I love my slumlord

The archives of the yellow blog are fraught with tales of the vicissitudes of apartment living in New Orleans. Over the years, I have indeed been granted my share of thrills. From the occasional rodent infestation, to the repeated kitchen ceiling collapse, to the air-conditioner wars, to the babbling brook, to the Shut Up, Little Man plumbing guys, the trip has indeed been a long and strange one.

Today, however, I find it necessary to point out that for all of its oddities, the management of my building could be far worse than it actually is. For example, instead of comically grappling to keep up with the foibles of a quirky building, my Slumlord could instead be engaged in the rampant racial housing discrimination that now permeates over 50% of the local rental market.

Black residents encountered discrimination nearly six times out of 10 when apartment hunting in the New Orleans area post-Katrina, according to a new study released Tuesday by a local civil rights group.

The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center sent white and black testers to check out advertised rentals in four parishes between September 2006 and April 2007. The study found disparities in how landlords treat prospective tenants based on skin color.

In nearly 58 percent of searches throughout a four-parish area, black prospective renters were stonewalled while white applicants were welcomed, said James Perry, executive director of the housing group.

Anyone familiar with the informal "insider's" culture of New Orleans knows that this practice is nothing new. Oyster provides anecdotal witness to this here. I suspect though that the tighter post-flood housing market has only emboldened such behavior and so I'm glad to see someone shine some light on it.

I have stated before that since the flood, I have gained a new appreciation for my Slumlord. The rent has risen over the past 20 months but only marginally. I suspect, in fact, that the increase has not offset the increased operational costs. And the place.. despite the episodic strangeness (which, in truth, I've always perversely enjoyed to some degree).. remains a substantial bargain for its size and location. Furthermore, I can't imagine anyone could charge building management with the sort of discriminatory practices described in the article above. The racial make-up of the occupants traces well with the city's demographics at large.

It startles me to consider the fact that I've lived in this apartment for nearly eight years now. I suppose this must mean that I am comfortable. Either that or it means I absolutely hate moving.. or any change at all for that matter... which is true, I admit.

Until such time as I am convinced of the wisdom of enslaving oneself to nefarious creditors for the purpose of investing in one's very own "mud hut", I suppose I'll continue shoveling away rent money on this dump. Besides.. June is coming. Who knows how long any of us will be here anyway?

R.I.P. Babbling Brook

The short-lived wetlands reclamation freshwater diversion project known as the Babbling Brook was laid to rest today in a modest unmarked grave in Uptown New Orleans leaving us only with the fondest of memories.

Return to Babbling Brook

The saga of the Babbling Brook continues. A full week and a half.. or so after the first indication of seepage from beneath our building, the gusher continues to roar untamed as more and more gallons of fresh water burst onto the sidewalk and into the drain.

On Sunday, as Carnival revelers made their way past my door to see the Krewe of Carrollton on the St Charles parade route, they were treated to the increasing spectacle that is our neighborhood geyser.




And here it is again today.



Our little fountain has become quite the tourist attraction as parade goers of all ages stop and marvel at its many wonders. This morning we had another conversation with Slumlord as well as one with the S&WB. Turns out both parties are disputing who is responsible for affecting these repairs. According to Slumlord, because the leak occurs on "their side of the meter" the city is responsible for sending a crew out to tear through the sidewalk and fix the pipe. S&WB tells us that they are responsible for anything "between the street and the building" but since this leak occurs at exactly the junction of the sidewalk and the building, they.. might agree to send out an inspector but seem to claiming they aren't responsible. I don't know but it looks to me like the city should be out here working on this. Slumlord, for his part, has been agitating as well as have most of the tenants here. He has also contacted Stacy Head's office so perhaps we'll see some movement soon. Meanwhile we're low low low on water pressure. ..and we've got company coming for Mardi Gras... including Consuela who I am certain will want to shower.

Action Photos.. of plubming

This morning we found that the babbling brook had doubled in size as whatever underground pipe has burst began spouting more water from a wider area.

Below we see the land building properties of flood water in action as a fresh layer of alluvial silt has been deposited by the stream creating new coastal marshland just beyond the curb.


Oh and we're starting to lose water pressure.

