The Neighborhood

The awful neighbor saga continues

December 13, 2009 by Tricia

The saga with the bad renter neighbors continues! I have a feeling that we’re stuck with them for a few more months, although I’m hoping that they’ll mess up and not pay their rent again this month and end up getting kicked out.

Yeah, I wish!

On Thursday night we had the pleasure of watching them break into their cable box. I guess their cable and or their internet must be cut off. Hey … they were stealing our internet bandwidth in November and that hinted that they’d been cut off. So now they’ve attached a cable wire to the cable box and ran it along the side of the house and directly into the dining room window, like wise, they added another wire and ran that through a basement window.

I’d guess that the house is freezing, but they’ve had most of their windows open to some degree since they moved in in mid September (bet they aren’t going to pay the heating bill either!) so the introduction of cable wires through the windows won’t make them any colder.

I’m just hoping they’ll get caught! I want to tell the cable company myself, but my husband doesn’t want me to. He just wants us to stay away from these terrible people as we don’t know what they’ll do if we tick them off. Yes, they are THAT scary.

They’ve pretty much already ruined our Christmas as we don’t want to leave the house empty as we’re fairly sure they’ll break in, so I might stay home while Chris goes to his parents for Christmas dinner. Nice eh?

The strange thing is that I think they don’t think we notice these odd things they do … like prying open a cable box at night in the freezing cold under the glow of our security light no less. The guy is always lying to us about things … like he says he’s working (nice job since he’s home all the time or at the drug dealer down the street!). Oh and he told us that they were out looking at new homes, that they’re thinking of buying one of those manufactured home yet their young daughter told us they were too poor to even eat salad?

Anyway … as you can see, these people get to me and the home owners are no help. When we called them last week over the parking problem they didn’t want to hear anything we had to say. So we’re just waiting to see how much damage the renters do to the house and how much debt they leave the home owners when they run out on them. Karma sucks – at least it will for them!

Our scuzzy neighbors will be gone soon!

November 30, 2009 by Tricia

Ha! I just found out that our terrible renter neighbors will have to move out soon!

Earlier today I noticed that there was a washing machine and a dryer sitting on their front porch. Now, since our washing machine up and died in August we’ve been doing without and taking our laundry to a laundromat (and drying it at home).

I knew that the renters were also going to a laundromat to dry their clothes because their dryer isn’t hooked up for some reason and possibly doesn’t work. So I saw what appears to be a new looking washing machine and dryer on their porch and I thought that the home owners might have bought new appliances for the house.

So I called the home owners to ask them about it as I was hoping that if they were replacing these items that maybe we could have the old washing machine if it still worked. Hey … a used one is better than ours that doesn’t work at all, right?

What I found out is that the home owners didn’t know anything about the washer and dryer sitting on the renters porch, AND, that the renters haven’t been paying their rent!

The home owners were just over there a few days ago to ask them for the rent. They just moved in in September and I don’t know if they paid first and last rent (with the home owners history I suspect they only paid the first months rent), so it’s possible that they missed both Octobers and November’s rent.

The home owners are in the process of trying to evict them. The lady said to me – you know I think they lied about their jobs too. I asked if they’d called the employers that they’d listed and she said they called the numbers they were given and talked to people that the renters had told them to ask for. I suggested that she just call the human resources department of the workplaces that they’d listed but she said “what’s the point now since we’re trying to evict them”. Dumb, the fact that they lied about having jobs might help the home owners evict them sooner.

I guess the rent isn’t the only bill that they aren’t paying. Ever since they moved in I’ve noticed that they keep a lot of windows in their house open. I figured they’d stop doing that once it got really cold (like now!) because their heating bill would be sky high … well they haven’t … so I’d bet that they aren’t paying the heating, electricity or their other bills. It won’t be long before they’re cut off.

I’m pretty sure they aren’t paying their cable and internet bill.

I just checked my internet usage (from Rogers) and it’s way up! Rogers, my internet provider only allows us to use 60 GB per month. Prior to our scuzzy renter neighbors moving in my usage averaged about 8 to 10 GB per month. However I just checked our usage for November and it’s up to 52 GB! They’ve been stealing our bandwidth!

