In Spring 2021, it felt like the pandemic was starting to wane. Remember how we felt at the very beginning of the pandemic? Like that we’d stay inside for two weeks, it would go away, then our lives would be exactly the same forever and ever? Well, I guess I must have been feeling a partial version of that feeling in spring 2021. That May, I booked $250,000 in work in one month. Remember, the year before I’d had an HGTV show and the previous five years my career had gone nowhere but up. So my subconscious kind of expected the same thing to keep happening. I thought at some point we’d go back to “reality” and all the hard work I’d done since I was a child would finally pay off. Hard work? Paying off? …IN AMERICA? What a stupid thing to think LOL!
It seems like, work hard and you’ll succeed. But life doesn’t really work like that. And there are people out there who have worked harder and deserve more success than I have who have made far less progress. I know that I am lucky and that my success is not fully my own. I’ve known that forever but I really feel that now. There truly is no sense to who is successful and who is not. It’s mostly just random. As the 1999 cheesy-yet-touching hit song Baz Luhrman song goes:
Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much
Or berate yourself either
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's
That song came on my Spotify at the gym yesterday and it just made me think about how cheesy my friends I thought it was in high school. We thought it was dorky but we still liked to listen to it. But I feel like it’s actually a really beautiful song with such a great message - we no longer have the same fear of sincerity we had back then. People are allowed to be honest and passionate now without being told they’re being wimps. So much better.
Spring 2021 was looking so promising and I’d just had a really hard, isolating winter at Londo Lodge. I was at my heaviest then, about 240 pounds (normally I’m around 180). The extra pounds were all stress and grief and cortisol. I was beginning to have a stress-induced memory loss issue where I could not remember anything long term or short. So I knew I kind of had to get back to the city and people to try and pull myself out of my depression (little did I know I’d be in it for more than three full years).
So my manager suggested I get a place in town again. He was going off the same information as me - it seemed like “things were back, baby!” and that if I booked a quarter of a million dollars of work in one month I likely could afford to have a place in town again. So I began to look for apartments in Los Angeles.
I ended up finding a home in a very central area. I try to keep its location private for safety reasons - I have had multiple stalkers before. You’d be surprised at how not famous you have to be to have stalkers, I’ve struggled with them since I was on Emily Henderson’s show in 2010. By no means do I see myself as a famous person, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to find me and invade my space and life. Basically because most of us are online now, we all have stalkers to some extent. Thanks, Internet!
The house I found, which is technically a duplex with another unit on the side, was the exact style of home I have always dreamed of living in. A Spanish style bungalow with a backyard and a bunch of cute archways everywhere. I’ve always had a strategy with finding apartments. I try to find the one that’s the worst maintained because normally they are cheaper and I plan on customizing them to my taste anyway. I always end up painting everything and swapping out the light fixtures and making them look really high-end. So an apartment that may cost, say, $3800 (that’s my rent, a bargain for LA!) looks like a property that could be rented for something more like $7000 a month. Another reason I jumped on the place was that rents had hit rock bottom, this is a rent control neighborhood, and all indicators showed rents were about to start rising a lot (I was right, they did and I couldn’t afford this place today).
Sadly for me, right after signing this lease in July 2021, the Delta Variant came and all the work I’d booked in May either delayed or was canceled altogether. So suffice to say it’s been a pretty challenging few years and there haven’t been many clear solutions to my issues. I’ve chatted about that enough though that I don’t want to go into it here. But you get it, I did my best and am doing my best to get by.
I was very intent on getting this rental (I hesitate to call it an apartment because it really feels more like a tiny house). I have dreamed of living in a Spanish style home since I started coming here when I was sixteen. My best friend lived in a beautiful Spanish/Mediterranean home in Hancock Park on Hudson Avenue and there was something about the glamour of that style that I’ve always loved. It feels both cozy and Old Hollywood simultaneously. Fancy yet so humble and warm.
I found this place on Craigslist and my initial interactions were with my landlord’s daughter, a wonderful and kind PHD. A mother with a few kids. I knew then and I know now they are a nice family and I really like them. I have always admired my landlord for being a brilliant man. He’s an engineer, an immigrant to this country from a marginalized group, and in person he usually comes across very sensible and kind (when things are going right and there isn’t any conflict). He and his wife must be a bit older than my parents. I’m a terrible judge of age but my parents also act a lot younger than they are so I don’t really have a good way of judging peoples’ ages.
