Terrible apartment ad -- probably not real, funny nevertheless
ElectricityWorst Apartment Rental Ad Ever
* Heat – Maintained at 21 degrees with lock box to prevent unauthorized tampering. Additional heating available for $20.00 per extra degree of heating per month. You may not use your oven to heat the apartment. If you do, you will be fined $50.00 per occurrence.
* Air conditioning – Maintained at 25 degrees during the summer with lock box to prevent extra cooling from being dispensed. Additional cooling for sale for $20.00 per degree of cooling requested per month.
* 25" Zenith color television set with basic cable service - INCLUDED IN RENT!
* Wireless internet (with content filter applied to block forbidden/immoral websites) - INCLUDED IN RENT!
* Provision of coin laundry services - You will have your own personal coin laundry washer and dryer machines. Washers and dryers are paid using a token system. Tokens can be purchased through the landlord. Washer tokens cost $4.15 each and dryer tokens cost $3.60 each. You are not allowed to use foreign currency or slugs in the washer and dryer. Violators will be fined $100.00 per infraction.CLEANLINESS: You are responsible for the cleanliness and orderliness of your apartment. Beds are to be made before leaving your suite, countertops must be wiped down, and you must remove all trash. Upon inspection, if the tenant's basement suite is not clean, the cost of cleaning services plus a fine of $100.00 will be levied.
LIGHTS: The lights in your basement suite and in the day room are not to be tampered with. If a light needs repair, report the condition to the Landlord.
WAKE-UP: Wake up will be at 5:30am each morning. All ceiling lights in the suite will be turned on automatically.
LIGHTS OUT: Ceiling lights in the suite will be turned off at 11:30pm.
CONTRABAND: The following items are considered contraband – alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, weapons, lock picking equipment. If any contraband is discovered to be in your possession, you will be subject to a minimum $1,000.00 fine. In addition, your items will be confiscated permanently. Second offense – you will be evicted without notice. A bailiff will escort you and your belongings off the premises. Your security deposit will not be returned.
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wow, that's harsh..
But the heat/ac sounds pretty alright to me...
(I don't know if that means heat/electricity is included in the price or not....if not then nevermind).
Cause right now it's 57F (13.8C) in my house...damn old house with leaky windows and outdated hot water radiators...
Broadway and Commercial is not exactly a spectacular place to be living, what with the two major skytrain stations.
Plus a couple blocks up Commercial leads to sin central... hipsters and coffee shops and slam poetry nights, oh my!
What would the warden-landlord think of that!?!
"probably" not real?
INSPECTIONS: The Landlord will conduct unannounced inspections to ensure
that these rules and regulations are being followed.
VISITATION: Visitation periods will be on Saturdays and Sundays from
1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. All visitors and their vehicles are subject
to search while on landlord property. Refusal to allow a search can
result in their being barred from all future visitation privileges. All
visitors must sign the Visitor's Log. Unauthorized visitors will be
escorted from the property, and the tenant will be fined $250.00.
I.D. BRACELETS: Each tenant will be issued an I.D. bracelet with his/her
photograph. It must be worn at all times. If you lose your I.D.
bracelet or it is broken, you will be required to purchase a new one at
the nominal cost of $5.00.
EXERCISE YARD: The tenant will have access to the exercise yard in the
area to the back of the property for 2 hours per day from 4:00 pm to
6:00 pm. The tenant is not allowed to bring any personal property to
the exercise yard. Once the tenant leaves the exercise yard on a
particular day, he or she may not return. No boisterous behavior is
allowed in the exercise yard. There is no smoking allowed in the
exercise yard. Minimum fine for exercise yard infractions is $50.00.
The most bizzare thing to me is that he is from just outside Vancouver, B.C. and he isn't making some serious coin on a grow-op.
No pesky tenants to deal with, either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Drive
"Closed circuit camera installed for security and safety. One in your suite"
Now you little pervy Born Again Christian.
A friend of mine who forwarded me the original Craigslist posting also looked up the laws of British Columbia; apparently the "unannounced inspections" thing is illegal. Not that this tells us anything one way or the other regarding whether this is a Poe.
http://www.bclaws.ca/Recon/document/freeside/--%20R%20--/Residential%20Tenancy%20Act%20%20SBC%202002%20%20c.%2078/00_02078_01.xml#section29
Just about everything in here is illegal in the United States, and I would assume in Canada as well. Here's where this had already FAILed to provide verisimilitude: "(with content filter applied to block forbidden/immoral websites)"
No-one writing an advertisement would stop to provide that parenthetical. In fact, that's pretty much a hallmark of mock classified ads. Sorry, it would have been funnier if it had been more believable.
