Rental Talk

The AngryRenter.com website has accumulated quite an impressive following, some 48,000 members at last count, and has even been attacked by the Wall Street Journal.  

Angry Renter is a petition and gripe site, protesting the mortgage bailout in America.  Unfortunately according to the Wall Street Journal, it's nothing more than Astroturf - a fake grass-roots movement founded by former House majority leader Dick Armey and Republican publishing magnate Steve Forbes.
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The New York Times has a very distressing article on how poor black women are disproportionately suffering from evictions, as compared to any other demographic in the country.  The article is pinned on a sociological paper which was recently published, which draws out a number of causes for why poor black women are being evicted at a higher rate.  

"Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women," says the author of the study, sociologist Matthew Desmond.  Black women are more likely to be raising children than black men at the same income bracket.  This is a two-part blow for them financially: if you have children, you need a larger apartment.  And children can be kinda expensive in and of themselves, obviously.
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In the wake of all these stories about the mortgage market, and people walking away from their mortgages to save themselves, I wondered what it was doing to the rental market.  

In Seattle at least, I know that the rental market was being seriously squeezed in the years leading up to the housing crash.  I had several friends who were kicked out of their rental apartments because the building was converting to condos for sale.  This was the case all across the city - at one point I read that 80% of Seattle's rental units had been converted to condos, but I don't know if that number was accurate.  (How could they know?)
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I have seen the recommendation to "walk away from your mortgage" cropping up everywhere lately.  It sounded like fringe advice at first, but now I have seen it advised by financial advice celebrities like Suze Orman, and most recently in a New York Times article.

In fact, the Times is running two renting-positive articles at the same time - one recommending that homeowners stuck in an upside-down or "underwater" situation with their mortgage just walk away, and one exploring the stories of people (specifically men) who bought houses, came to regret it, and went happily back to renting.
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This morning I read a feature article where the editors of the New York Times interviewed famous authors on how they decide what to cull from their book collections.  I noticed that one of the authors admitted that he never does, and several others framed it as a hypothetical question, using words like "would."
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I'm sure you've noticed storage units cropping up all over the place, but did you know there are seven times as many storage unit facilities as there are Starbucks?  That we now have more than seven square feet of self storage space for every man, woman, and child in America, so that it's "physically possible that every American could stand - all at the same time - under the total canopy of self-storage roofing"?  Because seriously, I didn't!  

The New York Times has a long and engrossing article about storage unit rental.  I expected it to be a diatribe against the wastefulness of self storage, the waste of money, of time, of land, and of clutter.  But Jon Mooallem has written a far more nuanced article than I would have expected.  
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Anyone who has ever been in the lower income brackets has had to deal with less than satisfactory conditions in a rental property. Negligent building managers, sub-code utilities, ancient appliances, pests, loud neighbors... it's being stuck between the rock of a low income and a hard place called no representation. One tenant going up against a property manager is a losing battle and if that tenant is forced to live in low-rent housing, he or she certainly doesn't have the extra scratch to pay court fees, let alone hire a lawyer. Even if worthy disputes did make it to litigation, where would the prosecuting tenant live in the meantime? Perhaps low-income renters ought to do what low-wage workers did in the early 20th century: Organize.

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A new law in Richmond, California is outlawing cigarette smoking in all apartments, condominiums and public places. When my family and I were in San Francisco a few years ago, I remember how hard it was for my aunt to find a place to smoke—I’m sure residents of Richmond are feeling her pain.

Apparently the big anti-smoking campaign is in response to the American Lung Association grading the city with an “F.”

The ban will be enforced by January 1, 2001, following a ban already in effect against smoking in farmers markets, parks and other public places. Fines for smoking in an apartment will begin at $100. Read more

If you’re faced with moving from a house to an apartment, you’ve got a lot of good things in store for you—little to no maintenance, no property taxes, and possibly even perks like free water, trash or cable services. You probably even have at least a semi-furnished place awaiting where you don’t have to buy a fridge or a stove, saving you big bucks.

But the one thing that many apartments lack is sheer space. Sure, there are some huge lofts and really great multi-bedroom digs out there, but the average apartment is pretty cramped. So the question remains—what do you do with all your stuff?

Here are a few tips and tricks to use when you’ve got a small living space. (These can come in handy wherever you live—including small houses, too.)

Use every inch in site. If you have a jumbo space not in use but you still have piles of stuff, it’s time to rearrange. Read more

The economy's tight right now, so in the process of apartment hunting the first thing that comes to mind is price. Why pay any extra $100 if you don't have to?

I was recently in such a position. The rent at my current apartment was reasonable, but I thought I could do better, all things considered. After sifting through ads for boarding houses and shared bathroom Single Room Occupancy listings, I thought I found a good deal. Decent location (at least geographically speaking), private bath, private kitchen, and a significantly lower price. I didn't depend on it, but I thought that it couldn't hurt to schedule a visit.

Thus began the experience I have come to call, "Visiting the Worst Apartment in My City".

Now, I've seen bad apartments before, so I think I have a pretty thick skin about these things. I've toured the likes of a dump in Ohio with ancient, rubbery linoleum floors, cracked walls and light fixtures that were being held up with little more than a rusty nail and a daily prayer. Read more