My landlord’s wife, who I have met on a few occasions when she accompanies him to fix things around the house, is just one of those lovely older women with an absolutely beautiful and calming presence. She is beautiful, still, but I am sure she was one of those show stopping women in her younger years - she just carries herself with that softness and poise that you can tell. She’s gorgeous in every sense of the word and I always feel better when she accompanies her husband. I’m going to call my landlord Larry, because obviously I’m not going to reveal any information about him personally or reveal where I live because I’m not an idiot.
Living in this beautiful house has been really lovely. One of my favorite things is when it rains. Those crazy torrential rainstorms we had last year in Los Angeles were truly magical and cozy. The house sits slightly elevated above the street so you can see everything. The beautiful arched windows in the living room look out over a tree-lined street, people rushing by from time to time walking their dogs or heading to a nearby street lined with shops. During the early days of the pandemic, that street was dead. But it has come back to life and there are so many nice and new restaurants I want to try when I can afford to go to restaurants again.
There have always been maintenance issues in this house. When I moved in it hadn’t been painted but I didn’t really care because I wanted to paint it anyway. Technically -if I understand the law correctly - a landlord is supposed to repaint between tenants if the paint job shows signs of age and damage. There were major cracks and scuffs everywhere but I was so in love with the home I didn’t care. I’m not a difficult tenant, I do most fixing of things myself.
The backyard was an abandoned sand pit that Larry and his daughter said they were planning on renovating, adding artificial turf, and bistro lights before I moved in (the bistro lights never made it). I had to bug the landlord for three months to get him to finally install the turf he promised on move-in day, which was a pain because the backyard was part of the agreement and the dirty backyard allowed Saturday, my absolutely beautiful American Staffordshire Terrier who is allowed to go out to potty whenever she likes, to track a ton of dirt and mud inside and I was constantly cleaning.
I absolutely love living in this house but maintenance has been an issue. Larry refuses to pay people to fix things so usually I end up with him in my house fixing things himself and doing not a very good job at it. It’s been small stuff - a door handle here, a door that won’t close there, a toilet that won’t work that gets replaced with a toilet that is installed crooked, like at a 17 degree angle to the wall. All of these things aren’t deal breakers and I still love the house and love living here, but there is something unnerving about having your landlord in your house all the time, which he was a lot the first year and still is whenever anything needs to be fixed because he refuses to hire experts. It’s a way of making it feel never really like my house, a constant reminder that I'm not fully “at home” because the owner is coming over constantly to remind me it’s his house. Kinda feels like he’s coming over to piss all over the place to mark his territory.
On multiple occasions, I have seen Larry in the front yard looking into my windows. This made me feel uncomfortable - it’s a really weird feeling to have the person who owns your rental peeking in the windows. I refreshed my understanding of the law on that and found out he really can’t come over without notifying me. So I told him that. But he’s the type that lies and deflects when you take him to task on things, especially rental laws. So he tends to get away with breaking laws a lot and generally I’m a pushover about most things. I’m the type of person who, if served a completely different dish than I ordered at a restaurant, won’t say anything because I don’t want to be rude and I am extremely conflict avoidant. I’ll just eat the food I don’t want and shut up because I don’t am very wary of contradicting people. Unless you hit one particular button, which you’ll learn about later. Then things can get a little wild and I get a bit Elle Woodsy. I OBJECT!
That house on Hudson Avenue I used to stay at, the one with the Spanish Mediterranean style I love so much, was owned by my best friend Alexis’ parents. They owned multiple rental buildings in the City of Los Angeles and so I have been well-versed in tenant laws since I was a teenager. I am a curious person and my friend Alexis was and is very smart. So she and her parents have been explaining LA tenant rights laws to me since I was sixteen. It can be incredibly frustrating to be a landlord here and tenants have a lot of rights. So any time I had an issue with an apartment I’d ask them about it and they’d explain the legality of the situation (Alexis’ dad was also a brilliant lawyer and a kind man so he was always helpful). Because I went to Cornell and Penn, two schools that tend to graduate wealthy people, I had a lot of friends who own apartment buildings and rentals in LA and elsewhere. So let’s just say I’ve heard it all and I have a pretty good understanding of the laws here, and have since I was a teenager.
My heat in this beautiful house has been an issue since the first winter I lived here. It’s malfunctioned every year leaving me with no heat for spells every year. The heat source is an in-floor heating unit powered by gas. It’s an antiquated system that they don’t sell anymore and quite frankly I’d be surprised if it meets city code. It doesn’t really heat the whole house, just the living room and part of the dining room closest to it. So I can’t really shower here in winter because the bathroom is too cold (I just shower at the gym). The bedrooms are cold as well but I don’t mind sleeping in cold rooms so that’s never really bothered me.
