My eyes were opened to the more bizarre side of life when I became real estate landlord. Everyone knows the rules more as suggestions than law and very few people are as they seem. A good example would be my recent ex-tenant Travis* Meeting him over the phone he seemed like a great guy. I gathered his information, ran the credit check and checked with the rental intelligence network with all coming out good. I called his former employer as he was relocating to our city for a new job and listened to him extol the virtues of this clean and quiet young man. We was glad to take a room in our condo and share space with two other gentlemen. These two men were terrific tenants and I had no reason to think they would not all get along. That turned out to be wishful thinking. Although he signed a year lease, it was only two months later that Travis lost his job. He would stay another month while he ostensibly looked for new employment. In the red hot Alberta economy he should have had another one that afternoon but it didn’t work out that way. Instead our other tenants started to complain that he was not respecting the common area by not cleaning up after himself and taking dishes into his room and leaving them there even though he was home all day. Next thing you know he was accusing his roommates of stealing his food and threatening violence if he didn’t turn down the TV while they were trying to sleep. They finally offered an ultimatum that either he goes or they go when they had returned home from another twelve hour shift to find him in the living room watching TV in a towel. I certainly couldn’t blame them I urged him to make other arrangements as soon as possible but I still wonder if people give good references because they honestly don’t know these people on the deeper level or if they are just happy to hand them off to some unsuspecting schlep. I doubt I will ever figure that one out. There will always be liars to contend with but at least I know I did everything I could before taking on a challenge like Travis. *Names have been changed to protect the not so innocent as I too know how to play the game.

Rhonda Hoffman

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