Slumlord Thousandaire*

English: Picher, OK, May 14,2008 — The kitchen frame of a house in Picher remains intact as does the dishes in the cabinets. Ottawa County in Oklahoma received a declaration as a result of a recent tornado and severe storms. Barry Bahler/FEMA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I’m in the area so I’m coming to look at the house with you,” I told my husband over the phone.

“I’m already here,” he said.  ”The landlord hasn’t arrived yet.”

“And?”

“It’s got some… issues,” he said carefully.

“Such as?”

“Cosmetic stuff.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”  I hung up and cooed to the crying baby in the back seat.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the house were the walls.  They were scuffed, dented, and in bad shape.  The kitchen was tiny with barely any cabinets.  Those cabinets that existed were covered in a thick coating of red paint.  One of the drawers was missing a front.  Some of the kitchen floor tiles were missing.

The walls were no better in the rest of the house. Two of the four bedrooms had doors covered in stickers.  Two of the bedrooms were carpeted, something brown and dirty.

“I know I need to replace some tiles in the hall bathroom,” the landlord said.  The whole area where the soap dish would have been was gone.  The area where the tile should have been was in bad shape.

“Will you be painting before we move in?” I asked.

“You all can paint if you like, maybe I can knock a little bit off the rent.”

It was a small house, and dirty.  Lots of missing tiles in the rooms that had tile.  Huge garage missing one of the windows.  Just bad, and not good.  He was asking more in rent than we were currently paying for a lovely two story house in a great neighborhood.

The upside is the neighborhood was nice and the yard was gorgeous.  There was one old rotten tree that had fallen in the backyard.

“That will need to be removed,” I remarked.

He ignored me.

I commented that the neighborhood looked safe, and he noted that it was.  ”This place has been empty for over 2 months and there has been no break-in.”

The place had also been empty for 2 months with no attempts to make repairs to make the place more inhabitable, or at the very least worth the rent being asked for it.  He offered to take us by a couple of other places that were currently being occupied by renters who would shortly be evicted.  We politely declined.

Thank goodness we had other options.

*I bet a million people have come up with that pun, huh?