"The Rent Is Too Damn High"

Again

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

FYI, it's midnight here and I have actually been writing ALLLL day for the first day in a very long time. I've totaled over 12.5 hours of writing new drafts and this post today. But this post has NOT been proofread at all. It is just stream of consciousness stuff, so I'm sorry if that makes it tough to read.

I'm just too tired to read through it and too tired to not publish it now before going to bed.

Ready for it? Okay.

Nearly 15 years ago, Jimmy McMillan went viral for stating the simple fact that rent is too expensive in America. Everybody laughed about his delivery, but virtually all of us knew it was true.

Today, I couldn't help but think again about Jimmy, because that dreaded email came in from my landlord last night.

You might recall me mentioning how my next door neighbor said we're the last two tenants paying $750 a month for our apartment. Our landlord's office told her the rent was going up to $1,000 in August.

She asked if they had reached out to me yet and I cringed. “Not yet,” I said, “but I suppose that means it's coming.”

In my hopes to delay that nightmare, I tried to go under the rental company's radar and didn't pester them about the fact that the water heater they supposedly fixed back in the spring was clearly never fixed so it's STILL leaking.

I mean, I've stayed here even when I could have moved because rent is so expensive everywhere else. The last lease I signed with them was in 2020. Here in Tennessee, that means I converted to a month-to-month lease because they never offered me a new agreement and never told me to leave.

I've just kept paying on time and try to be a good, quiet tenant they frequently forget about.

Well, they finally remembered me and said I had to turn in the new lease by August 9, and it offered two choices:

1. Pay $1,000 a month for a year-long agreement or

2. Pay $1,150 monthly to stay month-to-month.