Freshwater Diversion

What began about a week and a half ago as a small seepage of water from the ground where the sidewalk meets my apartment building has grown into a multi-spout babbling brook. Steady mini-geysers are producing a strengthening flow from underground to form a stream that cascades into the street and down the nearest storm drain. I've spoken with Lackey 2.0 and Slumlord about it and they seem to be hinting that it's the city's problem. Longtime readers will know that this is far from the first time I've had trouble with the plumbing in or near my apartment. I'm starting to worry about sinkholes in the street (which have happened before) or worse under the building itself. Is there anything else I can or should do?

Slumlord's grace period is just about over

Despite the fact that my rent has jumped more than 20% post-K it does remain below the inflated average for the area. My building is located in a tricky spot.. right between the famous Garden District and the infamous "Triangle of Death". Living here gives one the aesthetic benefits of some of the city's most historic neighborhoods and popular attractions. I can walk to the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, or Magazine Street, or (before the storm) the St. Charles Ave Streetcar line. The French Quarter and the Superdome are each about 10 minutes away via bicycle.

The location also allows one to experience some of the.. um.. local color associated with my side of St Charles Ave. Some frequent visitors to my front stoop over the years have included prostitutes and panhandlers in various states of intoxication, transient laborers who live approximately 12 to an apartment in the building across the street, and the guy who used to try and sell us stuff he dug out of the dumpster. About a year and a half ago there was an unusual standoff between a SWAT team and a knife-wielding naked man on the roof next door. Did I mention also that one of the houses across the street from me is currently on the market for half a million dollars? New Orleans is a funny place. I am never leaving.

Over the life of the yellow blog.. I have also mentioned some of the quirks of my building and its crack management team. (Interpret the "crack" any way you see fit.) See here and here.. and well, you get the point. Since Katrina, I've learned to exercise a great deal more patience with my Slumlord.

The flood deprived New Orleans of virtually all of its public housing and a great majority of its rental housing.. where dwelled a large percentage of the city's considerable population of working poor (myself included). The resulting shortage has led to a dystopian housing scenario where masses of poor and underemployed citizens are shut out of the rental market as rents have skyrocketed to two and three times their pre-storm levels. Instead of working on a solution to the housing problem, local political leaders have spent most of the past fourteen months capitalizing on the short-sighted animosity of the remaining haves toward the now largely abandoned and still exiled have-nots. Most notably, Mayor Ray Nagin recently executed a wonderfully Machiavellian reelection campaign where he cultivated the votes of the conservative establishment by purposefully not developing a plan for low income housing while simultaneously garnering the absentee votes of flooded out citizens by playing to their fear that there was indeed no such plan. Sound weird? New Orleans is a funny place. And still, there is no plan to restore the city's decimated rental housing stock.

Throughout all of this, Slumlord (unlike many New Orleans landlords) has been comparatively reasonable about the rent.. and has not as yet sold the building for conversion to condos. For this he has earned my gratitude. Unfortunately he's quickly using up this capital. I'll explain.

One of the weird things about this building is that everything seems to fall apart at once. Two days ago, I noticed a leak in the elbow joint below the kitchen sink. At the same time, in the bathroom, a completely different leak developed in the supply hose which delivers water from the tap to the toilet. I placed buckets in the appropriate places and, yesterday, left a message with Mrs. Slumlord.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed the plumbing mobile parked outside along with the building Lackey discussing matters with the plumbers. Turns out they weren't there to deal with my problem at all. They were there to deal with a problem another tenant was having which involved actual sewerage backing up in her bathtub. Although, this made my problems seem trivial by comparison, I nonetheless took it upon myself to mention them to Lackey who distractedly agreed to "take a look" at his nearest convenience.

Such convenience did not happen upon us today. When I got home from work, I emptied my catch buckets, cleaned up the floor of the bathroom where things seem to be backing up there now, and called Slumlord just to see where the situation stood.

Me: Hey. I talked to Mrs. Slumlord and Lackey about this yesterday, but I just wanted to let you know that we're still having some plumbing issues over here today.

Slumlord: What? Is there a water problem? We need to know that! That's costing us all kinds of money! You need to tell us about that!

Me: Um... I did tell you.. yesterday.