What has bothered me is Larry’s response every time the heat stops working. The first few times, it was out for a few weeks to a month at a time. His response has been to “put on a sweater.” I grew up in a small house in the woods heated by a wood burning stove. It was not very warm at all. So if I am complaining that it is cold, IT IS REALLY COLD. And yes, it doesn’t snow in LA but we do get very chilly winter weather and you need heat during those times. There are literally laws about it.
And that’s kind of where this story turns into a dramatic saga. I spent only a few days in Los Angeles in the late fall of 2023 because I was stuck working at my Yosemite cabin, trying to get the kitchen ready for rental so I could finally start pulling myself out of the financial hole of paying for two houses for two and a half years when I’d only planned on doing so for a few months. I finally made it back to LA full time December 28th, 2023 and the first two things I noticed:
It was really, really cold.
The heat was not working.
I notified Larry to come fix the heat on December 29 and he showed up four days later (during which time the interior temperature of the home was 48 degrees). He messed with the thermostat and got the system to work for about thirty minutes but later in the day I noticed the house was cold again. I texted him again letting him know the heat wasn’t working again and that’s when things started to get weird and uncomfortable.
It took him two weeks to come back to check on things, during which time I had to bug him over and over to help me. I have been living without heat since late December and he seems to have no problem with that. There are two space heaters, both of which malfunctioned and melted extension cords and/or outlets. So I haven’t been able to leave my dog at home with them on for fear that they would burn the house down with her in it. I’m not going to risk losing my dog just so my landlord can save some money, so I took her to a nearby daycare when I needed to run errands for too long. That costs $50 a day. $50 I cannot afford right now because I can’t even afford a computer or phone to do the work I need to do.
Understandably, I started to get frustrated after weeks and weeks of no action. And I started to understand that while I thought the thermostat was just malfunctioning, Larry must have known something I didn’t know that he wasn’t telling me or he would have just come and replaced the thermostat, which he knows how to do and has done before. He knew the system was kaput and was stalling on fixing it because he didn’t want to pay for it. I know him well enough to know that.
Now, let me tell you something about Larry that allows me to understand him better that I may be able to otherwise. Larry is VERY cheap. He will always choose the cheapest fix even if it means he’s going to have to come back in a few weeks to fix it. This has happened with basically every repair in the home. And it’s annoying to watch because I know what he’s doing is ultimately more expensive than just doing it right and doing it once. But the reason I can read him so easily is that I have a father who is exactly like this. Like many of you, I have a cheap dad.
I’ve told Larry that. He knows I know how to deal with cheap people and that I can read what they’re up to really quickly because of my background. I also understand affluence pretty well. I come from a decently affluent background. My parents have not helped me financially as an adult for a number of reasons. Firstly, they want me to figure out how to do it myself because I have kind of a dependent personality, being the youngest of three I always look to other people to figure things out. Second, I think they have a social justice thing as people who were raised poor that it’s not fair for affluent kids like me to be helped because it’s not fair to everyone else. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, because my parents were both raised lower income and they have a lot of trauma about it that makes them hoard money because they’re scared. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to understand that and have empathy for it. And while it’s been painful to know that they could have made the past three years okay for me by helping me financially, thus probably bringing MORE money to our family in doing so (if they’d helped pay for my kitchen I could have rented it out last summer and made way more than they’d loaned me back), I also know not to go there because it’s just too painful so I don’t. And I feel good about the fact I’ve done all this myself with no help. So ultimately it’s caused a lot of pain knowing they could have helped without changing their lifestyle but I think it’s going to end well and I’m not mad about it because I am a grown up and that’s literally not their responsibility.
I’m not telling you this to brag about having well-off parents - I’m still broke and that doesn’t matter. I’m telling you this because I know how affluent people operate. I know what assets they have and I know, based on the multiple multi-million dollar properties my landlord owns that he has way more money than my parents (if he didn’t he’d sell one of his houses, he has at least three that I know about but I also caught him in a lie about one of them so he may have more). And I know my parents could fix the issue in this house without it making a dent in their savings and investments. I’ve been open with Larry about having had a hard few years financially and I think he thought that meant I was a lower income person who didn’t understand my rights. But even though I have been broke for basically three (Wait, four? WHAT IS TIME?) years I come with a sense of entitlement based on something else entirely. And I plan to use that entitlement for good.
