Know your rights

A previous commenter brought up an important issue… landlords and your rights as tenants.

If anyone out there is like me I didn’t understand how many rights I had as a tenant and how many of said laws had been broken by my landlords.  I highly suggest reading through your rights at http://www.tenantsunion.org/rights/

This website not only explains your rights through the process of finding a place and signing a lease, but also the rights you have when you are living there and are in need of maintenance repairs. 

I know I’m not alone when I say my landlord has been neglectful of my phone calls regarding maintenance issues.  Suddenly you are going straight to voicemail and your phone calls are mysteriously never being returned, now if this happens it is important to know there is a solution.

First 

Landlords have 24hrs to fix an issue which creates a dangerous living environment, (electricity, heat, water temperatures, leaks that won’t stop.)

Landlords have 72hrs to fix major appliances, (fridge OR oven,) and plumbing

Landlords have a maximum of 10 days to fix anything else that requires maintenance

Second

If your landlord does not respond there are several options you can:

· Report them
· Fix it yourself

• Deduct the cost for repairs equaling as much as third of one month of rent

· Hire a repairman

• Deduct the cost of labor and repairs equaling as much as half of one month’s rent. 

It is important to know your rights as a tenant because it appears that landlords tend to break many of the laws we are privy to.  So speak up and get your landlords whipped into shape because lucky us they cannot retaliate on us for reporting them!

klutz

When I moved home I moved an apartment FULL of my stuff home as well…

With my parents gone enjoying sunshine in Hawaii for the week I decided to take full advantage of it, and tear the house apart looking for said items. 

The house now looks like a massive tornado has blown through it,
And I one of its victims.

I must admit I am a massive klutz… anyone that has known me for more than five minutes can attest to this.

In the past two days I have cut my hand twice in the most inconvenient of places, jammed my ribs into the banister on my stairs, burnt my finger on my toaster, (nothing to do with moving… but yet another affirmation that I am indeed a klutz,) and injured my back.

This has led me to realize one thing; I need a boyfriend.

Can I afford to pay for a back massage to fix my back? No.
But if I had a boyfriend he would feel obligated to help make me feel better… right?

My parents being in Hawaii means one other thing, I am in charge of my grandmother who has to take a ton of medication and has dementia, which I am sure you can imagine is not a good combination.  This morning I woke up to a phone call at 7:30 from her, explaining to me that she had forgotten to turn the hose off the night before and had flooded the basement.

Needless to say four hours of shopvac’ing her basement I now have eight calluses and a bruised foot to add to my list of injuries.

So word of advice when you are moving hire someone if you happen to be anywhere near as big of a klutz as I am…
and ladies get yourself a man/woman to give you free massages.

Atlast

So after close to five months of searching, we finally did it. We found an apartment with a nice landlord, that accepts co-signers, and isn’t the size of the trunk of my car. It is spacious, sunny, and only two blocks from infamous Alki beach… never mind the 1970’s countertops, we are telling ourselves they just add character.

After all the ups and downs,

Okay mostly downs

of our search, it seemed pretty unlikely that we would ever find a place that we really liked and that would take us without some mass form of deception. It ended up that we actually found two such places and had to decide between them. While it was difficult to figure out the pros and cons of each apartment, it just was nice that we even had a choice.

I think it is a good reminder that you have to be ridiculously determined in order to find a place that is willing to except you when you are first starting out. 

The lease begins in a few weeks but I have already begun packing all of my things away… and I mean all of my things.  This means the vast majority of my clothes.

 So I ask you this questions, is it acceptable to wear the same piece of clothing for three weeks straight since I already packed everything else away… or would that be frowned upon?

The three month rule

YES!

We finally found a decent apartment in our price range.  We made the correct rent amount, double one months’ rent, and we were finally beginning to feel hopeful.  That was a mistake.  We were certain everything would go through, because we made sure to discuss everything so we wouldn’t be surprised with the outcome, or so we thought.  I just received a phone call from the apartment complex informing us our application did not get approved. 

Why? You ask.

Because they require that applicants have had their job for at least three months.  Now my friend is moving from Bellingham after graduating from Western Washington University.  She needs to live here to be able to get to work, however; she apparently needs to be working at her job for a minimum of three months.  I ended up calling around after hearing this, and it seems to be a very common practice in West Seattle.

So I implore this new question, how do you work at a place for three months if you have nowhere to live? 

Not student friendly

Finding the perfect apartment should be exciting… right?  Not when it’s a never ending search. 

If you want to share an infinitesimal studio with a roommate then you’re in luck.  For a mere 400 dollars apiece you can live in a death box.  When watching a movie you can sit in your roommates lap in the only chair that will fit in the unit.  If you’re looking for something a bit ritzier then that, that’s where the trouble begins.  A two bedroom near the junction starts at $1025 and goes all the way up to $2400.  When you are a student on a strict budget paying anywhere near $1200 dollars for half of one months’ rent is out of the question. 

So you finally find a place that is in your budget and isn’t ridiculously small or run down.  You are the first people to turn in your applications.  You’re in the clear, right?  

WRONG.

Many places in West Seattle have an awesome rule.  They do not allow cosigners, nor do they seem to care if you are a student.  Living in Bellingham I grew very accustomed to landlords being more then willing to accept students with zero income and allowing someone to cosign for them.  Many landlords just took your word that you would be able to pay the rent.  Being in a college town, they were all very used to students and more then accommodating to them.  The landlords do not care that your family will be financing your living expenses.   They do talk about how nice that is and how lucky you are, but then they inform you they will not accept your application because the people renting the apartment need to make 3xs the rent amount on their own regardless of where the rent money comes from... because apparently it matters where the money comes from. 

So I implore this question.  How do you find a place to live in West Seattle as a student?  Because four months into searching and it’s starting to feel more like doom then any sort of excitement.