Slumlord: You need to tell us when this happens! This is costing us money!

Me: I understand that. I talked to Lackey yesterday and he said....

Slumlord: Lackey doesn't work for me anymore.... He does but he's part time... You're supposed to tell Lackey 2.0 about this! We need to know this! It's a lot of money!

Me: Well.. I wasn't told that... but anyway I did call as soon as..

Slumlord: Look, Lackey 2.0 will be there tomorrow.

Me: Okay. Thanks for all your help.

And so go many conversations I've had with the man over the years. He's a charming fellow. I can only imagine the nature of the subsequent conversation between him and Lackey 2.0 because not half an hour later, Lackey 2.0 showed up to investigate my plumbing issues. He claims to have now scheduled an appearance tomorrow with plumbers in tow to affect repairs. As luck would have it, I'll be at work tomorrow so I'll be in suspense most of the day as to whether or not my apartment will eventually fall in the path of a catastrophic man-made flood much more localized than the one we saw last year. Update to follow.. if I survive.

Note: I'm just noticing that each of the above indicated prior misadventures of apartment living also contain the only two references this blog has ever made to "Shut Up, Little Man". It is certainly no coincidence that life in this building would tend to conjure such imagery.

Well that's nice

Cox suspends bill payments Wonder if Slumlord still wants his September rent.

Hot!

I mean like, on the real! Meanwhile, our a/c struggles continue. When we first visited with the Slumlord's Lackey regarding this issue, Lackey's solution was a rudimentary instruction to us regarding the operation of the thermostat. We usually leave it set between 70 and 75 during the day. Lackey's theory was that this was not a low enough setting to induce cooling. Having found this explanation rather strange, I pointed out that the actual temperature in the room was well above 80 and that, yes, I understood how a thermostat works. Lackey cut me off with a curt, "I'm the technician here!" Having received the implication that the only alternative at this point would involve fisticuffs, I decided to try his suggestion. We set the thermostat to 65.

A week later, the place had not begun to cool. The only new development was that the coils were beginning to ice up. Lackey agreed to summon an a/c professional who managed to relieve us of the icing.... but not the hot.

So this morning, after a particularly intolerable night's sleep, I summoned the energy to phone Slumlord once again. Before I left for work, I made sure the thermostat was set to 65 in order to ward off any complaints. (We still usually keep it at 70.) A moment ago, I called Consuella at home to see if anything had been done. She reports that she was out when Lackey came by to check on things, but he did leave us a note. It says:

"Unit needs to be kept at 70 for 24 hours. If still not cooling call Lackey."

WTF!

Hard Times

Yesterday I woke up to find the ceiling leaking again. I don't understand why Slumlord is so cavalier about resolving this issue. It may be that he has every legal right to be.

In the first year, if you’ve registered (and only if you’ve registered) your lease at City Hall, you are pretty much guaranteed a place to live with repairs and maintenance supplied by the landlord at a specific price (your rent.) After that, all bets are off. This is the state that most of us are in. It only takes five to ten days to get you out after that. You are now at the mercy of the landlord – the kindness of strangers, so to speak.

This is why it's time to go drinking now

Unusual day. It began innocently enough last night when Consuela and Captain Jack Sparrow decided to pick up a few pounds of crawfish. They seemed happy with their purchase so I left them to it and turned in early.

This morning, as I was walking out the door with a load of laundry, I was met there by the carcasses of four crawfish which Captain Jack had nailed to a telephone poll presumably as a warning to any passing crustaceans who may harbor thoughts of challenging his authority in the future. I reflected on this for a moment and went on with my day. Laundry, a quick jog and a shower…. Oh did I tell you about the shower? This week we lost the ability to shut the water off in the tub. Once you’re done in there the cold water just keeps running. I figured out that this can be temporarily overcome by applying direct pressure to the knob. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get Consuela and Captain Jack to agree to take on this task in shifts. We devised a temporary solution involving a plunger propped between the knob and the soap holder and held in place by a towel which works fine but is a bitch to replace every time someone takes a shower.