Larry was not responding well to fixing my heat in a timely manner, I started to get angry because it was fucking cold. And so I let him know I understood the laws for the reasons stated above. That’s where he went wrong. He tried to convince me I didn’t understand the laws and that he wasn’t required to do anything. At that time I posted on my Instagram account and, luckily, a lawyer who specializes in housing rights in the City of Los Angeles, reached out and said he’d be willing to chat with me.
What I found out was that I was right. Tenants in LA are entitled to reliable, permanently installed heat in the living spaces (which include but are not limited to) the living room and bedrooms. That heat sources has to be able to maintain a heat level of seventy degrees at three feet from the ground. So technically my rental has been out of compliance the whole time - it’s never had heat in the bedrooms. Finding this out, of course, made me furious because Larry had been trying to convince me that I didn’t know the law and that he was in the right. But not only was he in the wrong, he was way more in the wrong than I realized.
I didn’t know the thing about heat being required in the bedrooms. And Larry would have never told me about about it and had no plans of installing it. It was at this moment I reached out to my neighbor to see what her heat situation was. And this is when I kind of went crazy. Here’s her story. She moved into the apartment in 2015. A year later, the heater (same archaic in-floor device as mine) failed. The Gas Company came out to red tag it in 2016 and she hasn’t had heat since. Larry never even bought her space heaters. He did literally nothing to help her and her husband keep warm.
My neighbor has cats. To keep them warm, she has had to leave heating blankets and other heat devices like space heaters on during the day. She sits at work worrying about them malfunctioning, killing her cats. She told me that has given her a ton of anxiety and that it’s made working on those days difficult. It may sound stupid, but we pet lovers LOVE our animals. Thinking about losing them because a rich landlord doesn’t want to follow the law is infuriating.
My neighbor didn’t know the laws and was surprised to hear them. So people of LA (and kinda everywhere, these laws ten to be similar), know you are ENTITLED TO HEAT. And likely soon we’ll be entitled to AC because it’s getting just too hot. My neighbor hasn’t had heat in eight years and Larry didn’t plan on doing anything because he knew she didn’t know the laws.
I’m a pretty sensitive person and the type of person that, if you slight me, will get really hurt. However, if you slight me in a way I see as related to a social justice issue, say economic inequality, I go fucking crazy. And that’s how I see this situation. My landlord knowingly withheld heat, a right LA tenants have, because he could get away with it. Or he thought he could get away with it until he met poor-yet-I-know-the-laws me. When I found out my neighbors experience of not having heat FOR EIGHT YEARS it made my blood boil. I don’t fucking care about my own situation now, I’m way more pissed about hers. She’s Latina. A rich man taking advantage of a minority just looks bad. And as someone from a Latino background that’s gonna piss me off because I’m so used to seeing it, brown people get fucked over all the time.
All this being said, I weirdly still love Larry and his family, but he has the same kind of weird sickness about money my dad has. His childhood trauma of growing up poor has led him to be able to rationalize whatever kind of economic selfishness he needs to to hoard as many millions as he can. And I can have empathy for that. But if my father did this to someone I’d want someone to call him out the way I’m calling out my landlord. And also, my dad would NEVER do this. While he’s not been generous with me for the reasons stated above, he did a ton for our community my whole life. He’s a dentist who would make sure poor people could have dental care by trading them for things. Like if someone couldn’t afford dental care he’d offer to trade them for fire wood or something of a far lower value than the services he was offering.
I think there is something special not only about my dad and his social justice stance but also how and where I was raised. My siblings and I were all raised to do the right thing. My parents didn't care if we cursed or did drugs (pot, not like heroin LOL) but if we did something mean or unethical to someone, weren’t nice to an unpopular kid or something like that, they knew exactly how to put us in our place. They’d call us out and judge us hardcore for it and we’d stop because it made us feel gross (even if my siblings didn’t respect their curfews all the time). My friends in high school and I were all goodie two shoes. We were all expected to be sort of morally perfect. And it wasn’t because of religion or anything, none of my friends were very religious. It was just because that’s what our parents were like and while we could disappoint them in other ways if we disappointed them morally we’d feel like shit.
This all sounds self-righteous and I guess it kind of is. But it’s all to say I am highly idealistic and if you make me mad about something I see as problematic I go kinda crazy. So when I found out my landlord had tricked my neighbor, I got fucking pissed. I knew I had something to do about it.
