We have a little one bedroom cottage behind our house that we rent out. It's not like we have a use for it, so it's nice to have the extra income. It has a separate entrance, and most of the time we hardly see the person who lives there. Except for the fact that they come in through a gate at the side of the house and go through the back yard, which gets the dogs going crazy everytime they come in or out. But other than that, it's kind of cool. Mia has a tendency to love whoever lives there, especially after one lady (this kind of disgusting one) started feeding her things like ribs and chicken wings. We got to deal with the resulting dog farts, and the tenant had a nightly visitor whenever she came in that ran in as soon as she opened the door. She definitely got the better end of that deal (cuz we got the back end and it wasn't pretty). Since then, Mia is absolutely convinced that who ever is back there has got to be better than her cruel, totally neglectful (i.e. crazy people who will only feed her DOG FOOD twice a day and hardly any scrapes) owners.
Anyway, for the most part part, its a good deal. But I had no idea how having a little place to rent out would bring out SO MANY crazies. Everytime we look for some one to fill the spot, we're inundated with wackos and bums. So now that I'm married to G and part of the fun, I don't have to go into the world to meet crazies. They come right to my door. That particular lady with the ribs was my first experience with G's tenants a couple of years ago. She started chain smoking as soon as she moved in AND moved in her girlfriend with whom she would have frequent arguments. It took us several paint jobs and new carpets to even partially get out the smoke smell. And the random bits of furniture that was in the house while she was living there are STILL airing out in the garage. The best was when I got to meet the girlfriend face to face. G was out of town. Apparently the two ladies had had a fight, and she was knocking on the door asking for a ride to the airport cuz she'd been kicked out. Um, ok. And stupid me got caught off guard and said YES. Even though the airport is like an hour away. No wonder crazies are drawn to me, right? But I don't know, I don't do well under pressure. And it turned out that I was actually picking G up from the airport a couple of hours later, so somehow it seemed like a fine idea to just take her up with me. Except that I wasn't leaving for a couple of hours, and as soon as I said yes, she brought all her bags and just sort of sat on the couch and waited, until I finally decided to just drive to get it over with and figured I'd kill time near the airport until G's flight got in. And the worst part about the whole thing (well, if I had to pick just ONE) was that she cried and complained THE WHOLE RIDE UP and for the entire time, I had no idea what her name was. Seeing as how she wasn't even on the lease to begin with. Turned out that she had flown out from Texas to be with our chain-smoking, rib-loving tenant, and they'd had this on-again, off-again relationship for YEARS. Awesome. That was already way more than I needed to know, but since the ride was an hour long, I got to hear all the gritty details.
So then, when we started looking for some one to replace the tenant (whose gay AND straight sex encounters I knew WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT), our prize candidate was this lady who kept calling and pestering G until he finally agreed to show her the place. Her thing was that she needed Section 8 (low income) housing. We're not really authorized for that, but she seemed to think that we'd really love her and decide to go through all the red tape. And come on, who wouldn't be tempted after meeting her. She came around 9 o'clock at night with her belongings all loaded up in a van - she had already been kicked out of her housing and was ready to move in immediately. She sat in our living room and filled out her rental application instead of taking it with her. She listed her references but asked us not to call her last 2 landlords because they were spreading lies about her and had pretty much blackballed her in all of Santa Cruz county (hence the move to ours). She said it was fine to run her credit but fyi, she'd had some difficulties recently and her credit reflected that. She hoped we would understand. She didn't have a job. AND the best was when we asked for $20 to run her credit check along with her application. She wrote us a check but then called G the next morning asking if he wouldn't mind waiting . Needless to say, we didn't go with her. The sad part was that I think she was thinking the whole time that this place was the one. Like I got the sense (because she said as much) that she was already picturing how some of her belongings would look in certain corners of the apartment. I'm sure she would have loved to bring some stuff in from her van to test it out if we'd let her.
Most recently, we just had to find a new tenant at the beginning of Dec and she seems all right. Except that she's already been late with her first month's rent. Said that she could only withdraw so much $ from her ATM per day and didn't think ahead to get money before moving in (she waited until she was 2 days late to even start withdrawing the first increment). And couldn't pay by check cuz she lost her checkbook in the move. This was after we'd already agreed to let her pay the security deposit in 3 monthly installments. We'll see if we regret our selection. The problem is that we don't seem to get a ton of applicants each time, and we end up trying to pick the best of the lot. I guess the economy's not helping. And its sort of a unique little apartment, not really suited for families or anyone with excellent income. This girl definitely seemed better than the other call G got from some divorced lady with 3 kids who asked if "we could help her out" cuz she only made $600 a month. $600 TOTAL. For all her expenses. That's already less than what the apartment goes for, so I'm not sure how much help she was looking for. Plus she wanted to move all her kids in there too.
So clearly, we didn't have much to work with.
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