So there I was this afternoon. It’s my day off. All of my errands are run. I’ve got the heads of impaled crawfish staring at my front door and a shower that could explode at any second. It’s definitely time to get out on the bicycle for a while. Naturally the three hours I spent riding around, drinking coffee, doing the crossword puzzle in Consuela’s bar were the two hours the a/c guy showed up to fix this problem and the plumbers came by to fix the shower. The good news is Captain Jack was in the house. The bad news is he was sleeping. I returned to find a “sorry we missed you” notice on the door from the a/c guy and the plumbers hard at work…. on the KITCHEN SINK. They had done a beautiful job too. We now have a brand new kitchen faucet. Everything works great there.. pretty much like it did before.

The plumbers had a little trouble adjusting when I had to tell them why Slumlord had actually dispatched them to begin with. Both of them are wiry, leather skinned, raspy voiced yats who have clearly aged beyond their years…. kind of how you might picture the Shut Up, Little Man guys. In fact, they even seemed to channel those guys as they descended into a short spat over which one of them was to blame for the mix-up. I was afraid they might even come to blows for a minute there. They recovered their composure, such as it was, and went to work on the bathroom while I watched the Kentucky Derby.

While the work was proceeding, Captain Jack finally emerged from his coma and eagerly asked me if I had seen his crawfish. I told him that I had and offered him my Vlad the Impaler comparison. This pleased him so much that he immediately ran out to show off his handiwork to the plumbers. The conversation went like this.

Captain Jack: “You see Jeff says it’s kind of a warning to all the other crawfish who might come up out the neighborhood to fuck with us.”

Inbred Leather-Skinned Cigarette-Scented Plumber: “What do you mean? Is ‘crawfish’ like code for niggers or something?”
Also, they didn’t finish fixing the bathroom. We may or may not see them again on Monday.

Springtime in New Orleans

We are only now beginning to receive vague hints of the unimaginably torturous summer temperatures to come. Already Consuela is having fits of discomfort. What's worse is tonight I decided to open our underperforming A/C and discovered that this is happening. How bad is it? And more importantly, how likely is it that Slumlord will do anything about it?

In a related story,
The glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are in rapid retreat.

Hey check it out I hit 10,000 visitors

It's about freaking time, you losers! Actually I love you all. Really. Especially the people looking for Barry Bonds homerun balls. You guys are the best. Sorry but there will be no Monday Sports Page today. (Tigers won. Saints lost. No, I didn't go) I've had quite a busy time of it this weekend. My father has finally sold my childhood home and I have spent all of the last three days helping him haul truckloads of unbelievable tear-jerking memories across town. This is grim work indeed. Add to this some rather intriguing work related drama which I can't talk about until I figure out a way to do so without inadvertently arousing the attention of the hyper-sensitive or that of the clueless or that of the just plain evil.. who all may be reading right now. Hello. Add to that the fact that my ceiling is leaking again just in time for Thanksgiving. Slumlord and lackey have promised to fix this before "the holiday." I hope they meant this one. Add to that the stress of the as yet to begin preparations for this holiday and, well, I've kind of got my hands full. As a result of the chaos.. and in honor of this 10,000 visit milestone, I am pleased to present the first official Lib Chron rerun. Tonight's repeat takes us all the way back to November 11, 2003 when I, very much in the spirit of the holiday, linked to this article by James Loewen on the Thanksgiving origin myth and also reccomended one of his books. Every bit as good a read this year as last.

Slumlord Update

Things, as usual, are not well here in our shanty on the wrong side of the streetcar tracks. On Friday, I logged a complaint with my slumlord's voicemail about the following issues:

1) The rot in the front door frame has nearly progressed to such a stage that locking the door is becomming less and less a tangible reality. Sure, we can still turn the deadbolt and do so out of adherence to ritual, but I imagine it wouldn't take more than a halfhearted shove from a mildly anemic four year old girl to free it from its moorings. This is not exactly an ideal situation in our neighborhood. Yes, the crackheads are friendly but, as they say, tall fences make good neighbors.. or in this case just a door... that you can close.

2) The a/c isn't really cooling the appartment very well, or at all really. This is a real problem because, well, do I really have to explain the summer here in the tropics? No I don't. Good because just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood. We still let the air run, but only so as not to cheat Entergy out of their hard earned monthly payment. We have given up on setting the thermostat below 80, mostly because of the ugly way it laughs at us whenever we do so, but also I get tired of the sound of money burning for no purpose.