I decided to take that lawyer up on his offer to chat. And I learned all the laws back and forth. I wrote them in a Google doc and made sure I understood them correctly. I sent the doc to the lawyer to check my facts so I knew what I was talking about before asking my landlord if he had time to chat on the phone.
I wanted to talk to my landlord because I really love him and his family and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though he’d already lied to me multiple times about my rights at that point and tried to convince me I had no ground to stand on in demanding heat. And I also knew if I didn’t discuss this with him he’d never address the heating situations in my bedroom (which are legally required to have heat he never mentioned or planned on adding heat to). I just wanted to call him and give him a chance to either come clean or admit he didn’t know the laws.
That call did not go well.
I immediately transcribed the call afterward to make sure I remembered it properly but I’m going to summarize it here because it was long and VERY repetitive, mostly because Larry kept deflecting, self-victimizing, and trying to cast me as a villain.
My Bonkers Call With My Landlord
Me: “I’d like to give you an opportunity to explain to me your understanding of the laws in LA regarding heating in rental units. I would like this conversation to be open and respectful. We need to listen to each other and I would appreciate it if you don’t talk over me and I will be respectful of you when you speak in the same manner.”
[Larry tends to interrupt and ramble over you if ever questioned on legal things he knows he’s wrong on]
“I care about you and your family and I respect you and think you are a brilliant man. I would like to give you an opportunity to explain your understanding of the laws in LA regarding what’s needed in LA rentals for heat.”
[I asked this because I wanted to give Larry an out. Basically I wanted to give him the opportunity to pretend he didn’t know what the laws were so that he could give a “Oh man I didn’t know!” type response and pivot to doing the right thing]
Larry: “Is this being recorded?”
Me: “No.”
Larry: “I have done everything in my power to get the heater in the living room fixed, what else do you want me to do?”
[He did not answer my question about his understanding of the codes re heat and rentals because he knew that would trap him in a lie]
Me: “Larry, I have consulted a lawyer who specializes in housing law in the City of Los Angeles in order to understand my rights because you told me I was wrong and didn’t understand them and I wanted to make sure. He is willing to represent me pro bono if need be.”
[This is true, an incredibly kind lawyer, pittie/human baby daddy agreed to represent me if need be. It’s highly unlikely it would get there but good to know]
Larry: “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you going so hard? Why would you get a lawyer this is just a small thing? Why are you trying to ruin my life?”
[Reminder, Larry is a multi-millionaire. The duplex I live in is worth about 1.8-2.2M, he owns the house next to me which is worth at least 1.8M, and he owns a large home in the suburbs worth at least 1.3M. It’s highly likely he owns more properties but doesn’t want to tell me because of his “I’m poor” act.]
Me: “In Los Angeles the requirement is that there be a reliable, permanentl-”
[Larry interrupted]
Larry: “Why are you doing this to me? Are you trying to take my house away?”
Me: “Larry, I wouldn’t even know how to do that and I would never do that. I need to tell you these laws so I know you know what they are. You told me via text, which I have archived in a Dropbox file, that I was wrong about laws and that my friends who own rental buildings don’t know what they’re talking about, so I need to explain this to you so I know you know so you can act accordingly.”
[Larry interrupted again with a non sequitur asking me why I was trying to ruin his life]
Me: “Larry, I have been speaking with a lawyer who specializes in housing law in the city of Los Angeles. I am well-versed on these laws now and you tried to tell me I didn’t understand them. Either you lied to me that I was wrong in an attempt to avoid paying to fix the heater, or you don’t know the laws and need to know them.”
[Larry interrupted and kept rambling about me ruining his life and why was I doing this]
Me: “The law states that each living space, which includes but is not limited to the living room and the bedrooms, both in Graciella and Jeffrey’s [fake names for neighbors to protect anonymity] apartment and in mine, be outfitted with reliable, permanently installed heat. The heat needs to be able to maintain a level of 70 degrees at three feet from the floor. Space heaters can be used but only as a stop-gap, one to two months, tops.”
Me: “Larry, did you know this?”
Larry: “Yes, I know the laws.”
Me: “Then why did you tell me when I said I knew that LA rentals required heat that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I was wrong?”
[He dodged the question]
Larry: “Why are you doing this? You went and got a lawyer? Why are you coming after me so strongly. I have done everything for you! Why are you trying to take everything I have?”
