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Worst Roommate Ever

nymag.com

191–200 of 290 posts

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#191

I couldn't help but imagine an older version of Erlich Bachman from Silicon Valley while reading the name throughout the story. https://i.imgur.com/qXUq2eX.jpg

Except in the show, it's Bachman who's the landlord taken advantage of by a menacing tenant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#192
post #178

Did anyone else read this paragraph wonder wtf really happened... "Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. S…

What a weird story. One strongly suspects that there must be more to it. As reported, to not even be indicted (which usually has a low bar) for stabbing someone to death in full view of numerous witnesses seems like a pretty abnormal outcome.

Universities will do anything to lower their crime statistics.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#193
post #169
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I lived in mortal fear of the day one of them realised that they could just stop paying me rent, and there's nothing I can do about it whatsoever That is of course false. It may be a hassle, but you can absolutely to something. And giving people housing is important, that's why the laws often favor the person renting, not the owner. The laws is a risk you have to take if you want to rent out your place. Price it in…

Realistically, there's nothing I can do about it because the eviction process is so long and time consuming, that by the time I finally evict the person, my lease would be over and I'd be moving out anyway. After having given my roommate free housing for many months of course. > "Giving people housing is important" I agree! So let's make the government financially liable for any missed rent payments, while the evicti…

Well, here in Uruguay, eviction is also awful, so tenants are required to pay for "rent insurance", which is awful if you're a diligent rent-payer (as it's an extra month's rent every year), but it's great for the owner - if the tenant loses one month's payments, the owner gets reimbursed for every month and the judicial arm takes care of eviction.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#194
Imagine being his brother. Yikes. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to feel a sense of familial duty toward such a person. Those tenants were entrapped for sure, but I get the feeling none of them were as trapped as his brother was.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#195
post #80
post #53

The kind of tenancy laws I read in articles like these, sound absolutely idiotic. If you let someone into your home, and they aren't on the lease, you should be able to kick them out anytime they overstay their welcome. If you do sign a lease with someone, and they haven't paid their rent, you should be able to throw their stuff out and change the locks as soon as their security deposit has run itself out. As a forme…

> I lived in mortal fear of the day one of them realised that they could just stop paying me rent, and there's nothing I can do about it whatsoever That is of course false. It may be a hassle, but you can absolutely to something. And giving people housing is important, that's why the laws often favor the person renting, not the owner. The laws is a risk you have to take if you want to rent out your place. Price it in…

You can certainly do something, but you will lose a lot of money doing it. Where I live in Illinois it can take months. If someone isn't paying that whole time, that's a real hardship.

I still rent out my old place because I took a bath in the financial crisis and I needed to move. I can't just "price it in" as I can only charge what the market will bear, which just barely covers my mortgage.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends where. In France you are completely stuck when someone dies not pay. It can take over a year to finally kick someone out. But then how do you kick them out? By doing something ! Which was my point. Saying "nothing whatsoever to do about it" is a lie by the OP. I'm not saying all the rules are sane. But it's better to protect the weak that need roof over their heads, than the persons renting out a house t…

>Having a house to live in should be. I think their is a confusion of rights and duties occurring here. You have a right to own a house. What you are speaking about is others having a duty to provide you with a house. In particular, we need to be clear on exactly what the duty to provide housing is. For example, there is a significant difference between the government offering safe homeless shelters because society h…

Every able-bodied human has the capacity to provide their own housing, given enough land area on which to build. But in most places on Earth, the local legal regime has been constructed in such a way as to provide for a means of land ownership, where other people may be lawfully excluded from using the land, or even just being present on it.

There must be a tradeoff there. Everyone requires the legal right to occupy the volume of their own body. It would be completely unethical to make it illegal for a person to exist. Any attempt to do so induces such a person to treat the legal structure as a mortal enemy.

So in exchange for respecting a land property right of another, those land-owners have a duty to provide those who might otherwise develop that owned land for their own purposes with a location on which they may exist. They don't even need to actually build any houses, just to allow for any type of housing to be built without attempting to prevent it. If they fail in this duty, they have abrogated the social contract that allows land property to exist, and those with no place to stand could ethically seize the land property.

The right to own land comes with a duty to supply living space to those whom you would exclude from it. Surface volume is a limited resource, and impossible to defend in large parcels without the cooperation of others.

It would be advantageous for the landowners to form a cartel, such that they could retaliate against renegades that undermine the collective property right by neglecting the duty, because the natural game-theory equilibrium is for everyone to be a NIMBY until the landless people reach a breaking point and murder all the landowners, just to take a reasonable portion for themselves.

If you don't build houses, you need to build strong walls.

Georgists have put a lot of thought into this concept, even if I don't entirely agree with their proposed solutions to the problem.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#197

This is one of those extreme pieces that illustrate a libertarian trope about property rights. "Due to some crazy librul laws about renting apartments this psycho stabbed me and ate my cat..." Landlord laws are there to protect people from property owners that are often unfair and discriminatory. It is the VAST-99.999%-almost-always-few-exceptions-case that landlords are unfair to tenants rather than psycho's like th…

[deleted]

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not 'inconsistent' so much as neglected to include the key details necessary to understand why Vidrine was acquitted (or, 'not indicted'). I mean, it's presented as a heinous murder. But yeah, you are right, after a second read there isn't major inconsistencies.

> neglected to include the key details The “key detail” is Bachman was close to a traumatic, seemingly-random violent interaction in his youth. Whether it was cheese snacks or a cheese sandwich, and who attacked whom first, are largely irrelevant to the main story.

1. had i said key details to the main story, yes, i'd agree

2. see my comment below, where i point out that, indeed the players and events that unfolded here are only proximal to not directly in the scope of the story about Jamison.

3. I already admitted there wasnt major inconsistencies, whaddayawant from me. A formal retraction?

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#199

Did anyone else read this paragraph wonder wtf really happened... "Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. S…

Rehosted on Imgur (where it can be viewed without JS enabled):

https://i.imgur.com/5zTT0gk.jpg

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#200

Did anyone else read this paragraph wonder wtf really happened... "Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. S…

Reminds me of an episode of Cops I once saw where a man beat the shit out of another man for stealing the baloney from his sandwich.
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