Tenable Houses Gather No Moss
Monday, 11th October 1999Des Moines, Iowa [NotS]
Define irony: a slumlord reproaching the practises of slumlords in an article about slumlords.
Ed.
Good old Ed.
Ed Moss is, by chance, the manager of the house I’ve rented while I’m in town researching a novel. So it was amusing, if ironic, to find him complaining about other landlords in CityView the other night. Granted, his opinions in that article were logical enough: landlords should keep their promises, avoid letting houses go to hell, promptly correct problems like exposed wiring, cracked windows, and so on. But that’s where the irony seeps in, and screams.
This house I’m renting from Ed is literally the apotheosis of his documented hellhouse. Exposed wiring, cracked windows, unfinished carpeting, unpainted walls…the list has shortened slightly over the last four months, but it’s still long enough to fill a sheet of notebook paper–a sheet of notebook paper which my roommate and I have rewritten and resubmitted to Ed a dozen times since we moved into the place in June.
Originally, the shortcomings were understandable. I got to town and was staying with friends–two of which, also by chance, were Corey and Paul of SlipKnot–until SlipKnot left for OzzFest, and the remaining tenants of that house split up to live elsewhere. That long, dumb story, entitled Notice to Vacate, is online under News of the Stoopid at gremlin.net, incidentally. My roommate and I called in what could be described as a favour from Ed, who my roommate knew years before. We managed to move into the unfinished house two weeks before it was supposed to be available. The understanding was that the house would be completed on schedule.
Two weeks later, little had changed.
Two weeks after that, rent was due again. Little more had changed.
A month later, rent was due; we saw Ed long enough to hand over seven hundred bucks before he fixed a couple of incidental things and disappeared for another month.
There’s a pattern here: Ed shows up to get his money, fixes whatever looks easy, and splits until rent is due again. At this rate, the house should be fully completed just about the time Buck Rogers returns to Earth.
The reason: Ed is busy. Ed controls fourteen houses in this town. To some degree.
For example, he controls a house on Jefferson; we know this because the tenants there are some old friends of ours. Which is why we also know that Ed no longer owns the house.
In an apparent attempt to dodge property taxes and to skirt the responsibilities of the owner [a practise we know Ed to detest, according to his quotes in the last CityView article on the subject] Ed has signed the ownership of the house over to our friends, and, evidently, backdated the contract by several years. The good news is that, now that he’s no longer fixing our friends’ house, he’s got a bit more time to fix ours; the bad news is that, most likely, what he’s up to is fraud. Which leaves me wondering: if Ed goes to prison for twenty years, how much longer will it take to replace this shattered window I’ve been staring at since June…
Of course, the answer to that is simple.
The last time we handed over the periodical list of unfinished characteristics to Ed, we made it clear that, unless those items were fixed to our satisfaction by the end of September, we’d be moving out. It’s October now, and we’re still waiting for most of this to happen.
So let this serve as a warning to potential future victims.
Ed Moss makes a lot of promises and appointments. He also makes a lot of excuses and postponements. On the rare occasions in which a promise is finally kept, it’s far later than expected, and often carried out by some questionable third party who seem overly curious about the electronic components within the house and the local availability of crystal meth.
Ed is a veritable encyclopaedia of legal advise, explaining that any landlord who walks into a house without first giving the tenants forty-eight hours’ notice is trespassing, though he rarely gives out much notice before arriving.
Ed is a gregarious fellow, letting you bum him cigarette after cigarette, and playing your guitar at you while you’re trying to type, instead of actually fixing anything before he leaves.
Ed Moss is a good guitarist, but a poor landlord.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; you’ve got my word on that…
–Gremlin