Thing is, lots of people really care where they live and how the area looks. When a person is paying a descent amount of rent, or a high monthly mortgage, they want-to-require a nicely kept area. They don't want to live around people who will throw their trash bag, or just some trash, on the cement by the trash bin and the trash bin isn't even full. These are folks that just plainly don't care. Would really hate to see how the inside of their apartments look.
We are a nation with cities full of residents who think that any altercation between police and someone they don't even know is the green light to go steal whatever they want...without repercussion. Institutionalized Irresponsibility codified by government.
That trash is a health-hazard, and it's littering. That's a different story. And you just identified those folks who don't want their apartment inspected, and why that is.
Yeah, I suffer from the same syndrome. Guys used to come to me instead of the chaplain when they got dear John letters in the Army. The thing is, I know I’m a hard person to work for / with and to me, wasting time with gossip no matter how well founded it may be is still gossip. I’ve been known to sent people down the road because they were comparing their salaries with each other whilst they were supposed to be doing their job. I give raises to those who deserve a raise and teach those who need to be taught how to do their jobs better so they can get a raise and those who will not learn I send down the road. When a staff member of an apartment complex, or any business for that matter starts conveying information about one customer to another or one resident about another is out of line and needs to be dealt with. Now earlier, in my first post I wrote that I doubted if things went down between the regional manager and the resident manager as it was written. Regional guys for the most part aren’t stupid and got where they are the hard way so they should know the ropes. To come out and blatantly tell someone’s understudy that they will not go far would be ludicrous. First, to do so is like inviting someone to get frustrated and quit whilst taking the unbanked cash receipts. Secondly, to know that someone is dead weight and not relieve the situation with a pink slip and a replacement is also stupid. Now, if that regional guy told the manager that he’s been getting a lot of calls at the home office concerning her work and if that continues then her future was looking bleak; And /or, if the regional guy told the manager that if she couldn’t handle what was happening at her complex then she might like to re-examine her future with the company, I’d go with that. But just to insinuate that she is lousy at her job and not replace her at the same time would again, be absurd. All that written, if perhaps the regional guy got his job because his uncle is the CEO, maybe that might be a different thing but still, it makes me wonder how much is simple gossip and how much is true.
How I stated about the talk between the Regional and the Manager here, is what the Manager here told us. Otherwise, my wife wouldn't have given her some Apartment Manager jobs to look at from Indeed. She took then and said "thank you" to my wife. The Manager did tell us that the Regional said that......"you aren't going to go anywhere with this company". That's why she took the Indeed jobs and thanked my wife for them.
So, let’s assume that what was said behind closed doors between the manager and the DM was the same conversation that was quoted to a tenant as verbatim. The DM cannot be defended because he’s an idiot and likewise, the manager of the complex cannot be defended because she passed on information that the residents shouldn’t be privy to which, if found out, makes her a high risk for any other management position. Plus, if the residents of the complex do not respect said manager enough to stick to the tenets of their lease, then she still cannot be defended.
I agree with most of that except the last part. People who don't respect themselves don't respect others. That's not the fault of the others. That's like saying speeders don't respect cops, so the cops are at fault (actually I don't really know...maybe it's like that and maybe it's not. I've exhausted myself in this thread.)
I respect personal liberties and if I want that for myself, I have to be willing to tolerate it in others. I don't care if my neighbors have a junk car in their driveway. I don't even care if it's up on blocks in their front yard. I don't care if they mow their lawn. I did care when I had a neighbor who decided he was going to make a kennel out of his side yard, facing my house, because the dogs barked often and loudly. But I tolerated it because it was his yard and I chose to buy a house that bordered the yards of two other people. I was happy when he and his dogs moved away but, like the train that used to come through, the barking didn't bother me so much after a few months. Right now, there is a vacant house on one side of me, owned by the state, that has a garage and shed whose roof has collapsed, and a pile of junk that used to be covered by a tent-like temporary storage thing that collapsed from the weight of the snow since the previous owner moved away and was no longer removing the snow. On the other side of me, there is a house occupied by someone who doesn't seem particularly talkative, but there are no problems that I am aware of. But he has only a half-yard because the back part of that lot is occuped by what used to be a taxi office but has been vacant for years, and has a pile of junk, including a couple of old snowmobiles, barrels, and other stuff. The railroad tracks behind my house has only seen a couple of trains in the past year, and is mostly grown up with weeds. So, you see, when our code enforcement officer decided to complain about my compost pile, which he had to walk the railroad tracks in order to see, I wasn't particularly interested in hearing about it. Once he found that I wasn't about to cringe from the weight of his authority, he sort of lost a bit of his enthusiasm too. To be sure, I complained to the town manager, who wasn't particularly interested in my walking around town finding places that were much bigger eyesores than my compost pile, so I don't think I'll be hearing any more about that. So yeah, those of you who love the orderliness of an HOA-enforced neighborhood wouldn't want to live next door to me. But that's okay. I'm not particularly interested in keeping up with the Joneses, and I certainly don't want someone telling me that I have to. I have no problem with the existence of HOA-controlled neighborhoods, but I wouldn't want to live in one. There are plenty of people who do, and that's fine too.
