WORST APPLICATION EVER.

A lot of people assume that when a landlord decides who to rent an apartment to, he picks the applicant who makes the most money, but experienced landlords don’t do that. Naturally, a landlord does want to be sure that an applicant can afford to pay the rent, but the #1 thing a competent landlord is looking for in an applicant is someone who likes the place and wants to live there. I’ve been a landlord for a long time. I know that if I rent an apartment to someone who has a lot of money but who hates the place, that person will be miserable living there, and he will make my life miserable too.That is why I didn’t offer an apartment to the woman I called the Kitchen Crier.

The Kitchen Crier. I once rented a 1-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street in Rockridge during a particularly hot rental market. Several dozen people came to my one and only showing, and 10 of them turned in applications.  At the end of the showing, I sat down on the living room couch to review the applications I received. I thought I was alone until I heard the sound of someone crying. I got up to investigate. To my surprise, I found a woman sitting at the kitchen table, stooped over, crying, and holding a handkerchief over her eyes. There was a partially filled out rental application form on the table in front of her. I said: “Are you OK?” She nodded her head and said: “Yes,” so I went back to the living room, wondering what was going on but not knowing what to say. After a while, she came out of the kitchen holding the rental application form. She looked around the living room, paused, and then burst into tears again. I said: “Is there anything I can do?” She shook her head, looked down into the fireplace and said: “No. It’s just that my mother warned me that I’d wind up in a place like this, but I didn’t believe her.” Then she handed me her application form, walked out, and drove away – still crying. It seemed to me that this woman was not going to be happy living in this apartment, so I decided to rent the place to somebody else.

WORST APPLICATION EVER.

Snowball. One of the strangest rental applications I ever received was for a 1-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street in Oakland from a well-dressed, middle-aged woman. She walked through the apartment, filled out an application form and handed it to me. The first thing I noticed was that after ‘Name of Applicant:’ she wrote ‘Snowball.’ I said to her: “Is your name Snowball?” She said: “No. Snowball is the name of my cat.” I said: “But you wrote Snowball after ‘Name of Applicant’.” She said: “Yes. I did.” I was befuddled by that answer, so I read the rest of her application before asking any more questions. It turned out that all of the information on her application form was about her cat. She provided no information about herself, not even her name. For example, after “Occupation:” she wrote: “Companionship.” I said to this woman: “I don’t understand. Do you want me to put the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Yes.” I said: “I still don’t understand. Do you plan to live here or is it just your cat?” She said: “Oh Yes, I’m going to live here too.” I said: “Well, why do you want the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Well, as I understand the law, if the lease is in my name, then I’d be responsible for paying the rent.” I said: “Yes. That’s right.” She said: “Well, that’s why I want the lease in my cat’s name.” I nodded my head to indicate that I understood her line of reasoning. I thanked her for her application and told her that I would call her if I decided to rent the apartment to Snowball. As you probably guessed, I rented the apartment to somebody else.

Can A Cat Rent An Apartment? You may find this hard to believe, but people do sometimes rent apartments just for their pets. I saw an interview recently with a man in San Jose who is renting a 2-bedroom apartment for his daughter’s 2 cats. Just the cats live in the apartment. The man’s wife is allergic to the cats, and the apartment is next door to his house. Here is a story about it: Apartment Rented to Cats. However, no landlord is going to rent an apartment to a cat. All landlords require that a human being take financial responsibility for paying the rent, even if no one (no human being) is going to live in the apartment. That is because a contract with a cat is not enforceable in court. (You probably already knew that.) However, things may change if Wayne Hsuing wins the Berkeley mayoral election next week. He has some big-name endorsements, including our former mayor. Hsuing is running as an anti-speciesist. Anti-speciesists believe that all animals should have equal legal rights. Hsuing says that his goal is to pass a constitutional amendment granting all animals ‘legal personhood.’ If the Constitution was amended to say that animals are people, then cats would have the right to rent apartments, just like ‘human animals’, which is what anti-speciesists call human beings. I can foresee a long list of problems if I had to rent apartments to cats. For example, how would I get a cat’s signature on a rental application or a lease? How would I run a credit check on a cat? Cats don’t have Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers. Credit bureaus require that sort of information to run credit checks. And how would I verify a cat’s income?

WORST APPLICATION EVER.

“I Have a Jack Daniels Terrier.” I recently rented a big house here in Berkeley. I once got an application for this house from a woman that immediately aroused my suspicion, but as my sister Bonnie says, I have a suspicious nature. Why, I asked myself, would a single woman want to rent a 5 bedroom house by herself? Of course that’s legal, but it’s not normal. After reviewing her application form, I said: “I see you have a pet. You wrote down that your pet is a Jack Daniels Terrier. Don’t you mean a Jack Russell Terrier?” She seemed annoyed by my question. She said: “No. I meant what I said. I have a Jack Daniels Terrier.” I said: “Uh, you own a dog, right?” She said: “Yes, you know I do,” sounding increasingly annoyed. I said: “Well, I’ve never heard of a Jack Daniels Terrier before. Are you sure you don’t mean a Jack Russell Terrier?” Then she blew a gasket! She said angrily: “I’ve told you 3 times now that I own a Jack Daniels Terrier. You’re one of them, aren’t you?” I didn’t reply to that question. I didn’t know what she meant. Then she stood up and gathered up her stuff and said as she left: “I know you’re one of them.” She said that several times, but she never explained what she meant by that. When I went home, I looked up ‘Jack Daniels Terrier’ on Google, just to make sure that there really is no such breed, and as I suspected, there isn’t. I decided not to rent my house to that woman – or her Jack Daniels Terrier. I rented the house to a nice bunch of U.C. Berkeley chemistry grad students instead. Here is a photo of a Jack Russell Terrier. Notice the distinctive upturned tail, a characteristic of this breed. I wonder what a Jack Daniels Terrier might look like.