Dear OC:
First, bear with me a minute. Open letters are a tricky undertaking–I need to tell you a few things that you already know for the sake of all those eavesdroppers who make up my larger audience. For example, you won’t be terribly surprised to learn that you are a management company and that you have managed the house where I’ve lived since last August.
And it shouldn’t come as news to you that, as of today, this house has new owners and new managers.
In other words, it’s time to say goodbye.
So now, let me tell you a few things you probably don’t know:
1. A friend from Hong Kong reports that his family of five lives in an apartment no larger than a dorm room but as expensive as a house here on campus. His personal space consists of a single dresser drawer and one bunk of a bunk bed, which he can close off with a blanket in the cooler seasons. It is unlikely that his siblings will move out before they marry.
2. Over the summer, hundreds of students were booted from their apartments in the Olympic Village of housing-starved Munich to make way for visiting athletes.
3. At Denmark’s Technical University, international students live in containers–those little boxes you see at construction sites.
You see, there are places which are every bit as developed as Madison but that truly suffer from what can only be called a housing crisis. And that brings me to my point–as a management company, you provide a vital service to this city. In a general sense, you help satisfy Madison’s demand for housing. More personally, you keep a roof over my head.
Thanks, OC.
Now, I realize that such a note of thanks is a tad anomalous on a campus where apartment bashing practically qualifies as a rec sport. I’ve heard complaints from friends, and I’ve read them on the pages of this newspaper. In fact, I would venture that most tenants can and will readily list the failings of their particular apartment.
But I would similarly venture that homeowners are no less aware that their homes are far from perfect. Homeowners have old refrigerators and lead pipes and walls that need paint. Homeowners are just as frustrated as tenants when a repair person fails to show up or a garbage disposal loses a pitched battle against a spoon.
That probably sounds familiar to you, OC. As a homeowner extraordinaire, you know that it’s no fun owning an old house–broken things need to be fixed, those lead pipes need to be replaced, steep property taxes need to be paid. You have to comply with a host of city regulations, satisfy your tenants and figure out how much to charge in advance so that you’ll still turn enough of a profit to make it all worth it.
Of all the landlords I’ve had in college, you are without question the best, OC. But the others have not been bad.
Granted, crappy landlords do exist. They’re the ones who rent unsafe apartments, fail to comply with city ordinances and treat their tenants poorly.
They’re the ones who carpet the bathroom. They’re the businesses that deserve to go out of business.
But far too often, we tenants fail to distinguish between a mediocre apartment and a mediocre landlord. In other words, outstanding landlords can manage pretty run-down apartments that rent for a lot less than brand-new places with fancy-sounding names. As a tenant, I call that a bargain.
Whenever I had a problem, you would be there the next day–often the same day–to fix it. You were pleasant. Efficient. Effective. This is a reflection of you as a company; it has absolutely nothing to do with my actual apartment.
You probably know the reason why many campus apartments have old appliances, questionable plumbing and rather unique character: They’re cheap. And they’re usually rented.
Government ensures that I have a safe place to live. But I get to balance my desire for a nice place with my desire to pay as little for it as possible. That’s capitalism.
If you’ve met the new owners of my place, you know that they are energetic and ambitious. They’ve asked me to put together a list of “issues” with my apartment, and they intend to do much of the work themselves. My list now includes items like mowing the roof and replacing the mirror of death. But with every item I add, I wonder how much it will cost me should I choose to renew. I don’t want to lose my bargain.
That reminds me, OC–my toilet now double flushes. It’s a strange phenomenon, although better than its previous states of a) not running, b) continuously running and c) continuously running and not draining. Of course, you’ve been good about fixing it before, and I know you would’ve fixed it again.
But as a special thank you, I’ve saved the double flush for the new guys.