3) Those ceiling tiles in the kitchen are, once again, beginning to bow ominously. Last time the ceiling collapsed, the slumlord had the tiles replaced, and explained the leakage thusly, "The people above you must not be using their shower curtain." The kitchen has flooded three times in four years and this is as far as he is willing to go in pursuit of this matter. It gets old.

So today, the slumlord's surly lackey was dispatched to investigate our air conditioning. His conclusion: "Well, I see you have it set to 80. When you do that, the air in the room won't get any cooler than 80." I tried to explain to him that it was set that way because the lower settings do nothing other than increase my electric bill, but he held fast to his position. Finally I allowed him to leave before we actually came to blows over the issue. He set the thermostat to 72 and said, "You'll see, just let it run." This was three hours ago. It is still damn hot in here. Consuela wants to start witholding the rent until these problems are fixed, but I am pretty sure that the goodly management would rather evict tennants than actually fix the appartment. I hate moving but am quickly losing patience.

Kitchen Drip Caper

I like to think that I've been generally tolerant of my current living quarters. The folks who live above me have recently invented a sport of some sort that sounds like it involves 1)bowling balls 2) cinder blocks 3)wild cackling. Meanwhile, the next door neighbors are only a few slips down the twelve step ladder from becoming the Shut Up, Little Man guys. I could also mention the daily progress of freaks, crackheads, Jehova's Witnesses, and other such n'er do wells who frequent my doorstep but I'd rather not, thank you.
As I mentioned above, Consuela and I have been pretty understating regarding these issues on account of the following facts: 1)The rent is relatively low for the size and location of the building. 2) No one seems to mind when said rent is late. Oh, and also the umm.. charm. And so everything was fine until last night when God decided it was time to the destroy the kitchen by water.
It began with a drip. Many good things do begin with a drip such as a pot of coffee or an afternoon thunderstorm after a hot August morning. This was not one of them. This was a drip which had journeyed from someplace deep within the sinuses of the building to an exit point in the center of an increasingly convex ceiling tile above my kitchen counter. Curious, I decided to begin an inquiry into the nature of this drip. I opened my investigation by positioning myself atop a barstool, mostly to increase the odds of breaking my neck. From there I began to, scientifically, poke at the tile cyst until, finally, it burst open in a magnificent shower of water and mold and pieces of something... oh and I think a few dead bugs.
Less than amused, I telephoned my slum lord with whom I carried on the following conversation:

"Um, my kitchen just, like, blew up and there's water all over the place and it's still dripping and this is not normal right?"
"Is it dripping or flooding?
"Well, I think the one generally leads to the other."
"Is it dripping or flooding?"
"It's dripping...... menacingly."
"Put a bucket under it and I'll send someone out tomorrow."

And there I was in a soiled and sinking kitchen looking for an adequate bucket. It was about this time that the following sequence of events transpired on my television set.
First and Goal: Deuce McAllister clearly breaks the plain of the goal line. One official signals touchdown only to be overruled by another official whose view of the play was blocked. Jim Haslett decides not to challenge the call.
Second and Goal: Aaron Brooks fumbles the snap, Eagles recover in the endzone. The Saints are doomed yet again.
I did the only thing a rational man could do at this point. I hauled ass to A&P and bought a giant bottle of Merlot.
The dripping continued unabated throughout the afternoon and began to crescend around 9 PM. The increased dripping and new tile buldges prompted yet another stool top investigation (I don't learn very quickly.) This time Consuela and Nurse Mama walked in the door at exactly the right time to witness as I received a second dousing. This time the water was just gushing in. I placed another frantic call to the slum lord who then condescended to dispatch his poor lackey to investigate. When the lackey arrived, the dripping stopped by itself. He didn't know where it came from or if it was coming back. He did know that he couldn't do anything about it until the morning. He went on his way and I spent the next four hours cleaning up. Supposedly he is back in my apartment today, while I'm here complaining. Hopefully, I'll have use of kitchen before it's too late to make oyster dressing.

So that's my day. How are you?