Image designed by me using canva
Who else is fed up with landlords/homeowners and their evil lies? Well, I am. Okay, I'm not talking about just homeowners, but landlords that rent their houses to students.
Students should live in a conducive environment, free from dangers and well-equipped with learning facilities, don't you think? But some landlords are just so mean that all they care about is their selfish interest. They just want the money, and that has blinded them from seeing what evil they are actually doing.
I don't have a problem with landlords making money. I mean, everyone wants money. But why deceive people? Can't they just be real for once and let people get what they paid for?
About 1 year ago, I gained admission into a federal university in my country. The location of the school was very far. where I lived, so I had to travel to another state. I got a house; a room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Pretty nice for a student if you ask me. My hostel was very far from the school, and I had to spend a lot on transport fares.
Instead of spending a lot on transport fares, wouldn't it be better to just rent another house that is closer to the school? Yeah! That's what I thought. I decided to spend the rest of the semester in that house and find another house at the end of my first year in school.
Here at my university, houses don't get electricity. It has always been like that since heaven knows when. I don't know who to blame for the lack of electricity, the government. Or any other person? How do students cope without electricity? They make use of generators. So they get electricity for about 2-3 hours a day.
A friend of mine introduced me to a house agent. A house agent is in charge of taking care of houses and making sure everything goes smoothly. The agent told us (my roommate and I) that students are rushing hostels because they are closer to the school, and that we have to accept the one he gives us.
We met with the landlord and he told us we'll never regret renting his hostel. There are 19 rooms in the hostel and none of the rooms were painted. The landlord promised us that he'd paint the hostel after a week. Hostels are meant to have generators (that is the only way students could charge their phones, lamps, power banks, and do some other things), but this hostel didn't have one. But the landlord promised us that he’d get a generator for us within two days.
The landlord told us everything about the house worked smoothly and we won't have any reasons to complain. Students had occupied 18 out of the 19 rooms, so we had no choice but to pay for the room. We paid the landlord and he gave us the receipt immediately.
Okay. Nice right? After two days, we didn't hear anything about the generator. We stayed for 48 hours without electricity. On the third day, my phone, my power bank, my PC, and my lamps were all dead. The only thing that was on was my roommate’s torchlight.
We called the landlord and reminded him about his promise to bring the generator, but instead of saying he'd bring the generator right away, he said we should be patient with him.
A week passed, and we still hadn't heard anything about the generator. Imagine staying for 168 hours without electricity. There was no electricity to pump water, so we had to go to other hostels to fetch water. It got to a point where they stopped us from fetching water. So we had to fetch water from a very far place.
How did we charge our phones? Funny story. We charged our phones in a hostel close to us. For the first three days, they allowed us to charge our phones, but on the fourth day, they chased us out like animals😂. They insulted us! Oh boy! I have never been insulted like that in my life.
2 weeks after we packed into the hostel, the landlord finally brought the generator. We were angry but still happy because we didn't have to fetch water or charge our phones from other hostels.
We enjoyed the generator for 3 days, but on the third day, something terrible happened. The generator stopped working. We called the agent/caretaker and he said we must suffer for destroying a new generator. He said he wouldn't do anything about it for some days so we'd know how to take care of it.
After 1 week, they repaired the generator. But after using it for just 1 hour (or even 30 minutes) it stopped working again. We called an engineer who worked close to the hostel. He checked the generator out and said the generator was fake. THE LANDLORD BOUGHT A FAKE GENERATOR!
Do you remember his promise to paint the interior and exterior of the hostel? He still hasn't done anything about it even till now that I'm writing this post.
That's even the smallest issue. Here comes the biggest issue. Yeah! The lack of electricity/generators is also a big deal, but the biggest issue of them all is “EVERYTHING ABOUT THE HOUSE!!!!!” The doors are faulty. You have to jack it like 5 times before it opens. Not only that, the bathrooms and kitchens are messed up. There are 19 rooms in the hostel, the last two rooms are really suffering. Water from the zinc of the last room comes out into the kitchen of the room before it. So it means if the last room washes plates in the zinc the water comes out from the next room’s kitchen.
We were so angry that we all went to the agent/caretaker's house. And when we complained to him, he told us we destroyed everything and we have to face the consequences. We got so angry that we gave him hot slaps.
The next day, the landlord brought a new generator. Well, maybe violence is really the answer to some things.
He promised to fix everything and paint the house before next Saturday, let’s see how things go.