Picked the wrong person to mess with

I’ve lived in that house for 14 years.  My landlord and I have always had a tenuous relationship mainly because she’s essentially a slumlord and every time I asked her for some maintenance, she would say “I can fix that but I will have to raise your rent”.  Uh, no, that’s not how it’s supposed to work.  I used to get that little panicked feeling, heart racing sort of thing whenever she called or emailed

That was then, this is now.  Nothing she says or does scares me in the slightest.  Now when I have some sort of communication with her, my eyes roll back in my head and I have to steel myself from her idioticness

When Mar moved out in June, I thought sweet, I’ll have this nice albeit termite ridden place to myself finally.  I got this.  Then I got fired from my job, which resulted in a law suit, but that’s not what this is about.  I wasn’t able to afford this place on my own, with no job. I had a little bit of money stashed away, so I was ok for a little bit (quite ok actually, surprised myself), but I put it out there that I needed a roommate and lo and behold my friend Debi said her friend needed a place

Won’t get into Martine here, suffice it to say he’s not my favorite person on the planet, why I am moving in with him is still a mystery, however at the time and to some extent now, he’s a means to an end.  Pays half the rent, stays in his room the whole time, we don’t have to share a bathroom, etc.

Dragon Lady found out that I had a roommate, because when they came over to look at the roof or some other maintenance work, she being a snoop, checked into all the rooms. She then gave me a 3-day notice to quit when I confirmed that I did in fact have someone living there.

My infraction? Not having smoke alarms (which I do, no battery in it, but it’s there, like it has been since 2003) and for having an additional person in the unit.  My rental agreement states it covers TWO adults, and if the tenants wanted to add additional occupants, THEN they had to go through the vetting process, etc.

Did not once panic when she gave me the notice, because I am in the right here.  I checked with my friend here in Legal and she said that I was in fact correct that my rental agreement covered two adults, etc.

I did however tell Dragon Lady that if she was going to play that card, then I wanted my over payment of my rent back. And she lost it.  Said she hadn’t even looked into any of that over payment stuff and to send her an invoice

Girl bye

The history on the overpayment, elevator speech: Mountain View voted in rent stabilization in 2016, told landlords to roll back rent to October, 2015 amount, starting December, 2016, and ongoing rent increases would come from the city, not arbitrarily by the landlords.  For example, Dragon Lady raised my rent almost 8% in September, 2017 when the new rent stabilization act said it could be no more than 5% and that for that time period (9/17-18) it would 3.4%.  She didn’t think our units fell under that new rent control, so I took it upon myself to do the research, and contact the City.  Come to find out that our units DO fall under it, and she’s been overcharging since December, 2016.  To the tune of $1408 to be exact

I have been emailing her since I gave notice about all the crazy things that are wrong with my unit.  It’s literally falling apart.  No response for quite a few days.  I resent her the paperwork that she asked for, as well as the invoice and stated, if you don’t address these items, I will be filing a petition with the City

She’s addressed everything except the over payment of rent

So it’s a slow day here at work, I spent a good part of the afternoon gathering data for the petition that I am filing against her with the City.  All copied and documented, to the dime.  I have her copy and I will ‘serve’ her with these papers on Sunday at our walk through of the house

I am actually really surprised I saved every piece of paper she gave me.  Comes in handy being an Office Manager sometimes.