If you know me, or have been reading my blog for awhile, you probably know that for the past 2.5+ years KC and I have been renting a little green house at the top of a hill in Oakland.
Despite the fact that we’re just renters, we’ve actually done quite a bit of work to fix up the house. 

For example, KC landscaped the small piece of land between the street and sidewalk by installing some steps and planting a few things:

We painted the laundry room and installed carpeting over the concrete floors:
I painted the stairs:

And the closet doors in the dining room:And of course, for little P’s nursery, we painted the walls and installed plank flooring over the crappy painted wood floors:

In the 2.5+ years that we’ve been living here, we’ve made a total of two (yep, TWO) maintenance requests. The first was when we had a squirrel living in our attic (it was actually building a nest which was coming through the beams of our ceiling in the living room.)

I notified our landlord of the issue last October when I first noticed the squirrel. He at first thought I was lying for some reason, until I sent him this picture:

Yes, that’s an actual picture of the actual squirrel who took up residence in our attic. Even after sending the picture, I had to send him a picture of our house as well to assure him that, “No, that wasn’t just an ‘example’ picture.” (Which… seriously?)

Anyway, our landlord opted to “wait it out” with the squirrel, and the squirrel did leave for a couple months, but then returned. I contacted him about it again after KC got up on an insanely high ladder and stapled chicken wire over the holes where the squirrel was getting in, and the squirrel then still managed to find his way back into the attic.

Despite the fact that he’d been on notice about the squirrel for 5 or 6 months at this point, his proposed solution was to “split” the cost of removal, since, according to him, it wasn’t something that he had to cover the cost of as a landlord. (Um, I looked at the laws — that’s so f-ing far from the truth it’s not even funny.) It was only after I told him that I was 7 months pregnant and didn’t really have $400+ dollars to remove a squirrel from a house I didn’t own that he agreed to pay for the removal. Y’know, out of the goodness of his heart.

Wow. Thanks.

The second maintenance request we made was very recent. Our kitchen sink had been leaking, and despite all our attempts to fix it on our own, we determined we needed a plumber to fix it. (Please note that we do not pay the water bill here — the landlord does. So really, we could have just let the stupid thing leak and leak because, who cares right? But because there’s a drought and we’re not monsters, I got in touch with him.) My specific request was a referral for a plumber — because, yes, we were actually willing to pay to have the faucet fixed ourselves (rather than get into another stupid argument about what a landlord is supposed to cover the cost of by law.) Much to our surprise, he actually said he would have his handyman come out and fix it, and, surprise! he was going to come visit too.

Hooray.

He came out the week before last and looked around the house. KC showed him the work we’d been doing and how we, along with our duplex neighbors, had been attempting to keep the yard alive while still conserving water.

We’ve literally had basically zero interaction with this guy since we moved in. (In fact, he once hired people to remove a tree in our backyard and had them come out without telling us. I got a text from our neighbor while I was at work one day, saying “There’s a giant truck in your driveway and a bunch of random dudes in your backyard — do you know about this?” Uhhh, no, no I don’t.)

So yeah, that’s the kind of guy he is.

But despite that, we loved where we live and so continued to be good tenants and even sent him a birth announcement when this little peanut arrived:

So why the title? Why do I hope karma exists?

Well, because on Friday, we found out that he’s evicting us.

Yep, he’s kicking me, KC and our TWO MONTH OLD BABY out of our house so his son can move in. Not because we’ve been bad tenants or did anything wrong. Just because.

Because he can.

Because he’s a terrible human being.

Because he owns a bunch of other properties as well, so why would he want his son to move into one of those?

Because his son is a grown adult, but why should he have to find housing on his own like the rest of us?

Because we have a brand-new baby, so of course we should be asked to move. (And I really haven’t been through enough this year.)

So, thanks, terrible landlord. I hope your son really enjoys it here. I’m sure he’ll get a super warm welcome from all the neighbors. We’ve become good friends with all of them and they are now well-aware of the situation (and were already annoyed with our landlord to begin with since he does $%^& to keep up the property.)

So if you’re out there, Karma, do me a solid, will you?

Thanks in advance,

Chelsea