So who do I have to kill to get into this "apartment"? Or can I just steal a loaf of bread for a twenty year lease?
I like the idea of a two-hour limit on visits (especially if, say, my parents are visiting).
Has nobody noticed that this is blatantly obviously a (not all that hilarious) joke? Duh...
Have you not read the post?
That insanely detailed list of requirements demands the editor's sharpest knife. I believe it can be reduced to "Masochist Wanted".
The thing that's odd is that the specified temperatures would be perfectly comfortable for most people. A real landlord would keep the building at 15° in the winter and 30° in the summer.
It's not legal for a landlord to impose "fines" against tenants like that. Which would matter if this were real, which it's not.
#14 - I've never known a group of people larger than four that could all agree on a temperature that was "perfectly comfortable"... and then only if that was the selection criteria for the group.
But it's got IOL (Instant On Lighting)!
The killer feature.
Um, it's a joke guys. It's called "prison."
#1, BCSIZEMO:
I don't want to come over all Four Yorkshiremen, but you're lucky to have central heating; my bathroom was 8C this morning, bedroom was 11C. It'll be a bit warmer when the fires get going...
This is exactly how I imagine apartment ads in North Korea would be like.
Meh, smells like a clumsy viral for prisoner's rights or something.
Is it some kind of place that a judge can allow you to live instead of prison? Like some kind of transitional housing between jail and the real world for people who really really don't want to be in jail and think this sounds better?
Say it with me; "Sa-tire!"
To me, it seems to be talking about a group home, or half-way house, for people on parole or work-release. I don't think it works as satire.
It started out good, then it just got silly. What if I wanted my apartment at 45 degrees? Would I be able to pay the landlord an extra $480 a month?
Sounds reasonable to me!
It's definitely a joke, and even if it was real it would violate a shit-ton of civil liberty laws, and "renter's rights".
Honestly, I could see it, and we're talking about my specific neighborhood here. That said, it's most likely a worst possible case mashup of the kinda shit some segments of the renter demographic have to face each and every day.
There is a *lot* of very dodgy rental housing in Van as opportunistic landlords look for new and exciting ways to either monetize or marginalize societally challenged tenants. It's a phenomenon more usually associated with (but not confined to) downtown east side rooming houses, which are steadily disappearing as they're converted into quirky and expensive boutique hotels targeting the 2010 Olympics, and 'illegal basement suites', which is a hoary old housing issue that rears its' ugly head with every change of municipal government.
Nothing can prepare you for the pervasive and tenaciously incompetent greed embodied in BCs' political system. This is Vancouver... If it'll line someones pocket, it'll occur
Unfortunately, the ability to dig up a link to the Residential Tenancy Act only confirms the illegality of such actions, and has no real impact on whether or not it's actually taking place.
That's the thing about laws... they need to be enforced.
Our provincial government has made the filing of RTA complaints as difficult a process as possible (I think there's one office handling the entire lower mainland) and the municipal government is mostly concerned with encouraging poor people to move out of town so folks from Seattle can park downtown and not worry about having their car stolen.
Vancouver is a beautiful city, but it's not a very pleasant one, and it's certainly no place to be poor.
I'm surprised no one's thought of the possibility that this is some sort of very specific fetish/roleplay thing. That may be why he's having trouble finding a tenant--just not that many people in the Greater Vancouver area who get off on being under surveillance in their own apartment, and having to use an exercise yard.
Whether or not it's legal (apparently not), it's entirely plausible that someone wants this level of control.
This is either an ad for an apartment for a basement "suite" in your parent's basement, or for an "apartment" in a state facility, ie.--prison cell.
#20 Billegible: Meh, smells like a clumsy viral for prisoner's rights or something.
#22 Raj77 Say it with me; "Sa-tire!"
And pretty clumsy indeed if people aren't getting the satire. If anyone thinks this is remotely reasonable as an apartment option, then the point is completely lost--either as a protest or as comedy.
Either that, or we've gotten so used to surveillance, discipline, and loss of civil liberties that we don't know the difference between prison and freedom.
But, how much is the monthly rent?
@hobartimus
I think it said $480/month. Which is, I think, actually really cheap for Vancouver, even for a shitty apartment.
