May 4, 2008
apparently we’re slumlords
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The city sent us a letter last week informing us that the condition of our house does not meet code and that we have 30 days to fix the problems or face fines (we are not alone in this).
The city dinged us on a collapsing section of privacy fence out back, the peeling paint on the front of the house, our crumbly cement steps, and the lack of a handrail on these steps. We’re looking into getting an extension, which ought to not be an issue.
We’ll need to hire someone to paint the top peak of the house, it is 6 or 8 feet higher than my ladder-comfort-level will ever be, and we’ve got to figure out what kind of handrail we can put together that we can live with the looks of.
I know it is bad, but I must confess, I giggled a little when I read your post. Oh our house’s paint is pealing and our yard had been a disaster.
Since you are in the middle of renovating, an extension should not be a problem.
I received a notice of violation (bad gutters) a couple of years ago. I called them up and once I said that I was the owner and that I lived there they dropped the whole matter. Seems they thought it was a rental. Have never heard from them again.
We went through something similar with the city of Chicago–we assumed to be a landlord too but we never got out of it once we clarified we were homeowners.
It was very much what you would expect from the political “machine” here–we ended up passing muster by hiring a friend of the inspector. Nice.
Hopefully you have a better experience.
Ha! We’ll join you in slumlordness… with our piles of stone, cracked and breaking siding, and sinking porch with rotted columns.
I looked at the front of our house this morning…. Not going to do anything about the lack of paint on the window or frame to the attic but I think I might throw a coat of paint onto one of the columns on our side porch, just in case we’re in the midst of a beautification crackdown….
Found this site after a google search on “Richmond Sucks”. The potential Richmond slogans from 2005 really made my day. Thank you for that. I agree with everything said there. I am trying to inform people about VCU’s latest effort to take a step backward. They are no longer allowing scooters to be parked on the sidewalk OR at bike racks. This is due to the VCU police who are completely separate from VCU parking. VCU parking says that scooters that don’t have license plates cannot park in the VCU lots. If you have any interest, read more about these issues here:
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~kmjacobs/scoot.htm
The house is gorgeous btw.
[...] bit past our 30 day deadline, tomorrow will see putting together a handrail for the front steps (like the one pictured above). [...]
[...] put in a handrail at the front steps because the city said that we had to. It took us 2 tries to get it [...]
[...] walls here have *many* layers of paint, some of which is completely peeling. Much of it, though, is cracked but well-adhered. Today was test to see how much scraping/sanding [...]
[...] May, the city got on us for our code violations. We got caught having peeling paint, no handrail, a broken fence out back, and crumbly steps. We [...]