There were a bunch of horror stories in the last six months about landlords jacking rents up by as much as 300% for livable apartments in the wake of the hurricane. The supply situation was pretty bad BEFORE 90% of the buildings got damaged. Now it's even worse.

The only ads you see in the paper under “Residential for rent” are “Executive Housing $3,300/month Call xxx-xxxx” and you just KNOW that that particular house/apt was going for $1800 max last summer. By trying to “target” “executives” in the ad to justify the rent increase for their dump they're trying to rent, all they're doing is to help foster the supply shortage. Not to mention that anyone who's made it to an “executive” level is going to be smart enough to see right through it.

The landlords who manage my apartment haven't really had a stellar track record to begin with, but I've always gotten along with them because I don't want to get kicked out basically on their whim.

Last month we got billed for four months of cable service, Dec-March. It was $120 dollars or $40/month. Our cable wasn't ON during that time, and in February the landlords asked us for the cable box address so they could see what was wrong. When they queried the cable company, our box was not even listed with them as an active address, which was why we didn't get any channels. We had to provide the box number as well as the smartcard/cablecard number to them to re-enter us into the system. This happened on Feb 28th, 2004. How is it they can bill us for the four months when we were only put into their system on the 28th of Feb?

I brought it up to the landlords and they passed the buck. They said that we had to take it up with the cable company, but that in the meantime, the cable company had billed the mangement company, so they in turn put it on our rent bill to recoup their charge and left the onus on us to try and get some satusfaction from the cable company. As bad as that was, this isn't the purpose of this rant.

When I went to pay the rent last month, we didn't pay the $120 cable bill, so I had to pull all the cash out of my pockets to make up the difference and I was short by $36 dollars. I said I would go to the bank and come back later that day to pay the difference, and she said “Oh, don't worry about it, we'll just tack it on to next month's bill and you can pay it then to save yourself a trip” Well that was nice of them...

This month's bill arrived the other day, and the balance forward from last month is $86 instead of $36. What a coincidence... that's exactly $50 more than what I thought it was, and $50 is the “late rent” penalty. I called them up and asked them, giving SO MUCH leeway in the way I worded the question, that I was pretty sure that the shortage was not $86, but only about $30 or $40. She was off the island for the weekend, but said that I should “just pay the amount on the statement” and she would “explain it to me later”.

If I'm right and they've charged me $50 for paying late after telling me “oh don't worry about it, we'll carry it forward” then I'm going to update this post and re-insert all the bad words I edited out and also put their names and phone numbers here and start REALLY looking for somewhere else to live. If I'm wrong and they're going to adjust NEXT month's rent, then I'll post an apology here (and start looking for somewhere else to live)