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March 14, 2007
I'm probably the only New Yorker who cares about his landlord's health
Real estate is a blood sport in New York, and it's typically first experienced by virgin New Yorkers in the city's notorious rent market, where junior bankers will fight over a cramped Village studio in a 5th-floor walk-up that rents for $3000/month and requires a $6000 security deposit and a cosigner, plus a $5000 payment to the deadheaded and sleazy realtor who "found" you the place. Then one finds his landlord on some Worst 10 list.
I avoided most of this by living in Harlem, though my poor girlfriend's blonde hair attracts plenty of unwanted attention here. When I arrived late in the evening of January 1, my elderly landlady, who's lived in Harlem since she was born, called a car service and took me out to dinner at a place on Zagat's Top 50, insisting that she pick-up the tab. She outfitted me with a bed, sheets, and towels, seeing as my stuff wasn't to arrive for a few days. And she gave me a block-by-block rundown of the places to avoid in Harlem because of the drug dealers. What kind of landlord in New York City, or anywhere, does that for her tenants?
As her mental health declined, she started going increasingly batty, at one point ordering me to move out because, she said, I stole her birth certificate. I just kept on paying rent but quietly went into contract to buy a place, figuring I'd rather be a slave to a mortgage than to a landlord. (That was last July, and the condo still is not fully built.)
On Monday, shortly after I arrived at the plant in Tennessee, I got a call from the guy who lives on the second floor. He hadn't seen Dolores since Friday, and she had missed her Friday evening theatre appointment with him. I had noticed an awful smell in the hallway coming from her unit, a smell I couldn't place precisely but wasn't just rubbish. We ended up calling the cops, who Monday morning had been to the house and "removed" Dolores.
Long story short, she's been in a coma since blacking-out and falling Friday between 5PM and 6.30PM. The cops found her unconscious in the kitchen and took her to Harlem Hospital, where she vowed never to go, even though it's the same place that saved Martin Luther King Jr's life after the first assassination attempt. The doctors say that she's "in God's hands now," which I think is doctor-speak for "we've done all we can," which is rarely a good prognosis.
Regardless of the outcome, it's sad to see such a thing happen to someone who accomplished so much, becoming an African-American millionaire who is known throughout the Harlem community. In a city where 589 housing code violations barely qualifies one as among the Worst 10 landlords in the city, it's refreshing to know that there are friendly people out there who would rather take the tenants to dinner rather than to court.
Posted by adrianjo at March 14, 2007 12:32 AM