Rental Story...

    When I was about 19 or 20 years old, I had been evicted from an apartment I was living for using the front living room window as an entrance (along with all of my friends). The suite was underground so it was way more convenient for everyone to crawl in through said window rather than go buzz the front door. We had received a couple of warnings and I think they were heeded for a while until the day I was in a hurry for something and thought, "Ah, I'll just hop in one last time, what could it hurt? Nobody will see me." Wrong! Busted. I remember seeing the EVICTION NOTICE on the door and wondering what the hell we (I had a roommate, he wasn't exactly thrilled) could be getting thrown out for. We knew all the neighbours so noise was never an issue--then my eyes scanned down to the bottom of the page where it said something like, "Despite repeated warnings, tenants still used front window as an entrance."

    I was living in Penticton and it was during the summer when we got the boot. Being a tourist town the vacancy rate at this time is virtually zero, totally matching my IQ. I went to work trying to find a place of residence and what few there were I was usually gave the same response/reply, "We don't like to rent to young people." I'm not sure if that was legal or not but it was the olden days so, probably--knowing what I know now if I was a landlord I would have said the same thing.

    I remember the address of the "last chance" domicile I found, it was # 41-2250 Baskin Court-- a fairly new but kind of el-cheapo townhouse project along the Skaha River (I can't believe it! I just googled  it and it's actually for sale. Believe me it didn't look like this when we left it--not that this is anything great). It looked perfect. My last roommate had moved on but I had a long time friend moving in with me...




...so I called the property management company and was met with the same, "We don't make it a habit of renting to young people." Desperation had set in by now so I said to the lady on the phone in a rather elevated tone, " That's all any of you people say to me! Why can't you give a young person a chance? We're not all the same you know, that isn't very fair, I'm responsible, BLAH, BLAH BLAH...

    Well I obviously got through because she did decide to take a chance and rent the place to us  but what do you think? You guessed it. Party central for over two years. We made friends with the neighbour to the right of us and there was a gap between us and the townhouse to the left, so basically all we had to do was make sure the rent was there on time and we were left alone.

   Basically we left the place in complete shambles. One night when I returned from a trip out of town, I found the downstairs was totally flooded. My roommate had been gone for the weekend and had left a rag in the bathtub drain, which wouldn't have been bad except the tap was dripping. The water left the living room ceiling drywall sagging about a foot and entirely water stained. The carpet and underlay were moldy but there was no way I could call for help after making my "speech" about responsibility. 

    There was plenty of other damage as well. Someone had tipped over a container of that nasty red, sweet and sour pork in the middle of the living room-- we basically just picked up what we could and left the stain (it turned out to be great for scratching the bottom of your foot) . The walls were banged up from wrestling around, there were coffee stains and cigarette burns on the carpet and countertops. The railing had been torn right off the wall by some pisshead trying to make it upstairs (probably me) leaving the handrail brackets exposed. We had this ugly yellow beanbag chair and in a drunken stupor one night a buddy of mine decided he was going to drag it upstairs and pummel me with it. Unfortunately he caught it on one of the exposed handrail brackets and tore it wide open. It turned out that it wasn't filled with "beans" at all but these hideous little, statically charged styrofoam balls that ended up on the walls and ceilings everywhere (we didn't own a vacuum). I just remembered one time I saw something poking it's head out of one of the lower kitchen cabinets. Upon further investigation it turned out to be about a 4 ft. long root from a bag of potatoes that was tucked in the back--that was bizarre.

    Anyway, so much for my tirade about the trustworthiness and maturity of my young manhood. I was moving back to Vancouver the time I gave my months notice of leaving and basically just left the place as it was, a wreck. They had my damage deposit (like $400 plus interest was going to fix that place) and I was way too scared, embarrassed and ashamed to make contact--I couldn't conceive of going over the damage report with her. I'd bet pretty good money she didn't rent to any young people again unless they wanted to take the place "as is." I felt bad for years about that afterwards.

     Anyway, it was way too weird to google it and find the place for sale--that was 30 years/tears ago. It's funny, I still dream about it occasionally but it doesn't resemble these real estate pics at all. Some peoples taste--Yikes!