[Larry tends to repeat himself when I take him to task over legal stuff, but just so this doesn’t get boring to read, know that he said that exact same thing every time I ask him to respond, over and over, for the entire conversation as a means of deflecting]
Me: “Larry, what I am trying to do here is get you to do the right thing so that I do not have to go to the city and file a report that forces you to do the right thing. I have a lot of friends who own buildings and I know these laws. You tried to trick me into thinking I didn’t know what I was talking about so you could save money and avoid following the law. You can’t get mad at me for going to a lawyer and finding out what the laws were when you told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I did.”
Me: “Larry, did you know those laws as I just stated them?”
Larry: “Yes.”
Me: “So you were lying to me when I said I knew what the laws were and that heat was required?”
[Larry did not answer the question]
Larry: “Why are you doing this to ME? Why are you trying to ruin my life and take everything? Are you trying to take over the house? Do you want to figure out how to takeover ownership? What is WRONG with you?”
[Reminder: Multi-millionaire with three multi million dollar properties in one of the most expensive real estate regions in the entire world. And also, he stupidly let slip once that he bought the one I live in for basically nothing (about $70K in the late 1970s, which is less than $296K now) because the couple who lived here before loved him and his wife. You think he’s gonna pay that forward and sell this place to me for an equivalent $296,000? Yeah right.]
Me: “Larry, I am trying to get you to do the ethical thing. I have told you repeatedly I think what you did, basically lying to me about your responsibilities about my heat and also allowing Graciella and Jeffrey to live in an apartment with no heat for eight years, is really unethical and I don’t think you see that.”
Larry: “They never complained you never complained!”
[I have text based evidence that we both notified him about the heat and that I complained about it multiple times. Those texts screen shot and are archived in a Dropbox file].
Larry: Why are you doing this to me and trying to take everything away from me?”
Me: “Larry, I’ve been around enough affluent property owners to know how they operate. I know how to read rich people. I think you thought because I’d been having financial trouble I wouldn’t understand the laws. But I did. And you’ve been relying on the fact that Graciella and Jeffrey don’t know the laws to avoid making their apartment up to code. They have cats and it gives them tremendous anxiety to leave the cats alone in the house with space heaters on. So they have to freeze all day. I have had to take Satie to daycare if I need to run errands because I refuse to leave her here with space heaters on because they are dangerous. Daycare costs $50 a day and I can’t afford that.”
Larry: “That’s not my problem, she’s your pet!”
Me: “It’s your problem that my neighbors have been living in an illegal apartment for eight years and that you were going to let me live in one until I talked to a lawyer. A lawyer you got mad I talked to.”
Larry: “If you take me to court you’ll never win. I look like a sick old man. They’re going to take one look at you and be on my side, I’ll look like a victim compared with you. I am retired, I can spend all day long driving back and forth to court and I will bury you. I have a friend who’s a lawyer who will figure out how to dig up every bad thing about you, your credit, and make you look terrible in the courtroom to get what I want. Your credit will be ruined!”
[What Larry might not know is that my credit is already ruined. But I own a house and have a car so I don’t care - I don’t want to get into anymore debt anyway and I have literally nothing to lose. Sorry babe!]
Me: “Larry, I’m doing this because I want you to do the right thing. I am trying to give you an opportunity to make this right for Graciella and Jeffrey and for me.”
Larry: “You are trying to take everything I have and destroy my life!”
Me: “Larry, I know based on the fact that you have two adjacent properties in the city of LA, each worth around two million dollars, and a multi-million dollar house in the suburbs [he lives in a very fancy, affluent suburbs i’m not naming here for privacy reasons], that you are way richer than my parents. My parents could afford to fix the issues with these two units and get them up to code without it affecting their lifestyle. And I know that you have way more money than them. So I know you can fix this and it wont affect your lifestyle.”
Larry: “Why are you trying to ruin my life and drain all my money from me?”
Me: “This isn’t really about me or about money Larry. I was mad about my heat because it’s been a pain for almost three years. But when I found out about Graciella’s apartment not having heat for eight years I was truly furious. You used her lack of knowledge about the law to avoid doing what is legally required of landlords and you did it for eight years. You would have done the exact same thing with me. You would have taken my heater out, covered it up, and not replaced it. You thought I didn’t know what I was talking about. Larry, I understand your personality because it’s just like my dad’s. He pretends to be poor to get out of paying for stuff, and it sucks.”
Larry: “That’s not my problem, that’s your problem.”