Now I thought that our Linksys Router was secure, but it seems that I turned it off a few months ago when we were traveling and I hooked up to another wireless service. Duh – that was dumb – or well, dumb not to make my connection secure again!

I just made our router connection secure again so they can’t steal our internet coverage! Ha, and I renamed our system “No more free internet for you!” LOL So now when they see wireless connections in their area (say when they’re wondering why they can’t connect) they’ll see my message for our wireless connection … the one they won’t be able to get into anymore! HA!

I learned my lesson! Always secure your router connection! I just hope they didn’t use the internet a lot today and push us over the 60 GB monthly limit! My usage report only goes from November 1st to 29th, so I don’t know how much they used today before I cut them off. If they did push us over I’ll have to pay extra on our internet bill.

Like I said it was really dumb of me to not make sure our internet connection was secure. That won’t happen again!

Now that they’re cut off, the scuzzy renter neighbors will have one less form of entertainment … maybe that will help them move out soon! Then the nightmare will be over – no more locking even our screen doors all the time and not leaving the house empty for long (we fear they’ll rob us if they know we’re out since the guy has apparently robbed his own parents and sister!).

I hope it doesn’t take the home owners too long to get them kicked out. I think the renters are on a monthly lease, but still .. the laws here in Toronto make it hard to evict people even if they haven’t paid their rent in months.

When I was talking with the home owner this afternoon I suggested that once they get these people out that they raise the rent. I mean, they’re renting a whole house in a great neighborhood for only $1000! That’s unbelievable … but no wonder the two renters they’ve had so far turned out bad. If they raise the rent to $1400 or $1500 (still a bargain) they’d likely get a better class of renter. Anyway, she said they’d likely just sell the house after this as the ‘renting” experience was just too stressful.

I can’t wait until the scuzzy neighbors next door leave

November 26, 2009 by Tricia

I can not wait until our renter neighbors next door end up getting kicked out. Note that I didn’t say move out … I’m sure they will have to be kicked out given the stories and history of them we’ve heard from some friends that used to live in the same apartment buildings that they did.

They are just plain scuzzy people. The kind of people that you take one look at and get a bad feeling about.

Now usually I give people the benefit of the doubt even if I have a bad feeling about them when I first meet them. usually my instincts are right – but I still like to give people a chance. Not in this case though … Chris and I just got a bad feeling about them from the start and then we started hearing from our friends that the guy had just gotten out of jail and that he and his wife are hooked on drugs and get this – that the guy actually robbed both his sister and his parents recently!

Chris just came back from the corner store and guess who was there just before him … our scuzzy renter neighbors – the guy, his wife and their teenage daughter. It looks like they pulled a scam while they were there too.

They apparently bought a long distance calling card. The store owner gave it to the teenaged girl and the girl proceeded to walk around the store – I guess while one of her parents were paying for the card. A few minutes later the girls said the card wasn’t in the envelope. So the store owner ended up having to give them another long distance calling card.

I suppose it’s possible that the card wasn’t in the package, but knowing these people’s history it’s more likely that they pulled a scam by distracting the store owner while the girl took the calling card out of the package and then said it was empty.

I only wish that the people that own the home had looked into these people better before renting to them. We apparently have no home owner rental laws here in Ontario where the home owner is supposed to do a criminal background check etc on prospective renters – kind of like a pre-employment screening that some companies do.

Why? Well, if they don’t and it turns out that the renters are doing something illegal in the home like making drugs etc then the home owner will be liable for their renters activities and any damages that the police do when they bust the renters … ie if the renters set up a drug lab in the house and the police bust in and break doors etc or tear up walls the homeowner has to pay for all the repairs because they didn’t do a background check on their renter. I guess if they did do one and the renter didn’t have a criminal history but then did something illegal then the story would be a little different for the home owner.

