October 12, 2023
"Now I only really see the upside of having lodgers..."
"... which means living with two wonderful people with whom I’ve become friends, who fill my cottage with jokes and fun and fascinating adventures and energy and life, who help me to make my home beautiful, bring up my puppy and throw dinner parties. It’s all the good things I remember about having flatmates, except the upside is that as the landlady I can get away with all the things I couldn’t do if I was a lodger, like stealing my flatmates’ milk and forgetting to turn the immersion heater off."
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19 comments:
The Democrats keep telling me this is the best economy ever- wtf?
#extrovertlifestyle
Sure wish the link to the original story was not behind a paywall. Years ago we were broke and took in roommates. Every single one of them ripped us off. Money, food, jewelry an often skipped out in the dead of night. One stole my truck and committed a crime. Fortunately, I was out of state and could prove where I was during the time of the crime. Swore off them ever since.
A bad tenant can absolutely destroy your property and, rough estimate, about 10% of tenants are bad. The law protects these people.
But a lodger is a different story. You can see these people tearing your home apart.
As an adult before marriage, when I wasn't in a flat-share/house-share situation I was a lodger with someone who took in lodgers.
This offers tremendous advantages when moving to a new city/country, as you've got a built-in non-work person to ask stupid questions to, someone with extensive local knowledge. And you don't need to acquire all of the chattel of a household all at once before settling in.
I've had many friends who expressed that they'd never stand for some of the rules and constraints that I agreed to in order to live in beautiful homes in ideal locations with nice people for a tiny fraction of what these friends paid in rent on thier studio or one-bedroom, and that's fine. (suum cuique, “One man’s fish is another man’s poison.”)
Younger people are so quick to tell boomers to take roommates like Golden Girls!! or even live in boarding houses. Lmao.
As if people were still civilized!
The young have no idea how desperate and slimy an aging roomie can be.
Golden Girls is not life.
Just wait until they decide they don't want to leave...
Bidenomics.
My next door neighbor, whom I've known for a decade, has a literal brain injury. One third removed. This makes him more or less unable to say no. This in turn led to him having a room mate and within three or four months that expanded to five or so meth heads and he was then sucked into that and what little mind he had turned to further mush. Ripped off, stolen from, violence and a house riddled with fleas and bed bugs.
All that kinda reminds us of the general scene, doesn't it?
Another neighbor and I finally convinced him to allow no trespass and restraining orders to be issued. It took about two months of actively chasing the vermin away to bring him back to somewhere in the vicinity of normal.
Shittiest part of the deal is he just went in for triple bypass Monday and can't really enjoy his freedom for another two weeks.
I’m selling the house before I take in borders!
Spiros said...
“A bad tenant can absolutely destroy your property and, rough estimate, about 10% of tenants are bad. The law protects these people.”
As a landlord, that matches my my experience.
“But a lodger is a different story. You can see [them] tearing your home apart.”
Never had a lodger. But kids….
I was last a lodger in 1983, in college, and the little old lady who rented to me a spare bedroom had a few simple rules. Be quiet all the time. No guests ever. Pay timely. Don't damage anything. She taught me 80% of everything I needed to know when I started landlording myself. I only upset her once, when I was trying to find the wolf spider that had run up my leg in bed one night, and made a little too much noise. She was understanding, and told me I'd used up my one free noise. L.O.L.s should run the world.
No paywall:
https://archive.ph/l0jPY
Lodgers in the day and age of Airbnb and Vrbo? Lodgers can be gone in an instant without settling rents, but besides providing online advertising, guests acquired through Airbnb, et al must pay upfront.
My Grandmother ran her home as a boarding house....after The Great Depression.
It's a great opportunity for Biden voters to support the "surge".
High density bunk beds and a well stocked first aid kit.
Paywall.
But from being an avid viewer of British TV (especially crime), they really do seem to have a tradition of lodgers.
When in Bath 25 years ago, we lodged in a modest, very typical British home. It had horrible heating, the toilet tank was near the ceiling with a pull chain, and the rooms were small and dark.
The other lodgers (Australian), kept going on and on about how modern everything was.
For us it was like living in the US in the '20s : )
Ugh, we lived - very briefly, like for 2 weeks - in a bedsit in London, a very nice house owned by a lady journalist (as she called herself) near the Angel tube station. Her other spare bedroom was occupied by two girls about our age.
The rules were horrible - I understand why, but it was six pages of you-may-nots. The room was tiny and dreary. We got out of there as fast as our former hostel-mates found a house with two British girls with whom they were slightly acquainted. It was FAR better to live with four near-strangers on an equal footing than in that bedsit, where literally all we were allowed to do besides sleep was sit on the bed, use the bathroom at prescribed times, and use the kitchen for one hour a day, different from the girls' hour.
Hell, even the youth hostel in which we'd lived for the prior month had been freer and more fun, and we were sharing a bunk room with six total strangers who might change daily and absolutely never had hot water unless we were up by 4:30.
It's all fun and games until the lodgers decide they'd rather be squatters. Good luck then.
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