number should anything go wrong.
• Walls painted poorly in bizarre colors with cheap paint that you can see through (don’t worry – they won’t repaint for you when you move in). These are studded with a colorful and varied history of tenants past. A fun game for children could be “guess what hung here in what year that still hasn’t been patched, sanded and painted over”
• You’ll save on hydro in the summer since there is no air conditioning and also in winter since the ineffective baseboard heating with the burning smell is more costly than you could ever imagine.
• “New” carpeting in the hallways (installed in 1985)
• “Fresh” painting in the hallways (done just before the carpets)
• Front door that often doesn’t close so you don’t always need your keys
• Door frames so rickety a good push will get you in – locked or unlocked.
• Intercom system that makes it impossible to tell if anyone is actually at the front door or if it’s just wind – who knows who you may be letting in?
• Plenty of storage provided you don’t own many clothes or anything else that needs to be put away.
• Sporadic (if any) snow removal makes navigating the icy sidewalks and stairs a winter treat. Your pets will love the nuggets of sharp, cutting salt that is set down once a month.
• Fascinating varied types of mold behind the crumbling bathroom tiles – with entire colonies of insects appearing in the bathtub every morning. Like Bits and Bites – you never know what you’ll get!
• Classy rust stains seeping from water damage on the bathroom ceiling (held up by masking tape in places)
• Vintage wiring featuring a breaker panel that flips off at will a couple times a week plunging you in the delight of darkness
• A great view of a dark and dirty red brick wall and your neighbors looking directly into all 4 rooms just a few feet outside your window – it’s so easy to make friends
• Bare wires hanging from the ceiling where there should be a lighting fixture – just like Berlin in 1945!
• Electrical outlets that may or may not work (it’s always a gamble – what fun!)
• Indoor/outdoor stone gray cleaning-resistant carpeting spotted with stains, cigarette burns, iron burns, and fraying sections near the doorways.
• Cracked, broken ceramic tiles in the hall lend a seedy, decadent air
• Cheap stuck-on vinyl tiling in the kitchen for that faux-diner look with original vintage rust-colored linoleum flooring still viewable between the badly set cracks and blackened glue
• Economical use of garbage disposal at the back of building – keeping the available bins to a minimum encourages lively nightly visitors and a thriving insect culture attracted by the fragrant, bountiful contents of the bins spilling everywhere.
• Lingering mold smell from sewage back up last year that flooded the lower floor.
• Plentiful rust stains in tub and sinks from the wonderfully antique plumbing
You will need last month’s rent as a deposit as well as 12 postdated cheques. For more fun, the Landlord will gladly call you at work to harass you and threaten to sue you and garnishee your wages for not giving him the cheques that your bank account are showing as clearly already cashed – and don’t think he’s going to repay you the interest on the deposit cheque either – he’ll insist that law doesn’t exist.
Viewings available weekends or evenings by appointment, though really who are we kidding? Anytime is fine! The landlord feels free to send anyone into the apartment he chooses at any hour whether the current tenants are home or not and with or without their permission.
As he will tell you – most residents are very pleased with the premises and have been here for years so it is rare that a unit comes available (never mind the tacky plastic For Rent sign stuck to the front door at the end of nearly every month, that’s just there for ambiance). He’ll also tell you he doesn’t rent to people with pets and if you tell him you have one he’ll claim you never mentioned it later. Of course it’s also illegal to refuse renting to someone if they have a dog or cat, but don’t worry – when you move in it will become very clear that he was only fooling and nearly every unit has a dog or cat.
The Landlord has been sued several times by past tenants already with several documented breaches on record. Here goes one more.
Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.