Me: “It’s not my problem you haven’t been abiding by city laws and now you’re going to have to. I’m really upset about what you did to Graciella, the idea that you can just flip a switch in your fancy house in the suburbs and be warm, but for some reason you didn’t think Graciella deserved to be warm in hers. You think because we have less money than you that we don’t deserve heat. And that’s why I am so mad. That’s also why there are laws about this specific thing. Laws you thought I was too poor and too dumb to know about. I have a lot of friends who have buildings and I know how annoying the laws can be for landlords. That’s why I’m talking to you before going to the city. Larry, Graciella’s case really made me more mad than my own and the fact you can’t see it’s unethical is making me want to go to the city.”
Larry: “What are you, some sort of communist? You’re some sort of social justice warrior targeting me? You’re a socialist! You’re talking about socialism!”
[These words are bolded because he hurled them at me as dirty insults.]
Me: “Fine. Call me a socialist. These are literally laws that exist to protect poor people from rich people like you who hoard money rather than pay their fair share. This law is designed to protect people like me and Graciella from landlords who refuse to meet basic human needs. Humans need to be warm in the winter and that is why there are laws.”
Me: “Would have you have added heat in my bedrooms if I didn’t find out they were legally required after talking to a lawyer?”
[Larry did not respond, but complained about how I was trying to ruin his life by taking all his money]
Me: “Larry, I love you and your family and I respect you. You are a brilliant man with a really inspirational story. I’m the descendant of immigrants as well and your story is so inspriational to me. I truly love and care about you guys. And your wife is just so beautiful and lovely - the other day when she was here I was remarking on how beautiful and kind her presence is. She is really a wonderful woman. But I see a sickness in you that my dad has too, a sickness around money that clouds your judgement. And in this case it’s making it impossible to see that it’s completely unethical to break the law just because you thought you could. You don’t seem to have any remorse. Do you feel bad for making Graciella live in fear of her place burning down with her cats in it for eight years because you didn’t fulfill your legal duty to provide her with heat?”
Larry: “I don’t feel bad about anything. I have grandkids. I have kids. I care only about giving my money to them.”
Me: “Larry, that’s fine, I have a family too. But you still have to obey the law and I know based on my own background that you can afford to fix this problem and it won’t affect your life one bit. You’re not doing it because you have a block and a sickness about money but I’m not going to let you get away with it because if my dad did this - which he wouldn’t, he used to provide free dental work to people in our community - I would want someone to hold him accountable. You are clearly not able to take stock and hold yourself accountable so I’m going to.”
[Larry continued to complain that I was an ingrate, that he’d done everything I asked over the years, that this was going to bankrupt him, and that I was just doing this because I was a socialist/communist targeting him for no reason aside from my communist agenda]
Me: “Larry, I’m doing this because I don’t trust you do to the right thing because you’ve lied to me repeatedly and I have evidence in the form of text messages.”
Larry: “Well it’s in the hands of the heating technicians now.”
Me: “No Larry, you need to commit to making this right. I need to know you’re going to do what’s necessary to make this unit and Graciella and Jeffrey’s unit compliant. Which means I need heat in the living room and both bedrooms. And Graciella and Jeffrey need heat in the living room and in their bedroom. That’s what we are due by law and space heaters do not count. Not for more than a month or so.”
[Larry refused to commit to put heat in my bedrooms and living room as well as in Graciella’s apartment. He deflected saying he had to talk to the heating guys]
Me “Larry, what I need in order to not report you to the city is for you to make this right. I want you to start with Graciella’s apartment because I’m really mad you made her go without heat for eight years. You will install a mini split in the bedroom and living room or a whole house ducted system. And same for mine, I need a mini split in the living room and one in each bedroom or I need a whole house system. And because I don’t trust you to follow the laws because you’ve clearly shown you have no regard for them, I want you to add AC too. That is going to be legal soon and I want to leave this place knowing that you wont screw over the next tenant like you did Graciella and Jeffrey. You’ve proven you’ll do whatever you can to keep all your money for yourself.”
Larry: “Why are you trying to steal my money and ruin my life?
Me: “Larry, people are more important than money. You have to see that. You have enough money. You can fix this problem and it will not affect your life. It’s unethical you’ve tried to skip around the law as long as you have. If you can prove to me that you understand what you did was unethical, I will just work with you to fix this with the heating guys. If not, I’m going to report you to the city. Do you agree that what you did was wrong? That it was wrong not to follow the law just because Graciella didn’t know it?”
Larry: “No, I did nothing wrong. I came to this country and made all my own money. I can keep my money. I did nothing wrong.”
Me: “I made all my own money too. My parents haven’t helped me with anything. I have had no financial help my whole adult life.”
