Hey, I'm just wondering if anyone else has had really shitty experiences with off-campus housing, problems with neighbors, or dealing with crappy landlords. How did you deal with it?

Me and my roommates have had a terrible time with our house. Here's some of the stuff that we've had to deal with:

-I got sick during the summer because the house had such bad ventilation (windows missing screens). Landlord said I couldn't prove that I was sick because of the house and refused to provide a solution. They then raged when I installed an A/C in my room for ventilation. We just got screens installed earlier this month.

-The lawnmower at our house was broken; landlord refused to fix it/provide us with a new one. We got a warning from the police; almost got a massive fine. (If you're wondering; Hamilton by-laws state that the landlord is responsible for mowing the lawn and shoveling snow; but if you take it to court, it's a grey area so basically it's the court's decision who's responsible)

-One day my housemate was playing drums at like 4 P.M. There were some knocks at our door; my housemate opens up the door and our next-door neighbor starts cussing out my housemate saying that college kids don't give a shit about anyone, etc. He (neighbor) ended up calling the cops and we got a warning for noise pollution (AT 4 P.M.)

-We lived in the house for 3 months before any repairs were made. We took our landlord to a tribunal after repeated attempts at getting them to fix the house (there were many many hazards). They made all the repairs a week before the court date. At the court, we talked to a mediator, who basically treated us like kids who didn't know what we were doing and we were told there was no point in going to court since repairs had been made. They gave me shit for changing a broken lock while my landlord was on a 1 month vacation, but then they raged at us when we asked for more house keys (landlord gave us only 2). They said it's not an important issue; we should've just made copies of the keys at Home Depot (THE MEDIATOR TOLD US TO DO SOMETHING ILLEGAL WTF?)

-During the court mediation (1 month ago), I brought up how my ceiling was damaged and had been leaking for a couple weeks. My landlord said it was my fault and the mediator basically ignored the issue. No repairs were made. Last Wednesday a massive part of my ceiling collapsed at 2AM. Two rooms flooded. On Friday, more stuff fell from the ceiling. On Saturday a massive part of the front entrance collapsed on my housemates' shoes ($550 worth of stuff damaged). We had to call firefighters; they came to the house to see that no one was hurt, then told us that our house is crap and that they had pity for us and left. Btw, my landlord has said nothing about paying for damages so far.

-Today someone came to check our roof. Turns out we have asbestos in our house. Since there's holes in the ceiling, this whole time there's been asbestos particles roaming all over the house. We called the landlord 3 times and they refused to make accommodations for us for the night; they also refused to believe there's asbestos because they were told there wasn't any when they bought the house (the house is 50 years old...it shouldn't be a surprise to them)

These are just the major issues, amongst a sea of other stuff. (I'm guessing people will tell me to sue the landlord, to terminate the lease, etc - Don't worry, we're in the process of taking appropriate action)

We can't be the only ones that have had it this bad....anyone have any similar stories?

Well this is my first year at Mac, and I decided to live off campus, and it's been excellent so far. Only a few random bugs here and there but that's pretty much it. Sorry to hear you're having such a crappy experience this year. DX

When I was between second and third year, my landlord decided to do construction on my room during the summer. I wanted to get a new bed and kept asking him what the new dimensions were gonna be, but he kept giving me vague/useless answers like "umm it's gonna be great!". He originally said my room was going to be just as big if not bigger than before.

Around August when the thing started to take shape, I came to realize what he actually did was chop my room up into two rooms and partially integrate a bathroom into it.

I basically just terminated my remaining cheques for the year and told him he was a dick. Probably should have stayed there in retrospect because the randoms I lived with instead were major party douches that pretty much destroyed the house.

Last week around 2 AM, some sketchy guy knocked our side door. He was claiming to be our neighbour and was asking for money.
According to him, he locked himself out of his truck, left his wallet there, and really needed money for whatever reason... he smelled like alcohol so we pretty much told him to f**k off.
Also one of my housemates never does her dishes, which is a pain in the ass.
I don't think I have any complaints with the house though, I mean it could be cleaner/newer but w.e.

Originally Posted by Eternal Fire

Last week around 2 AM, some sketchy guy knocked our side door. He was claiming to be our neighbour and was asking for money.
According to him, he locked himself out of his truck, left his wallet there, and really needed money for whatever reason... he smelled like alcohol so we pretty much told him to f**k off.
Also one of my housemates never does her dishes, which is a pain in the ass.
I don't think I have any complaints with the house though, I mean it could be cleaner/newer but w.e.

Reminds me of an experience I had recently.

I live beside these really rowdy kids, they're always throwing parties late into the night and creating a disturbance for myself and the people in the neighbourhood. So last week, I was coming home and I noticed a bunch of drunk guys hanging over on their porch. I ignored them and started walking towards my house when suddenly one them throws a beer all over me. I figured there was no point in fighting a bunch of intoxicated people so I continued walking to my own house. That's when I realized I had forgotten my keys in my car. As I head over to check, I notice that I also forgot my wallet. All my housemates were gone home for the weekend so I was completely locked out. I decided the best thing to do would be to get some change from me neighbours and use a pay phone. So I head over to their house and I must admit, I hadn't shaved in a few days so I must've looked pretty iffy. Having seen these guys tons of times before I figure they'll recognize me. One of them opens the door and asks "What do you want?" while eyeing me up and down. I explain to him how I locked my stuff in my truck and I need some change to make a phone call. Just as I'm finishing my store he screams "F*ck off" and slams the door in my face. I ended up breaking a window to get inside. Essentially, living off-campus sucks.

