The slumlords of South Oakland exposed

Though its only the second week of school, housing for next year will be on the mind of most students very soon. If you’re staying on campus, than you have nothing to worry about, except your lottery number and being placed in Lothrop. Speaking of depressing and lonely places to live, most people don’t want to live in North Oakland, either. So the only rational option for many students is to find housing in South O.

Good old South Oakland has a lot to offer. However, typically students choose to live in South Oakland for three reasons- it’s cheaper than on campus housing and North O, and its “lit” on the weekends, and everything is hella convenient. The downside to living here is while it is a relatively safe place to live, the actual house or apartment you’re living in may not be. I’m not saying that the housing complexes going to burn down any time soon, but if they did, it wouldn’t bring the fiscal value of the neighborhood down much lower.

South O has its perks like tons of nearby restaurants, grocery stores, and bars. That’s usually what landlords or realtors would try to sell you on anywhere else but South Oakland. They would show you the perks of the neighborhood and the close proximity of the school, but here they don’t because they don’t care.

Here, landlords know that almost all students need housing, and that’s why they couldn’t give a shit. If you don’t rent the house/apartment, some other sucker will.

Their general apathy towards renting, flows directly into the way they take care of tenants and the buildings they own. While touring potential units last year, I noticed that every place we went to was deemed “luxury” or a “great deal”, which they absolutely weren’t. All of the places I saw were tiny, not updated, and disgustingly dirty.

To be quite honest, they were falling apart. When I asked one of the landlords if they were going to have someone come by to clean before I moved in, they said “I wouldn’t bother, it won’t get cleaner than this”. At the time I was stunned by the complete lack of caring that went into these businesses and the consistency of their apathetic tendencies. The sad thing is, that is nothing compared to what I’ve unearthed after moving in.

My moving experience wasn’t unpleasant. The representative who was doing a walk through with my family and I was very nice and understanding. What wasn’t great was the condition of my apartment.

As a preface, I live in one of the higher end apartments in South O, and I pay a good amount for it. Also, my landlords have been great so far- they’ve done all the repairs needed in my apartment, which was a lot. Just while doing the walk through, we found more than a few problems.

The fire extinguisher had expired in 1992, there were holes in my bedroom door, the stove was throwing sparks, and my sink’s spigot was leaking to the high heavens. All of those were replaced in a timely manner, within my first week of moving in. There were also the minor annoyances of the maintenance people not calling ahead of time and just letting themselves in, and everything being done on separate days. But no one was sent to clean the carpet, which was so dirty that the bottom of my white socks turned black from walking on them. That being said, all of those problems are nothing compared to what some of my friends are dealing with.

Two of my friends who are living together have a roach problem, and I’m not talking used up joints. Live roaches were nesting in one of their bedrooms, and it took their land lord weeks to send over exterminators. Still, this is child’s play in comparison to another of my friend’s household problems. First, he put a deposit down on a townhouse in Oak Hills and was left without housing, because they just didn’t have a place for him and his roommates.

After not being refunded his deposit, they found a house below the boulevard. In his room, there was a dirty area rug that covered almost the whole floor. He didn’t like it, so he rolled it up, revealing the mold and asbestos covered floor. His landlord just covered up a literal floor of death with a rug and wasn’t going to tell anyone about it. This landlord would rather risk the health of his/her tenant than replace a dangerous floor.

None of these apartments and houses are cheap either, so it isn’t as though we’re all getting what we paid for. It is not as if any of us could know about in depth problems such as these, when all we get is a quick walk through and a 12 month lease.

If you are looking to live in South Oakland, be aware that you will be taken advantage of instead of taken care of. You will sign a contract saying that you’ll pay to stay there, but they are also bound by both law and contract to treat their tenants fairly.

So when you do settle your living arrangements, be thorough during your walk through, demand that the landlord keep up with the upkeep, and do not be afraid to call the landlord with problems that you find.