Raymond

City: 
Lodi
Residence Type: 
Single unit
Landlord Type: 
Private Landlord -- Rent Control

It is very simply. I have lived in this house for just over three years, and have never once been late on my rent, and always paid the full $900.00 a month. I have not damaged the house in any way. I have let the back yard go, because I became ill and could not afford to hire anyone to keep it up. My landlady lives right next door and spys on everything I do in the yard. My ex-wife visits here part of the time,to help take care of our Grandchildren and she is 100% disabled through the social security, so she cannot do very much in the line of yardwork. My landlord, the husband died about a year ago, and I had signed a rental agreement with him, but now the landlady and her daughter want me to sign a new rental agreement (month to month), which the original one is also, and wants me to pay $90.00 more in rent. Now this wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the new rental agreement being a lot more restrictive then the first one. My landlady is always spying on us, by getting up as early as 4:30 am to see if any cars are parked in front of our house, other then the ones that normally are. Now I have two vehicles and my ex-wife has one. I let my son and daughter-in-law use one of my vehicles, and my ex-wife lets them use her car, when they need to. This last Labor Day weekend, on Monday, the landlady called me up and stated that she knew that my kids had all spent the last four days and nights at our house, which is very far from the truth. They all spent one night, and my son came to our house at 3:00 or so am on Sunday morning that weekend, because they were at a party, and he did not want to stay, and us being the closer house, he just came here. The other memebers (4) of the family came over on Sunday night and picked our son up and went home. The reason that my landlady thought that they had stayed all four days at our house, was that the Van I own had a flat tire and could not be fixed until Tuesday that week, due to the holiday weekend. this is how I know that she gets up early to spy on us. Also, my landlady made appointments verbally over the phone, instead of in writing, and broke all but one, which she was late getting to. Last night 10/28/10 the landlady and her daughter were suppose to come over to inspect my bedroom, because I work on Thursday nights, and have to sleep in the afternoon, so my landlady, without telling her daughter, who does not live with her, did not tell her daughter that she had agreed that I could go to bed while they were doing an annual walk through, and the daughter, according to my ex-wife, got very upset, and stated that they would be coming back to see that room yesterday, which they never did. I waited for them to come over to inspect that room until 6:30 pm and then went to the store and made arrangements with my other supervisor for him to stand my duty last night, and I will stand a day of his in the future. Thank goodness that I can do this type of swapping with my assistant, because most jobs would not allow this and a person would just lose a day of wages. I have spoken to an attorney about all of this and he stated that if I wanted to go through the exspence of a law suit for harassment, he would be very happy to take the case. This spying on us and harassment has been going on every since her husband passed away. I and my ex-wife will not even use the pool that I put in the back yard, because we know that she is watching us, every time that we go out to have fun with our grandchildren. Since I spoke to an attorney, I know what she is doing is unlawful, but because we are trying to come up with money to buy our own home, and can't, at this time, afford to file a law suit, and that is why I am writing this story, to see if your organization can help us in some way. I would also like to see this landladies name on the Landlords Hall of Shame. There are more issues that I could put down here, that my landlady is guilty of, like when they came into this house and her daughter opened the doors under the kitchen sink, and just started pulling our paper and plastic bags and potatoes out from under the sink, and exclaimed to my ex-wife that a board was missing, and what did we do with it. My landlady knows very well that plumber had to go under this house after her husband passed away and replace the entire galvanized piping system, because it was rusted out and making me and my ex-wife ill from the stagnent water that had accumilated under the house. The plumber must not have put the board in question back under the sink when they were done. I did not inspect their work, because as far as I know this is the landladies responsibility. My question here is, does the landlady have the right to disturbe or rumage through our personal belongings to see if there is mildew or a missing board or anything else? That is all that I have time to write. I hope that your organization can do something, that will not cost us money. Thank you for your time.

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