This was a joke in case I was too subtle : P

Originally Posted by RememberTwce

Reminds me of an experience I had recently.

I live beside these really rowdy kids, they're always throwing parties late into the night and creating a disturbance for myself and the people in the neighbourhood. So last week, I was coming home and I noticed a bunch of drunk guys hanging over on their porch. I ignored them and started walking towards my house when suddenly one them throws a beer all over me. I figured there was no point in fighting a bunch of intoxicated people so I continued walking to my own house. That's when I realized I had forgotten my keys in my car. As I head over to check, I notice that I also forgot my wallet. All my housemates were gone home for the weekend so I was completely locked out. I decided the best thing to do would be to get some change from me neighbours and use a pay phone. So I head over to their house and I must admit, I hadn't shaved in a few days so I must've looked pretty iffy. Having seen these guys tons of times before I figure they'll recognize me. One of them opens the door and asks "What do you want?" while eyeing me up and down. I explain to him how I locked my stuff in my truck and I need some change to make a phone call. Just as I'm finishing my store he screams "F*ck off" and slams the door in my face. I ended up breaking a window to get inside. Essentially, living off-campus sucks.

This was a joke in case I was too subtle : P

this is awkward...

Well, first there was mice which freaked the hell out of me.

Then around July of 2010 I get a voicemail saying that there was water leaking to the unit downstairs and pieces of the ceiling were falling off. I told them that my tap occasionally drips, but there was nothing major. That turned into me knowing about a major water leak and not reporting it and that I owe them $900 for a new ceiling. We consulted with our lawyer and a community legal clinic, both said we have no responsibility. So we went them a letter saying we aren't accepting responsibility and if they want to speak to us again regarding that issue they can speak to our attorney. Got a really passive aggressive email from landlord's wife, and then that was the end of that. Then in the period of a weekend I found a new apartment and abruptly moved into that one with two months left on the lease remaining.

I've had a painfully similar experience! In my second year, we had no heat in the winter for about 1.5-2 months. We used space heaters to try to keep the place somewhat heated and then when we went home for Christmas break, the house froze. We came back to frozen pipes, toilet bowls, etc.
At the end of the tenancy, our landlord charged us more for utilities because of running space heaters when we had no heat. We had contacted him to let him know the heat was never coming on plenty of times and he told us to call his repair man ourselves, who never showed up.

There was an issue with flooding in the basement apartment that happened every time we used our washing machine upstairs. Our landlord didn't tell us about it, or to stop using it, so we were constantly flooding the basement - which he then tried to blame us for.

There was flooding from the dishwasher under the wood floors in the kitchen that made them warp and bubble. He had a repair man take out the dishwasher, never replaced it and tried to tell us he would sue us for damages to the floor because we should have notice flooding underneath it.

One time during a huge rainstorm one of my roommates rooms had huge leaking from the ceiling that destroyed some of her bedding. In the same rainstorm, one of our lights in the living room ceiling filled with water and crashed down, the landlord refused to fix any of that either.

He also threatened to call up our new landlords and tell them we were terrible tenants when we tried to contest paying extra for having no heat in the winter. GREAT TIME.

landlords are ppl too, I think half the conflicts can be solved if students are completely responsible for utilities, internet etc., but of course some students are lazy and don't want to do this............b/c they have so much "work" to concentrate on.

Originally Posted by Eternal Fire

Last week around 2 AM, some sketchy guy knocked our side door. He was claiming to be our neighbour and was asking for money.
According to him, he locked himself out of his truck, left his wallet there, and really needed money for whatever reason... he smelled like alcohol so we pretty much told him to f**k off.
Also one of my housemates never does her dishes, which is a pain in the ass.
I don't think I have any complaints with the house though, I mean it could be cleaner/newer but w.e.

Same thing happened to me recently. Guy came to my door saying he was my neighbour asking for $25 because he locked himself out of his car and needed money for such and such. I told him I didn't have any cash and he said he would go ask somewhere else. I later told a friend about it and she said the same thing had happened to her.

Originally Posted by JessMo

Same thing happened to me recently. Guy came to my door saying he was my neighbour asking for $25 because he locked himself out of his car and needed money for such and such. I told him I didn't have any cash and he said he would go ask somewhere else. I later told a friend about it and she said the same thing had happened to her.

Report that to the cops. Sounds like a running scam.

I remember reading this story on another MI thread

Definitely get a description and call the cops to report it.

Originally Posted by swarley

landlords are ppl too, I think half the conflicts can be solved if students are completely responsible for utilities, internet etc., but of course some students are lazy and don't want to do this............b/c they have so much "work" to concentrate on.

The Residential Tenancies Act seems to disagree with that....

mice

landlord was pretty good until we started seeing signs of mice in the spring (and then actually saw one in our kitchen cabinet and in the bathroom). They were selling the house and so they didn't give a crap. Our kitchen was spotless btw.

You could hear them running in the walls at night...creepy

Wow these are some pretty bad experiences O_O
I'm pretty happy about where I live. It's updated and clean and if there's any problem the property manager usually deals with it. He'll come over right away if it's some emergency (he lives like right down the street too) but if it's not a super super emergency he'll sometimes forget and not come until we call again. But other than that my off-campus stay has been great, he even cared enough to switch internet providers because our internet was super slow (Cogeco.. go figure). So yeah my only complaint is he sometimes forgets but everything gets done in the end.