But I agree with everyone who thinks that this is most likely a joke of sorts.
That having been said, there's a grain of truthiness to this. Renting in Van can suck in a lot of ways.
Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate the possibility of shadiness of anyone with a moneymaking scheme. There's a lot of newb tennants who would jump into this. The guy renting it might have had a thought process like: "My basement isn't being used, let's rent it out!" and then just made sure to have the 'right people' there. All of this makes perfect sense from a kind of mindset, and I've seen things eerily similar (in different ways) here in NYC. He doesn't know what he's doing is illegal, probably, because he figures hey, it's my house, I can put whatever limits I want on it.
Except he can't, of course.
This is hilarious. Obviously a joke; sadly enough, however, my mom had a landlord like this back in the '60s in Toronto. He locked out the thermostat controls in the winter and kept the place at a chilly 15 degrees. Her solution? Hang a bag of icecubes over the box covering the thermostat. Got the place up to a more comfortable temperature, and there was no evidence of tampering with the box!
And as several people have pointed out, BC has a pretty good Landlord/Tenant Act, and terms like this wouldn't even be tolerated in our prisons! (Of course, we have pretty liberal prisons here too...*grin*)
This is probably genuine but taken out of context. It look's like house rules for some kind of care home; ex-offenders; homeless, etc..
Having just spent 20 days in jail on a mandatory minimum sentence for a DUI, I can testify that jail is a lot like this, except we NEVER got to go outside (at least in the 20 days I was there)and didn't get to do laundry on our own. But otherwise, it's like Virginia jail. Oh, and the only turned off the lights for 4 1/2 hours a night in one block I was in and NEVER in another I was in for 5 days.
Lesson learned, in Virginia it's illegal to sit inside a car, even if it's not running, with the keys in the ignition, if you're drunk. And they have mandatory minimums so the judge can't take into account the fact that you weren't really driving.
Like Kaden, I live in the same neighbourhood as the ad, and like Kaden, it doesn't sound too far-fetched to me. In fact, it could be an ad for my neighbour's suite.
For all of you with landlords who lock the thermostat at an unacceptable setting: a bag of frozen food or ice-pack on top of the thermostat works wonders in the winter. A cup of tea below it in the summer also helps.
You know, all that said, when I was looking for a room in Vancouver a few months back, one of the ads I did consider was probably what this is parodying. I can't recall the exact phrasing/conditions, but it included things like wanting "studious" tenants, walls between "rooms" not actually going to the ceiling, no overnight guests, and "quiet times".
Not all of that is unreasonable, but on the whole it didn't sound like a particularly fun place to live, despite the rent being about $100 a month cheaper than anything comparable.
Fortunately, I lucked out and am now renting from a friend in Kits.
The temperature settings are a bit whack. I keep my place 52F/11C at night and 59F/15C during the day. In the summer it stays around ambient outdoor temp until it starts to go over 85F/30C.
The family is used to it, and the kids now tell me that they find their friend's houses intolerably stuffy, as they typically keep them around 74F/23C in the winter.
Is this an ad for a prison?
Hmm. I keep mine at 80/27° in the winter and 85/29° in the summer.
Your homeworlds' sun is hotter than Sol. You'll adapt, eventually.
don't feel too bad Sleestax, there are jurisdictions that will charge you if you are found sleeping it off on the back seat if they can find keys ANYWHERE in the car or on you. Just your police keeping you safe by jailing you for not driving drunk.
Apartment living in Vancouver...
You people who think this is satire should try it sometime.
We have a very serious housing shortage here, and stuff like this is the result.
I bet he finds a tenant within the week.
RE: the washer dryer tokens.
I am reminded of the scene in Real Genius where Chris Knight uses slugs made from alcohol frozen in Liquid Nitrogen to get coffee from the vending machine.
Gallon of LN2: ~US$3.00
Used Dewar
Flask off eBay: ~US$30-40
Screwing an asshole landlord: Priceless!
Wow, this sounds just like a crazy landlady we stayed with in Switzerland. Just no aircon! She was so anal! And abrasive. She even went into our apartment while we were out to "inspect". These "inspections" were never mensioned in any contracts we signed! She would hang around outside our door until we left, then slip inside, trying not to be seen. But I caught her! Walked right in on her. And she wondered why numerous tenants had left in the middle of the night without paying! Fruit loop!
That makes me think of this.
why does Johanna remind me of you?
This ad also appeared as an apartment in Toronto - so not real. But really funny!