What Happened After The Flood

     We live in a "garden" apartment, that means basement. With the recent heavy rains our apartment flooded. It turns out that the sump pumps in the two buildings our landlord owns were not working. Before we knew it our apartment became a small pond. 

     This is my 23 year old daughter who lives with us. She is expecting her first child in about 3 weeks and has spent the last six months gathering baby things and nesting, trying to make things as perfect as possible for the baby. 

     My 21 year old son lives with us also. He and his sister are very close though it wasn't always that way.


     The day after the flood we waited for the landlord to see what he would do to help us not only because it's his property but also because his lack of maintainence was directly responsible for the flooded apartments in both his buildings. What would have been a logical solution for him and us turned into major drama. Here's what happened...


     

Me, "Landlord, you have an empty apartment on the third floor, our apartment is ruined and you have to replace all the flooring, why don't we just move into that vacant unit as is and you only have to fix up this unit?"

Landlord,"No,no,no.You tear out carpeting and I replace it, in meantime you stay here."

Son, "It's not healthy to live here till then, you're responsible, let us move upstairs, it's filthy,wet, and it stinks already!"

"Your sister can stay upstairs till new carpet comes, I have other tenants in other building with kids and nowhere for them to go, if you don't like it you can move out! Pull up carpet and it will dry faster!"

Daughter, "Do you know how upsetting this is? I could have this baby any day now! I can't bring the baby to this!"

Landlord," Sorry, you can stay upstairs till carpet comes, then you come back down here"

This gave my husband a bad headache.He couldn't get a word in and wondered why "we" have to pull up this soaking wet carpeting for our landlord. The answer was of course the sooner it's pulled up, the sooner it dries and the sooner new carpet can be laid. The other choice was to stay here on the soaking wet carpet for three more days till the carpet men came. He said nothing because we had no other choice and no where else to go.

Son, "We can report you and take legal action. You are responsible and this is not liveable conditions"

Landlord, "You and your sister not on lease, you threaten me with legal action, you can get out!"

"You can't do this to us, I can't have a baby here like this, I don't believe you're doing this! What are we supposed to do?"

Me, "Everyone just stop, we have no choice, stop yelling!"





That was yesterday. We've spent the last two days ripping up carpeting, moving furniture, and bleaching the cracked concrete floor we now live on. Daughter has moved all the baby's things upstairs so it doesn't start to stink too. We're still not done and my son is breaking his back doing most of the heavy work with my husbands help. Daughter is still crying. Me? I'm just going to dive into this piece of chocolate cake and temporarily forget it all.

My neighbors are in a hotel and are filing suit against him.