Mike Todd is the second coming of Tia McNerland, in fact she pretty much taught him everything about being a slumlord. That fact is never more present than in one of the buildings he currently owns, 15 Cliff Ave... Or to many when it was owned by Tia McNerland 50 Baker.
My family and I had the misfortune of renting one of the apartments in 15 Cliff Ave. It seemed great with fresh paint and new carpet, but a lot of the renovations to the apartment were only partially completed when we moved in.
The original windows would have added to the charm had most of them not been missing panes. Along with the missing panes a majority of the storm windows were missing making the apartment almost impossible to heat. We later found out that there was no insulation between our floor and the dirt basement adding to the heating problem.
Then came our electric bill. Because of the heating situation we expected to have a higher than usual winter amount, but when we started receiving $300 electric bills in the summer as well when all that was running was one fan and a television we knew there was a problem. We checked the meters ourselves most were moving slowly, ours was out of control, and the meter labeled 'house' was at a stand still.
We called the electric company. Our meter was fine. We came to the conclusion that the house washer and dryer and all the hall lights that ran 24/7 were wired into our electric. The complaint fell on deaf ears. We called the building inspector (an old friend of Tia's) and got nothing.
We also had spiders. LOTS of spiders. Spiders in the shower, spiders in the cupboards, spiders crawling up my baby's leg. I'm not talking daddy long legs... No these were big menacing looking things the size of a half dollar. We complained, and even caught one of the spiders to show them... And..."Well I sprayed for them." (I was a stay at home mom at the time... No one ever sprayed)
Among the other problems we encountered (Oh, and there were many) were: A leaky ceiling in my baby's room, a flimsy front door that was obvioulsy broken into (more than once), an incorrectly wired outlet that fried a baby monitor, buried garbage and construction debris surfacing in the yard... Not to mention the 30 years of garbage piled in the basements from when Tia owned the place.
It wasn't until we were moving out late in the summer that we actually saw any of the complaints addressed. When we came to pick up the last of our belongings, Mike Todd was replacing the broken panes of glass and we noticed that all the spider webs had been removed. A quick peek at the meter proved the electric was still an issue, good luck to the next renter.
The kicker to this story... The thing that makes this whole situation even more appaling is... My husband is his younger brother. So if he's going to treat his family this way, how is he going to treat you?
* Warning: Mike Todd also likes to let himself into apartments for 'suprise' inspections.*
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