My parents taught me that stinginess is not about money you have or do not have, but a purely emotional matter. Indeed, when I met the landlady from Ahad Ha’am – the one who owned the entire building I lived in, with its ten apartments – I came to find that, as always, Mom and Dad were right. The lady, constantly sour and nervous, rented to three partners (and I am among them) an apartment in a rather disgraceful condition that only deteriorated from moment to moment, as tends to happen to old apartments that are not taken care of.
The landlady, illustration. “The Singer in the Mask” (screenshot: Keshet 12)
The climbing branch that grew directly into the living room wall, the menacing recess in the floor, the floor-to-ceiling dampness, the broken air conditioners she vehemently refused to replace or the piece of ceiling that fell on my partner while brushing teeth and nearly deprived him of his life for toothless teeth. All this did not interest the lady. According to her, the piece of the ceiling that fell also happened in the apartment above, and therefore there is no reason to stop regularly raising the rent. After all, she will find replacements. Suckers do not die in our world dearest city.
Every time something went wrong she sent, after repeated pleas, the same amateur man-man who at best brought a brush and paint something to a ridiculous cosmetic repair. It may have covered over the greenish mold stain, but not over the fact that the apartment, how to say? Completely crumbling.
Renovations, have you heard of it madam? Photo: Ahuzat Beit Group 3
Before we entered the apartment, the lady from Ahad Ha’am obliged us to deposit several thousand shekels in her account as a deposit, which she said would be refunded to us when we left. I, who had only had moisture and mold for one year, begged long months after I left the apartment to get the money back and encountered refusals, excuses and an unbearable forehead appearance. By the way, one phone call from my dad to the lady and the payment was deposited back into my account within a few days. The fact that Dad remembered that he was the one who gave the deposit, so the refund is supposed to reach him, is a different story.
Then it turned out that whoever replaced me in the room refused to pay the lady for all sorts of excuses and reasons. She called me and told me she really did not sleep at night because the guy was delayed in paying. For a moment my heart ached for the lady, and then I remembered that she continued to raise the rent and in the same breath neglect her, so I decided that Karma and all that and probably she would already be fine. Still, it has an entire building in One Nation, and most of us only have stories about annoying apartment owners.