I don’t know exactly how it all works, but it’s clear that the home owners in this case didn’t check up on anything that the renters next door told them. I mean, not even calling their employers. The guy had told them that he worked for the Toronto Transit commission and that his wife was a social worker … but we hear from our friends that the guy got fired from the TTC a year or so ago and then spent close to a year in jail and that the woman hasn’t worked for a few years.

Arg … I can’t wait for these people to leave. I’m sure it will start with them not paying their bills or their rent and then the home owners will have to kick them out. It can’t happen soon enough for me!

In the mean time we’re keeping all our doors locked and someone is always home. Hey, if the guy would rob his own sister and parents homes then it wouldn’t be a big leap for him to rob his next door neighbors – would it?

My dog hurt her feet – all of them!

November 8, 2009 by Tricia

We had a little scare earlier today.

My husband had taken our dog, Midnight, to a beach here in Toronto where you can let your dog off leash and where they can swim in the lake. It’s called Cherry beach.

We’ve taken her there several times, and being a Labrador Retriever, she just loves the water. She plays with other dogs, steals their toys and pretty much stays in the water until we beg her to come out.

I didn’t go today, but it sounds like it went much as it usually does with Midnight playing in the water and mingling with other dogs. After she’d been in the water for about two hours my husband started calling her to come in, but she wouldn’t. Usually she’s not to bad about coming to us if she’s had a good amount of time to swim and play so this was unusual.

Finally she came to shore and started limping right away. Perhaps she’d stayed in the water longer because she already knew that she’d hurt her feet?

My husband noticed that her feet were bleeding. He thought it was only two of her feet that we injured at first, but it turns out ALL of them were injured! He used the Cell to call me at home as he tried to get Midnight to the car. He’d already looked at the feet that he thought were hurt and determined that she didn’t have glass in them, but being covered with sand from the beach he couldn’t tell exactly what the problem was.

Being a nurse I started assembling things at home to try to take care of my dog once she got home. I grabbed a magnifying lens so that I could look at her feet closely for any glass, some gauze 4 by 4 squares, a sterile bottle of saline solution and some cotton balls. I had it all out on the coffee table for when they arrived. My plan was to wash her feet off with the saline solution and then take a look at them to see if there was any glass or sand embedded in her wounds.

I also called our vets office. They had just closed, but the doctor was willing to stick around until I’d taken a look at Midnights feet in case we needed to bring her in.

When Chris got home I ran out to the car. he’d put some towels on the back seat and they had blood spots all over them. Midnight limped with me into the house and I finally got to look at her feet.

Somehow she’d shaved off all of her toenails on all four feet. Right down to the nub. So they were bleeding and I’m sure there was some nerve pain. otherwise the pads of her feet looked ok. So I called the vet to tell him what had happened and depending upon how her feet look in the morning we might see him tomorrow. Nice of the vet to stick around for us though!

I don’t know what happened to her. Chris said he took her where we always take her and she’s never hurt herself before. Maybe the city put more rocks into the water in that area since we were last there? That’s all I can think of is that she scraped her nails repeatedly on rocks that were underwater.

Her nails were too long and I was planning on cutting them this week. Perhaps that made he nails more vulnerable to getting hurt in the first place? But still, even if her nails were short prior to her beach visit they’re now down to bare nubs.

We applied pressure to all of her feet to help stop the bleeding. That must of hurt a bit because she was shivering. Poor thing. This is the first time she’s really been hurt since we got her two years ago. Once the bleeding stopped I cleaned her nail nubs by putting some sterile saline solution on a gauze pad and dabbed at her nails.

Luckily she’s always sleepy after a good romp at the beach, perhaps more sleepy after the anxiety of being hurt – so she’s been sleeping quite a bit for the last two hours.

That’s fine by me because if she’s sleeping she won’t be licking her paws!

So we’re just sitting around watching TV and trying not to move around too much because we want her to rest and stay off her feet. We don’t usually watch TV on Sunday afternoons! There sure is a lot of commercials for acne treatments and fitness products!

Anyway … have any of you dealt with something like this with your dog or another type of pet? Any suggestions? I think if we can keep the nail nubs clean they’ll heal just fine. Hopefully they don’t get infected!