Larry: “That’s your problem I don’t feel bad for you.”
Me: “Larry, what you did is unethical and if you don’t see that I am going to report you. That way the next time you try to skip around a law it’s a lot easier for the next tenant to file. I’m disgusted that you can’t see you did something wrong. This conversation was all I needed. So I’m calling the city.”
Larry: “Why are you trying to ruin me I can’t believe you’re acting like this -”
[I cut him off and told him]
Me: “Larry, you need to chat with your lawyer to make sure you understand these laws to their full extent because I feel like I understand them better than you at this point and that’s a problem. Any correspondence from now on will be in the form of letters form a lawyer. I hate confrontation and this gives me so much anxiety. I care about you and your family a great deal and will always like and admire you but you’re truly sick in the money department and need to so some work on yourself to be the good man I know you can be and are in your heart. Goodbye.”
Now, I know how obnoxious and entitled I sound in this conversation. But remember, when I was eighteen I went away to Cornell. Everyone thought I was poor because I was from the woods. And because of that I am really good at reading people and figuring out how to use their own classism against them. I was raised with a great disdain for very rich people who try to screw poor people out of money.
I mean, I’m definitely a lower income person than my landlord but I don’t feel sorry for myself in that sense, I’m in no way claiming poverty here. But what bothers me is the brazenness of people like this. Who think that because someone has less, they're not entitled to the same LEGALLY-MANDATED rights they are. Larry can flip a switch in his fancy suburban home and be whatever temperature he wants to be. Why should Graciella and Jeffrey live without heat for eight years? He can afford to fix it and it’s his ethical duty to do so. And my unit as well, though honestly I’m less concerned about mine because I haven’t been living without heat as long.
I think Larry’s plan is to figure out a heat system for the living room in my place, the cheapest possible solution, and ignore my bedrooms and the fact they have no heat. And he won’t address Graciella’s apartment because I can’t get her to file with the city. She’s too fearful of retaliation to file a complaint with the city and while I tried to do so on her behalf to get her heat, the city told me she has to do it herself or they won’t do anything.
I ended up filing a complaint with the city on Saturday. One for failure to comply with heating codes and one for harassment for accusing me of being a communist for asking him to follow the law. I did not want to do this - again, I care about this man and his family - but I am now convinced based on how comfortable he has been lying to me that he doesn’t take me or my understanding of the law seriously. Basically, the only way I will be able to get him to follow the law is through these citations and while I don’t want to harm him personally because I love him my desire to do the right thing, my idealism, and my anger at him for what he did to Graciella and Jeffrey is greater than my worry about what this will do to him financially.
As you can kinda see, I’m a highly idealistic person and my brain kinda malfunctions when I see someone doing something unethical. And what makes it worse is not owning up to it. Literally all he needed to do when the heat went out was be like “Oh my bad, sorry, take $500 off your rent til it’s fixed!” Instead he acted like I didn’t know what I was talking about and tried to gaslight me into thinking I didn’t know the laws I’ve known since I was sixteen.
I have a few other tricks up my sleeve to use the legal system and city codes to get him to do what I want, which is basically to install heat and AC in both units in this duplex because I know AC is going to be mandated at some point and he’s going to try and weasel out of installing it when that happens. I love this house but I’m not sure how long I’ll be here because of how contentious this is going to make the relationship with him. It’s more important to me to leave this place code compliant for the next tenant than it is for me to have a cozy relationship with Larry.
I have been through the wringer the past few years and it’s kind of given me a fuck all attitude about things. When you live in a constant state of panic for four years, it flushes your adrenaline out of your system for a while, that’s where I’m at. And I know whatever happens I’ll be fine.
We live in a country where wealthy people are hoarding more and more of the capital and that kind of thing makes me wanna vomit. So slumlord landlords aren’t my vibe right now and I’m gonna do whatever I can to make this guy do the right, ethical thing. I wouldn’t mess with me this year. I’m in a winning era and not taking no for an answer.
More updates on this soon. Knowing Larry, this isn’t the last of the drama.
You probably don't want the conflict, but you and your neighbor should really try to recoup some of the rent you've paid him when he wasn't fulfilling terms of the lease. It would probably help you both out much more than he needs it!
I had a similar situation with a landlord who also believed he was in the right despite what the law says. I successfully took him to small claims court and won. He wasted a lot of time and money fighting me. It was so cold in my house I could see my breath in the morning. Sue him for the back rent. Some people will persist in delusion until the court forces them into compliance.