A lot of people I know bitch that Eugene is a small, boring, time-warped, counter-culture college town with no metropolitan aspirations. And I think that is totally fine, because what Eugene lacks in grand skyscrapers, massive weekend guides in the Eugene Weekly and a bloated sense of what culture should be, it excels in having one of the friendliest communities I have ever experienced. People are good to each other here. Small business is successful because people care about each other. Everything is a bit slower in Eugene, but when everyone is generally a friendly person in a relatively small city, the whole community thrives. Or so I thought.
My perception of Eugene is still a good one, but where the ideas of community, togetherness, love, caring and helpfulness stretch across a wide range of people, businesses and neighborhoods, there seems to be one collection of businesses that are unhelpful and borderline corrupt in our great city. Of course I am referring to the rental agencies that prey upon the campus community like leeches in a crystal-clear lake. Until recently, I had never experienced such an open disregard for help, responsibility and thoughtfulness through a rental agency.
Let me explain: I’d rented from Von Klein Property Management for three years. I never had a single problem in any of my apartments, and I never was ripped off or treated poorly, despite the horror-story accusations I have heard regarding Von Klein over the years. Generally speaking, I had a very positive business relationship with Von Klein. This year, I moved into a house managed by Woodside Property Management. And before I get into the details of my recent skirmish with Woodside, it must be said that my house is totally badass. It is old, silly and technologically deficient, and reeks of cat piss in two rooms. But damn, has it got some personality!
But things with Woodside looked slippery right from the get-go, which I do not need to go into for the sake of saving precious space and ink. Generally speaking, however, I can say that up until two weeks ago, my roommates and I have had relatively little to complain about to our landlords.
Then, our kitchen sink broke.
Being the absolutely fantastic tenants we are, we notified Woodside the following day, which coincidentally was Valentine’s Day – a supposed day of love. The short version of this story is that our sink was not fixed until Wednesday night – two full weeks later – after many phone calls, letters and office visits to Woodside. Needless to say, they never once contacted me or my roommates with an attempt to resolve our broken sink (by the way, we have a small kitchen with no dishwasher). So this has been a pretty big deal over the last couple weeks because I have been living in filth. And I do not mean that in a cute euphemistic, dirty college-boy kind of way. No, we were living in rotting food, ant infestation and garbage because our kitchen sink was totally nonfunctional.
You might say, “Hey Kamran, why the hell didn’t you just fix it yourself?” Because people, if I am giving a large sum of money every month to some guys who sit in a cozy office all day while I am cleaning dishes in my shower, there is something very wrong. Where is the landlord’s responsibility? Where is my money going every month? Why can they not fix something described as an “essential service” by Oregon law? Because rental agencies in Eugene know how to – and are willing to – manipulate and take advantage of college students.
Nearly every student I have ever talked to has had some large complaint at one time or another with a landlord, whether that is Von Klein, Woodside, Bell, a private party or none of the above. Now I finally feel the resentment other student tenants have felt toward the incompetence, rudeness, and lack of willingness to simply help out other people – especially ones who ultimately pay for landlords’ salaries.
How can a city like Eugene, which prides itself on acceptance, helpfulness, community strength, legal and social rights, allow for businesses to treat students, young people and low-income tenants so poorly? I guarantee that if I had a higher income and had a higher quality rental agency, my broken sink would not have even been an issue. If you cannot feel safe – emotionally and physically – in your own house, where can you feel safe? Community responsibility begins with people working together in an effort to make a better environment for all. We are the human race, and we are meant to help each other whenever possible – especially when rent is $1,200 per month.
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