I’m just trying to figure out how to keep her from licking her feet constantly. She’s awake right now and all she’s doing is licking. Sigh.

Looks like we were right about our new neighbors

October 30, 2009 by Tricia

My husband and I have been leary of our new neighbors ever since they moved in – in mid-September.

Oh, they seem nice enough when we talk to them, but then they do the opposite of what they told us.

For example … the night that they were moving in, the new guy came over to our backyard for a few minutes to talk to us and he warned us about this guy who lives just down the street from us … telling us that he breaks into houses and that he’s a crack dealer. Ok … good to know … but ever since the new neighbors moved in we’ve seen them going to that house about three times a day!

My husband who likes just about everyone he meets decided almost immediately that he didn’t like the new neighbors. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt since they seemed nicer than the last renter next door whom I called the Redneck Neighbors. But I guess our gut instincts were correct.

Last night Chris and I took our dog out for a walk. Normally Chris takes her alone when he comes home from work in the evening, but he asked me if I wanted to walk down to the East York Civic Center (only a few blocks from us) to see the huge crowds lining up for the H1N1 flu vaccinations. We didn’t plan to wait in line ourselves as we’ve decided to wait a couple of weeks and see if people start having bad reactions to the injection as it hasn’t had much testing yet … and well if you read my last post I’ve been having a lot of reactions to medications and even foods this year so I don’t want to take any chances. Anyway … going for a walk would give me a chance to break in my new Naot shoes right?

So we’re walking along and a car goes by honking at Chris. Chris waved and said that it was a guy he knew from work. We decided to take a side street and as we walked along the car came back and pulled up beside us. The guy said that he’d been hoping to talk to my husband for weeks as he wanted to tell us about our new neighbors but didn’t want to come to our house and be seen by them.

He told us that he’d lived in the same building as our new renter neighbors – hereby to be know as the Skanky neighbors. Well before they were kicked out for not paying their rent!

He told us that the guy had just got out of jail three months ago and that he didn’t work for the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) as he’d told the people that own the home next door. His wife who said she was a social worker hasn’t worked for about two years either. What do they do then … rob houses and do drugs. Yep.

The guy is so low that he robbed his parents house while they were on vacation .. I think that’s what landed him in jail but I could be mistaken. he also broke into his own sister’s house!

Apparently, when not breaking into houses, they sit around their house doing drugs day and night. Everything from crack to cocaine to percocets and oxycontin. He’s apparently into the oxycontin and she does 15 to 20 percs a day.

Now I don’t know if all of this information is true, but Chris knows the guy well that passed it on to us and he has no reason to lie as far as we can tell. Plus as far as I can tell they aren’t working. I stay up late at night because of my pain and I see their lights on as long as ours are. Sometimes when I’m up particularly late, say 4 or 5 in the morning their lights are still on even as I’m heading for bed. People who work don’t stay up to all hours day in and day out. I have no idea how they cope with caring for their three kids!

Obviously the home owners didn’t check out their renters references. If they had he would have found out that they didn’t work where they said they did – or at all, and that would have been enough to decide not to rent to them.

Now we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. We want to tell the home owners what we know about their new renters (and that they’ll likely default on rental and bill payments as we were told that that’s what they do too), but the home owners are sooooo stupid that they’ll probably tell the renters everything we tell them and tell them that they got that info from us!

What would you do?

For now we’ve decided to just wait and see what happens. If everything the guy told us is true they probably won’t be able to pay the rent soon and that will get them kicked out. That’s what we’re hoping for now anyway.

In the meantime we’re making sure our doors are always locked and that’s it’s clear to anyone looking at our house that someone is home. I mean – if the guy is so low that he’d rob his own parents and sister I’d bet that he’d rob his neighbors too if he thought the house was empty for a while.

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The awful neighbor saga continues

Our scuzzy neighbors will be gone soon!

I can’t wait until the scuzzy neighbors next door leave

My dog hurt her feet – all of them!

Looks like we were right about our new neighbors

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