We live in an HOA neighborhood. I can verify without hesitation that people that you wouldn't want to live next door to are everywhere. Even the mighty HOA can't keep them out. We have a stack of threatening letters from the HOA that we use for emergency toilet tissue. We have a motorhome that we bring to the house to clean, maintain, and load/unload when we are going or coming from a trip. It may be on the driveway for 3 days or so, and you can bet that by the 3rd day, a letter advising us of our wanton disregard for the rules has arrived. We toss it into the appropriate receptacle that will be dragged to the curb on Monday for pickup. When we first bought the RV several years ago, I contacted the HOA Nazis to let them know that ON OCCASION, it would be parked on my own driveway and they could like it or lump it. I told them to notate my account to show this. Whether they did or not I have no idea, but that pesky letter never fails to appear.
I have a friend here who is in the timber industry. He moved to a nice neighborhood the next county over so his daughter could go to their school system. When he moved in, they failed to have him sign the HOA agreement at settlement...so he started parking his work truck (We Kill Trees, Inc.) in front of his house. The Association rep goes crazy, thrusting the agreement in his face telling him he has to sign. My friend just smiles and politely declines. He was at a neighbor's party (a University of Virginia professor), and when the neighbor found out what the guy did for a living, he went ballistic. The professor called him all the childish names, while the guy calmly pointed out that the professor lived in a frame house with hardwood floors and a piano made of several types of wood. The professor kicked him out. The next day, the professor has hung No Trespassing signs on all his trees, facing towards my friend's house. My friend is still there, having fun jerking chains while waiting for his kid to graduate high school so he can GTF out.
Wayyyyyyy too much stuff to wade through, here, but I got the gist of it. I believe the problem is the lease, probably a standardized document with tons of legalese that few actually understand. I owned rental properties, single family houses, for almost forty years. I was an excellent landlord who kept good tenants and quickly evicted bad ones. My lease, which I wrote, perfecting it over the years, was in plain English, easily understood. One clause made it very clear that if any rules or regulations contained in the lease, or signed off on in updated addenda to the same, were not followed, then the tenant would be notified in writing, with such notice affixed to the front door and witnessed by an independent party, and this notification would inform the tenant that he/she would have twenty-four hours to vacate the property. (Another clause provided that the tenant would be given a written notice of the violation, and sign off on the same, being given time to correct the violation, prior to being given the eviction notice, as above.) Now, there are those who will say that the above clause violates this or that due process statute contained in most municipal rent agreements. So be it. Thing is, the tenant signed off on it, and waived the right to take it to litigation, put forth in another clause of my lease. I never had a tenant contest their eviction. NEVER. I evicted five tenants in about forty years. Not bad, I think. The management company at your place, Cody, needs to insert a clear, concise clause in their lease that's similar to mine, albeit reviewed by their legal department to make sure everything is legally cool. Problem solved.
The State of Alabama is a little biased in favor of the tenant in most cases. In order to evict I have to serve the eviction from person to person rather than simply tacking it on the door. And, there are 2 ways to legally evict: One is to give a 30 day notice to move out then I can change the locks. The second is to give them a 10 day notice, then go to the court house and pay $340 dollars to have them sent a notice to appear in court at which time the judge gives them an additional 10 days to move out or the Sheriff’s Dept. goes by and tosses out their stuff and locks the doors. The only other exception is if a tenant is involved in drugs. Call the cops and lock the doors after they are removed and their stuff goes on the sidewalk the next day if they haven’t made bail and made other arrangements.
Austin has a Tenants Council that gives free legal advice to tenants. The laws here also favor them over landlords. My lease circumvented the niceties set up to allow tenants to screw over landlords. Had I been challenged in court, I would have lost, most likely, but I never was, and so my evictions went smoothly. From the time I was eleven, writing contracts for gigs I booked for my band, I learned that getting written agreements made things so much easier, in all ways. My folks always told me, "Get it in writing. If you don't, you'll be sorry!" To this day, I faithfully follow that advice. Thanks, Mom and Dad, wherever you may be! If the majority of folks followed the advice I received, at eleven, Judge Judy, and the rest of the TV judges, would have no shows on the air......
Another thing that had happened here: We were told, by a young Asst. Manager, before she quit to take care of her newborn baby, that no firearms were allowed as well as no surround sound systems. I didn't remember reading anything on the Lease that stated these two things. I asked the Manager and she said "the Asst. Manager is wrong, we allow both". But, also said, "residents have to respect neighbors when it comes to how high the surround sound can be and firearms can not be out in the open to be seen by anyone coming in the apartment." We hooked our surround sound up, but keep it decently low at night. We know how thin the walls are. Our firearms are all in a gun case, with a locked glass door. There is a trigger lock on each and the case is in the spare bedroom, not in our living room. What I wish..........people, like a Manager and Asst. Manager, be on the same darn page!