We live in a town that is fairly new to a lot of our fellow city folk, and we see a lot of new developments and renovations going on. While this isn’t entirely uncommon, we tend to get a bit antsy if there is a new construction happening, because we know that there are lots of new construction apartments in the area.
We are probably in the minority on the city council because we tend to be against any building that’s going to have the potential to come down. We know that there are lots of new construction apartments in town, and that they’ll never be the building that happens to fall because we know there’s a good chance that new construction will happen, so it’s a bit of a catch-22 situation.
So what we do is we just kind of do our best to block new construction from coming in to town, and put up lots of billboards advertising our town’s newest apartment rental. This year we are working on putting up billboards in various spots in the city, hoping that landlords will see them and decide to start construction. So far, no one has.
I suppose this probably explains why the area between our billboard and the apartment building is so filled with construction.
The problem though is that many landlords don’t feel they have the right to refuse to rent an apartment to someone who may be a transient and not permanent. Maybe there should be a law stating that if you are a transient and are applying for a permanent residence, you have to show that you will be a permanent resident of the area within thirty days after your move-in date.
I don’t know about you, but if it’s not on your lease I’m not going to sign it. If you are not a permanent resident, you have to fill out a rental application and pay a fee to confirm you will be a permanent resident. Most landlords who don’t want a transient tenant are unaware they can refuse you, and therefore you have no way to force them to rent to you.
I would argue that the landlord has the ultimate power over whether you stay or go as long as they dont deny you housing. The good thing is the landlord can do this a lot easier than the city council does.
If you’re a resident (or maybe you are, but who knows?), you can file an application with the city to rent your property. Your fee will be $60, and you’ll even get a chance to meet the landlord. The landlord is only allowed to discuss a rental of $500 or less. If you’re willing to pay the rent, the landlord will tell you what options you have for an apartment.
This is one of those times where I hope no one gets hurt. I work in a city in which we have a $5 million dollar building that has been vacant for two years. The city has decided to hold a “redevelopment” project on it in hopes of getting some money to rebuild the building as a “super-luxury” place.
The problem is that no one is willing to give that money to pay the rent. It’s hard to say how much the landlord will sell the building for, but it is a lot of money, so I’m guessing the rent will likely be around a million dollars. That’s a whole lot of money to just throw into a building and hope no one notices.