Pulling my hair out fron electric company

[ohiofarmer 3,265]

    Long story short, they energized the wrong apartment. Now there is a risk of squatters. If you are interested, read on, but warning that it could go for a while.......

 

 

    I have this apartment that is empty on one side and abandoned on the other side.  Our governor came up with the theory that no one could be evicted starting March 2020  That followed through to september of this year. without getting political, it was because of the elegant theory that evicted people would spread the virus if evicted. This followed through two presidents and a federal health commisioner, so a year and a half. Then the supreme court called the whole mess unconstitutional, but the damage is already done.  The tenant partied the money away with drugs and left the electric company a bill for eighteen hundred, so I suppose that the company was told not to shut off power for the same reason he did not have to pay rent. The tenant actually helped to scrap a furnace and water heater out of the basement before he left. The house is stacked full like they just vanished, so even at that , the safe course is to remove the trash to the garage with reasonable care and put a notice for recovery in a newspaper add.

  I could go on about the rotten food in the fridge, but you get the idea

   I called AES power the other day and explained that I wanted the second apartment turned on so I could protect the water pipes and at the same time got the balance of what he owed on the abandoned unit. We also discussed that I did not want that unit turned on until the eviction was resolved.Christmas eve, i went there and as stated before , they turned on the wrong side. If this guy breaks into and occupies the apartment again, it will have to be a court eviction. To prevent that, I will have to go into the basement and remove the main breakers and harden up the basement entry.

 

  i was pretty proud of myself for taking the time to clearly mark the meter head to each apartment address and also to hand write ' To AES turn on 413 apartment"   Now they will not even take a service call until Tuesday. The tenant went from having a job and paying rent to putting every dollar in aid he got into his arm. i feel sorry for his kids, but not because they might be taken away, but that they might not be and have to live with him and their mom, who is also on the needle. Fortunately, I found an eye witness to the furnace and water heater theft, constituting a felony.  I am not very confident in the court system, however.

 

  In my opinion, the entire loss for this should be a direct 100 percent deductions from taxes [not income but taxes] since the supreme court deemed it illegal. Not holding me breath on that one.I left a lot of details out of this for brevity, but let me tell you  , it has been a tough year and a lot of screaming at the TV news... They wiil say that there was a program for landlords to recover losses, but it was a sham. So many hoops to jump through that it was not worth it.

 

 

 

[Darb1964 1,042]

That's not right and it sucks ,and like you stated, you will most likely never be compensated. The biggest tragedy is their children, I seen more of that than you can imagine being a cop for fifteen years.

 

We have my in laws house and have rented it since they passed, we have held onto it because it's handicapped friendly. Luckily the tenants have paid the rent throughout the epidemic.

[Ed Kennell 38,158]

[953 nut 55,198]

My persona advise would be to pay the bills, burn any and all associated paper work and never think about it again. The more you dwell on a situation you can not fix the more it will eat away at your soul.

 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change

 

the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

[ohiofarmer 3,265]

  It got a LOT worse. So the guy came back after being in rehab [allegedly]  and expects his house back.   It used to be enough to put up the three day notice and if no one was there, clean it out. But the powers that be run the court system like a cabal, and you need to file and pay for a trial. then maybe a month. The police told me the dude said he had no water and I locked him out. I asked them how could he verify the water if he was locked out ?  Why did they assume he was telling the truth about anything? In fact the water was on, but i told them it would not be on for long if he did not start heating the house.

  My plan became to cut the water off to save ten thousand in damages and just put the water supply accessible from the outside where the tenant could get it from a spigot.I told the police if that does not suit them to place me under arrest .  So the dude wants to live in an apartment with no heat and no hot water??

  Gonna go back and put RV antifreeze in the pipes, but without water pressure in them, Pex should be fine. i pulled off the toilet tank because water will be carried in to flush it. To top it off, after being sick, I went back there in the rain and checked stuff out and pulled the toilet tank, The next day I dropped a hundred in materials on the water system. Materials for common plumbing repairs are up by 100 percent easily. It's pretty incredible that they will let a person not pay his electric bill and stay in a cold house, but get after the landlord trying to keep his pipes from freezing.

  I got much sicker after all the running around and stress. Probably another hit at the virus. Living on steaming hot chicken broth to keep gong as that was about the only thing that let me cough my way out of the [probably omicron}  Nope, I did not get tested. not going to a test site where sick people are and get the vid for sure. not home testing as the test is not reliable and uses a very dangerous chemical as a reagent to activate the test strip.

  Don't hate on me for working sick. the cops were on my tail because i was gonna protect my pipes from freezing. I had no choice really. First indications of being sick was Christmas Day, and just this morning i can finally cough out all the stuff that was in me.

Edited January 2, 2022 by ohiofarmer

[c-series don 8,690]

It’s amazing how the landlord has basically no rights. I think New York might be worse than Ohio. Good luck, I hope everything works out, and your health improves. 

[rmaynard 15,436]

Whoever writes these laws must think that all landlords are rich. This is why my wife and I got out of the landlord business. Even long before Covid, it was nearly impossible to evict a deadbeat tenant, and impossible to collect back rent and other losses. I feel for you. Unfortunately, there is no solution that won't cost you money.

[ohiofarmer 3,265]

1 hour ago, rmaynard said:

Whoever writes these laws must think that all landlords are rich. This is why my wife and I got out of the landlord business. Even long before Covid, it was nearly impossible to evict a deadbeat tenant, and impossible to collect back rent and other losses. I feel for you. Unfortunately, there is no solution that won't cost you money.

 This is a different breed of cat. The tenant would have been gone last year except that first a governor and then two presidents took my property for their own use and let him pay no rent. Some of it came back from pandemic payments but then those same payments changed him from a functioning drug user to an animal. Everybody plays a game with the wealth of this country. If the deadbeat drug users do not or cannot pay the courts, they care not, because the judge and the attorney both get paid from public money. They force the victims to pay for a trial that benefits them. Then a second trial to collect the debt.

   One of the most despised laws under colonial rule was the quartering act. that is when a British soldier could be quartered at a hotel or home at your expense without compensation. The constitution was written so this would never happen again. Well, it has happened in a way with this madness... that the supreme court finally ruled to be unconstitutional. This bridge has been crossed and has caused many mom and pop landlords to go bankrupt. Seventy percent of residential housing is furnished by us.

  They do not care Blackrock is looking to scoop up properties for pennies on the dollar with government grants, just like they did after 2008