Um. Can I Have my Rent Back?

I received this email from a tenant who moved from the neighborhood because of a “feeling” she had about it after living in the apartment for a week.

The rental contract I use as standard procedure went ignored and unsigned while she continued to live here without bothering to come to me over why she hadn’t paid. The contract requires two weeks’ notice or the tenant forfeits the deposit (which she didn’t even pay).

She paid on the sixth day. She left on the seventh.

When she told me she was leaving that very day, I told her I couldn’t give her the rent back.

Maybe you think I was wrong to do this, but I’m not running a flop house here. She was aware when she left that she was wasting money by paying two rents, but said she didn’t want to let the other place go.

Seems harmless enough, right?

Here she is referring to another tenant who left around the same time she did. “[T]he previous one” is of course my apartment.

We didn’t have a contract, legal or otherwise, because she ignored the one I provided for her.

I like how she brings my attention to her payment of the rent as a generous act.

She actually didn’t “keep her word” since I had to hound her daily to get the money from her, though she reassured me in more than one e-mail before she got here that she would pay upon her arrival. It makes me nervous to give complete strangers the keys to my apartment, you see.

Also, as we will later see, “a small part” is actually half. Where I come from, half is not a small part.

Translation: It seems ridiculous to ask until you consider the fact that I could have been even shittier than I already was and even more self entitled than I seemed.

She didn’t tell me that she “hoped” to spend a month here. She told me that she would spend a month here or I never would have rented to her in the first place. The rooms in this apartment are rented at a month minimum.

Translation: I considered stealing from you. But I didn’t. Don’t I get any credit for that? I don’t really care how this sounds, sob story or no, because I have been approved of and adored my whole life until my expectations of total strangers border on the pathological.

Translation: It was a weighty decision to throw away a month’s rent, but so poorly considered that I’m asking you to do something you never said you would do in the first place and give it back to me.

Even though I never once went to the grocery while living there, choosing to eat all of my meals in restaurants and go out to bars with my friends, I want you to think I have no money.

P.S. Your apartment sucks.

Translation: When you forgave me the deposit which at today’s exchange rate would be about 400 pesos, I never said thank you, but let it pass without comment. In the contract I did not sign, it said that I would forfeit my deposit if I left with less than two weeks’ notice.

I moved out with less than a day’s notice, but I would appreciate you giving me the equivalent of a week or two in rent to show you are “decent.” I think you are crazy enough that whether I think you are decent or not is probably important to you.

If this is the case (that she deserved to pay 2 weeks’ rent + deposit), the most I could owe her would be $187.76 Arg, or $48.88 US. I think I deserve that much for putting up with the bullshit. Don’t you?

Personal Message to Prior Tenant: I hope they teach you what a paragraph is at your journalism internship, kid.

Translation: I am more than happy to pay less than I did. Let’s call it a gesture, even though it’s money. Regards only for myself, (redacted)