Well, it's been an extremely long time since I last visited this little ol' blog. It began with a vacation, but I would be lying if I said that was it—I came back from that vacation almost a month ago. I did start to write a post about two weeks ago, but obviously never followed up on it. Anyway, I have been fairly busy. I returned from vacation needing to find a place to live in under a month, as my lease was ending on July 31st. Thus commenced three weeks of frantic apartment hunting, which culminated in finding a reasonably nice place to live, not far from where I was living already, and in the same building as close friends of mine.
I dithered a little bit on deciding whether or not to apply for the apartment, as there were a couple of other places I saw that day that I also liked a lot. After giving some thought to it over the weekend, I decided to go for it, with the real estate broker barking at me the whole way to submit an application before someone else did. So, I put an application in and mentioned, of course, that I have a fairly small dog. "No problem," I was told, as the landlord allows pets.
I had an interview with the landlord, who approved me, but then commenced a new set of problems with the real estate broker, as he was insistent that I agree to sign the lease immediately, while I was insisting that I would like to read it first. Finally, he emailed me a copy of the lease, which said quite specifically that pets were not allowed without written consent, and stated, in all capitals that HAVING A PET IS TO BE CONSIDERED A SERIOUS VIOLATION OF THE LEASE. The broker assured me that this would get dealt with at the lease signing, which we finally arranged to happen on the day that, as it turns out, I got a stomach virus.
Nonetheless, I soldiered forth, vomiting in front of my dad's office building on my way to the lease signing. I believe this to be symbolic of something, but I'm not sure exactly what. At any rate, at the lease signing, the landlord insisted that he could not change the lease, nor could he just whip off some sort of written consent, as he is not an attorney. He wanted me to sign the lease as is, but assured me verbally that it was fine for me to have the dog. Finally, my dad (who is an attorney) drafted some completely reasonable language for a written consent and apparently this made the landlord no longer want to rent to me.
After the fact, I talked to some of my friends from the dog park, and they told me that they know people who had similar experiences, and signed the lease despite the no pet clause, only to get kicked out in a few months, with the landlord claiming that owning a dog broke the lease. I know for a fact that other tenants in that building keep dogs, and I'm assuming the landlord didn't change the lease for them, either, but I just couldn't sign that lease knowing that I would be breaking it immediately.
I guess a lot of people just take his word for it, and I couldn't help but wonder if my being the child of two lawyers is part of the reason I couldn't just take his assurances for an answer. This is something I am grateful for; it makes me feel savvy. I am also sometimes resentful of it. Part of me wants to feel as if I can just take this landlord's word at face value, and not worry about it. It implies a certain trust and faith in the better nature of humanity that I aspire to. On the other hand, signing something that you intend to break can't help but seem foolish to me. The lease is the landlord's legal protection, but it should be the tenant's protection as well, and if you're not a good advocate for yourself, then you may wind up getting kicked out of your apartment because of something you were told was fine.
The happy ending to this story is that I ended up moving in with my girlfriend, and therefore Rosie moving in with her step-sister, Maddy. From an apartment that allowed no dogs to an apartment with two dogs in just one week! And back to writing, both for pleasure (blog) and for work (screenplay). I have a contract, after all.
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