Eviction Chronicles - Brimming With Schadenfreude

Due to coerced mediation last week, while I got all my money back from my scumbag landlord, I am faced with the prospect of writing him a $2,500 check tomorrow for April rent.

It's not the money on my end so much that I care about, it's the fact that this scam artist can legally collect rent from a property that he hasn't paid a bill for in well over a year.

So it is with great delight that I greeted the flood that hit our basement yesterday - one that knocked out our hot water tank!

You see, now I don't have to pay rent tomorrow - I can at least hold it off until the hot water is restored.

All that's really wrong is the pilot light is out. But in our experience here, it hasn't been easy to re-light. In fact once, my Moronic landlord tried to do it himself only to come barreling out of the basement in a mad search for a fire extinguisher.

Apparently, the tank needs to be slightly disassembled and dried off by someone who knows what they are doing.

But this little problem isn't going to be fixed cheaply.

You see, my landlord has stiffed so many local plumbers that none of them will even return his calls - ESPECIALLY not on a day like today when every basement in Massachusetts is underwater.

The one buffoon plumber who has been doing the latest work for my landlord....I've seen several bills from him recently in the mailbox for my landlord. Obviously, my criminally-deadbeat landlord decided to stiff him as well on his unapologetic march towards bankruptcy.

So essentially, there isn't a plumber who will even respond to my landlord, or so I instantly calculated this morning when my wife woke me complaining of *cold shower*.

My landlord is probably going to have to call his most recent plumber, pay him the few hundred bucks or so he most certainly already owes him, AND then pay him at least another $100 to take care of my heater (and my two clogged sinks). All told, I figure this incident might cost my landlord $500 easily.

Because....for every day I'm here with no hot water to shower, do laundry, wash dishes, etc....I'm going to deduct 1/30th of my rent!!! (That would be $83.33 per diem.)



The timing was absolutely perfect - coming the very day before rent was due. So he knows well that the rent check will be held in *abeyance* until the matter is resolved. Any other landlord, who hadn't harassed and attempted to rob me would have been cut some slack - but not this jerk

AND, this was perfect timing in the sense that the weather is supposed to really warm up in the next two days - 75 degrees I believe is forecast for Saturday. Quick cold showers won't have the bite they otherwise have in the dead of winter.

So I'm happily hoping that no plumber comes for a few days. My wife can shower at the gym near her office. Me? I actually smell better after a few days...

For the prior installment in this long-running saga that might eventually give Bonanza a run for its money....See - Eviction Chonicles - Wimping Out.