LUCY'S LAST LAUGH

In Memory of Lucille Almir my friend who passed away last January, I am resubmitting the Rent Board Story I wrote about her of Last August. It is reprinted below.

I was at the Rent Board Meeting of July 29, 2000, when a very usual thing happened that I have seen happen many times before. Whenever the Rent Board's lobbyist, Christine Minnehan reports to the Board at the public meeting, the Board usually lets her speak first and makes everyone else wait. The stated excuse for this situation is because the lobbyist is in a terrible hurry to catch her flight back to Sacramento so she has to speak first and make everyone else wait and listen to her. However, after the lobbyist speaks and leaves the counsel chambers, she then has plenty of time to talk with members of the Rent Board Staff in the hallway. Although one would believe that eventually the lobbyist would figure out how to schedule her departure flights in a manner which gives her enough time to address the Board and get back from where she recently came, this never happens and I suspect that this situation is the Rent Board's way of giving her the possible largest prime-time captive audience possible on City Cable TV. Anyway, at the Rent Board Meeting identified above, Ms. Minnehan was discussing a Legislative bill that would allow apartment owners to separately surcharge tenants for increased water usage as a means to water conservation. I didn't get all the details because it was obvious that the lobbyist thought this was a terrible idea and she never goes into many details on subjects the Board disagrees with. However, the report made me think of Landlady Lucy's response to excess water usage by disgruntled tenants. For those of you who did not begin following this column at Rent Board Story No. 1, Landlady Lucy is my landlady and good friend. She sometimes requests my assistance dealing with the Rent Board and tenants who fail to appreciate her as much as I do. One of these tenants, with the approximate name of Mark Leftwing, was a really nice guy until Lucy gave him a rental agreement and keys to one of her rental units. Shortly after that event, Mark decided that he would invite his girlfriend into the rental unit to share his good fortune. He did not ask Lucy for permission and became a big pain in the neck every time her attorney served him with notices to Perform or Quit. Whenever that happened, he would retaliate by leaving his water running and often leaving the premises. Lucy would know when he did that, because she lived in the next unit and could hear the water running for hours. Once when the tenant left the water running and went on vacation, Lucy called at 5:00 on a Sunday morning and wanted me to be a witness to this event. She also called the Santa Monica Police Department to witness the running water in the rental unit with nobody home, but they determined that this was a civil matter. For some reason, when property owners water their lawns at the wrong time of day or allow their gardeners to maliciously operate leaf blowers, it's a Police matter, but when tenants do similar things, it's always a civil matter and the Police don't want to get involved. That is known as equal protection of the law.
After making a nuisance of himself for nearly a year, Mark Leftwing discovered that his presence on the property was not appreciated and he moved away. (I may have helped give him that impression.) And shortly after the tenant departed, Lucy asked me to help her determine the amount of security deposit refund due to Mr. Leftwing. So I told her that in order to accurately calculate the amount of refund, I would have to see her water bills for the past two years. The result is clearly stated on the letter to Mark Leftwing, which I have cut and pasted below (although I disgraced some of the names below to protest the indigent).

LUCY LANDLADY
690 6th Street, Apt. A
Soviet Monica, CA 90402

Mr. Mark Leftwing
1329 Fitzgerald Avenue
South Hills, CA 93134

Mr. Leftwing,

     The purpose of this letter is to make an accounting of your security deposit for the premises stated above and to inform you of good cause for any deductions.
     You returned possession of unit "B" on the evening of March 2, 1989 and left the unit in good condition. No deduction has been made for cleaning or damages to the unit. However, for one year prior to your departure, I believe you intentionally increased the water bill in retaliation for disputes you and I had concerning the terms of your tenancy. I have this belief because I could hear the water running in your unit for long periods of time after we had disputes. There was no reason for water to be running loudly as you walked around in other areas of the unit or left the property altogether. Your actions were calculated to send me a message and you accomplished that purpose on many occasions.
      Attached to this letter is a summary of my water bills with footnotes of events that took place during each period when the bills greatly increased beyond normal usage. I have also included copies of the water bills for the past two years should you wish to peruse them. Finally, I calculated the difference between the water charges during the last year of your tenancy ('97-'98) to those of the previous year ('96-'97), which is the most recent comparable period of time. As the attachment explains, you increased the water bills by $591.38 during the past year of your tenancy. The total deductions are as follows:

     Your security deposit is $1,424.00. The total deductions are $1,421.24. The difference is $2.76. A check for that amount is included with this letter. Don't spend it all in one place.

Sincerely,
Lucy Landlady