Every year...

Every year the elevator in my building stops working on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I don't know what causes it. Poltergeist I think. I only know this because every year I do the Martin Luther King Jr March and I come home from a long march all tired and then have to climb 4 fucking flights of stairs. This year, apparently the elevator is starting an hour and a half early. I went down to fetch my laundry out of the dryer to discover there was no elevator. Now unlike the last time this happened, I wouldn't have done my laundry if I had known this was going to happen. So I trudged up the 5 flights of stairs all grumpy and tired and shit and thought 'If my apartment building owners think they can raise rents with shit like this happening all the time, they are nuts.'

Which brings me to my 2nd point. I was talking to my apartment manager recently about the possibility of a new lease. I've been leaseless since this guy started. Every time I have asked, I get told that they will want to raise my rent $25 to do it. So I asked again last week sometime and he said the same answer and then mentioned that they (the building owners) want to eventually raise the base rents to $900. Are you fucking kidding me?! If my math is correct, that would be $900 base rent and then an additional $50 for utilities which would be a $200 increase for me. That's a buttload of money and totally not worth it. A neighbor heard that and agreed with me that this building is not worth $900 (or $950)/mo. Now I am willing to pay more in rent, don't get me wrong. I haven't had an increase since I moved in 4 years ago. It would only make sense that I should pay more eventually. But not THAT much more. And considering how often little things like the elevator breaking happen, I also don't know that I could support that much of an increase.

When I was downstairs doing my laundry I discovered one other little needly thing. They've raised our laundry rates by a quarter. It was $1.25 to do each load of wash and the same to dry. Just last Sunday it was still just $1.00. And it isn't as though these machines have been improved at all. They are the same crappy ones that were there last week. I will say it did give me 15 more min of drying time, so I guess that's okay, except I really didn't need the extra 15 min.

Someday I will have the money to buy my own place... although by the time that happens even the distant suburbs will be out of my price range. (Actually I'm hoping the glut of new 'luxury' condos don't work out for all the developers and so they end up going for cheap because everybody and their brother is building one on any 5' of space available. That's probably bad for me karmically but whatever, I never get what I want anyway.)