Three Minimum Wage Jobs Needed To Afford Two-Bedroom Apartment

[LibertyLover]

54. OMFG - that's an outrage

After I lost my house to foreclosure, partially because my husband declined to get a job as he had promised, we had to look for rentals. We live just outside DC and close to several military bases and the Naval Academy. The rents for sub-standard housing are incredible. The first place we rented was 80 years old and a former summer house so it was tiny. It was 2 tiny bedrooms and 1 bath. It went for $1450, 4 years ago The heating sucked. It had no real basement. The house was splitting in two due to subsidence and part of it at the back had crumbled, although my husband fixed it. The landlord could have cared less. We found out from the neighbors that his tenants generally stayed a year and then got out as fast as they could. The only saving grace was that he didn't care about our 4 dogs and didn't charge us a pet fee. The bathroom was in such bad shape that he actually had to pay a plumber to come out and put in a new shower pipe. The job the guy did was terrible - turned out he was the landlord's lawn person who claimed to be a plumber also.

We were going to stay another year, but couldn't get the landlord to ever sign a renewal lease, so we found another place which seemed better. It was slightly bigger and a bit cheaper. Sure, my commute increased by 20 minutes each way, but it seemed ok. That was until the first rain storm when the back porch and roof over the laundry area leaked. Then the entire ceiling over the washer/dryer fell down due to water. The front porch leaks, the living room and the dining room have leaked and we have had leaks in the master bedroom. The landlord has no money to fix the place. He is a Greek immigrant who claims to be a building contractor. The couple of times he's stopped by to "fix" the roof have proved he is grossly overstating his abilities. He'll put some goop on the roof, claim it's fixed and drive off. By the next rain storm the goop has dried and the roof leaks. Just recently we noticed the water tasting funny. It's a well. We are terrified that it's going bad. The landlord doesn't have the money to have a new well drilled. We put more salt in the conditioning unit and the water seems to be better, but we have decided that we will only stay one more year. My bankruptcy payments are finished in December and so after that we'll have more money for renting something slightly larger and hopefully better. Again, the one saving grace was that the landlord didn't care about our 3 dogs. I just hope that I'm able to buy something as soon as possible so that we don't have to worry about the dogs. But rents here are out of sight and for places that are almost uninhabitable.