We rented the upper duplex in Ken's dumpy house in May (and only in May). We were told before we moved in that the sink was broken and that he would fix it before we moved in. Do you think it was fixed when we moved out at the end of the month? No. I asked if I could pick one up at Home Depot and fix it myself but was told he could not afford it because he had no money in his account. Well he did but it was because he was check kiting - writing a $900 check out of one account that had no money to cover a $900 check out of another that also had no money - highly illegal, considered a felony. So we had to do our dishes in the bath tub. Highly unsanitary.
We also never had hot water (there were only two adults in our unit). I would wake up 30 minutes before the downstairs guy so I could shower thinking he was using all the hot water and I still got only 3 minutes of lukewarm water (at best) followed by freezing cold water for the remainder of my shower. He pays the utilities so I'm assuming he either had it set too low or the water heater wasn't big enough for 3 adults and 2 teenagers (1 adult and 2 teens downstairs). I told him and his response was to ask the downstairs tenant to stop using so much water (I think the tenant was getting paid to do others laundry because he was constantly doing laundry). That was no help.
We were also told that we had a furnace and air conditioner but were not told that we had no control over the air (we only had control of the furnace because the last tenant complained and his house was condemed until the unit had a separate control). He forgot to tell us that if we wanted our air on we would have to ask the guy downstairs. Our house was 85 degrees one day and when we were finally able to get ahold of him (he did not get home until after 6 pm) he turned it on for about three hours and then shut it off for the night. Our unit never dropped below 82 degrees.
Now here is the icing on the cake. The first two issues are actually building code violations so we gave him a letter stating we would be leaving effective May 31 because the conditions we were living in were unacceptable (I don't think it's too much to ask to take a hot shower and do you dishes in the kitchen sink instead of the unsanitary bath thub). We waited the 21 days allowed by law for our security deposit back only to find he would not be returning it and was seeking the rent for the month of June because we did not give 28 days notice.in all reality, the unit should not have been rented because it had building code violations. That is illegal. It's still not rented and won't be able to be rented until those to issues are taken care of since I called the building inspector today.
Also note that he has been telling everyone at work that he's so behind on his utilities that they are going to be shut off. DO NOT RENT FROM HIM!!! He spent our security deposit the second he got it and now we will have to go through months of legal battle to get our money back. He and his fiance are very strange individuals and I would not trust them for one second. I wish I would have never rented from him, especially since I work with him.
Any law enforcement officals reading this should prosecute him for his check kiting. He has openly admitted it to several people. A simple glance at his two bank records would show he consistently has $900 going in and $900 going out.
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