My family and I have recently outgrown our 2 bedroom duplex. While it’s really a great house and we have the best landlord in the world, we just need some more room (and a better backyard for our little one). So, we are (once again) performing the rental search. We need another year or two to save to buy and we all know it will be a buyer’s market for a long time, so we decided to just rent for another year.

Well, I forgot how painful the renting process is. Not only is it hard to find a 3 BR house right now, but we supposedly need to worry about scammers from across the world tricking us. Within only one week of looking at a small number of properties online, I have received two scam offers and thought I should share my experiences with everyone in the area so no one else is scammed. Luckily, I was smart enough to do some heavy research the first time, which saved me a large sum of money, but I am afraid that others have been scammed, which is why I’m writing this. Keep reading for the whole story and what you can do to avoid being scammed. Full Story »

Pittsburghrantsandraves.com has been featured (for the first time) in a major media outlet - the Pittsburgh Post Gazette! This past Sunday (January 26), we made the Cutting Edge: New Ideas/Sharp Opinions section for a post I had written in the Oakland series about landlords failing to make tenant repairs. I’m glad to see that this was the topic from my blog that was shared with Pittsburgh, because although the situation is improving, there is still MUCH room for improvement! Also, thanks to those readers who have contacted me with specific questions about their landlord issues. I hope I have been able to provide some half-decent advice. Have a happy Monday all! More soon….

Student Residents: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

Oakland Series Continued…

“You’re paying how much money to live here? They should be paying you to live here!” – my Mom when she saw my sophomore off-campus house.

Please see my past postings on Oakland housing if you are interested in learning more about the Oakland community - and if you are interested in helping to improve the problems!

Students agree with the resident’s assessment (mentioned in a recent posting on long-term residents in Oakland) that landlords are the cause of Oakland’s demise. In an all student focus group monitored by the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation (OPDC), the complaints surrounding the need for repairs were endless. The problem of landlords neglecting to make repairs is a universal one. Some students have moved into messy apartments infested with fleas or termites, but the landlords did not respond immediately to these complaints. One student’s bathroom window broke. The student explained,

“The window [which was on sash weights] collapsed and exploded. The past week it’s been like 30 degrees outside and we just don’t go in our bathroom and our whole apartment is cold. It was broken for a month…she [the landlord] didn’t send anyone to fix it until today and that was because our parents called and said they would no longer send the rent until it was fixed, so she finally sent over this dude and he put in like a piece of garbage bag plastic.”

Other horror stories included a broken stove, a refrigerator (which was replaced by a mini-fridge!) and other safety concerns. Full Story »

A Lofty Promise For Pittsburgh Students

While many of us have made it through college with or without the help of our parents, it sure would have made it a lot easier on all of us to not have to do so. As we know, the cost of a college education has risen dramatically over the last few years and that doesn’t even include housing, books, food, gas, bills - all of which also cost a lot for those poor college students and their families. But, making life easier on college-goers is one of the things that the recently announced “Pittsburgh Promise” aims to do.

The Pittsburgh promise is a promise to Pittsburgh public school students that as long as they stay on the straight and narrow, they will receive full college tuition. While many were unsure if the program would get off the ground - as soon as UPMC made the commitment to contribute 100 million dollars in funding to the program, it became evident that it would indeed happen - and that the city was well on its way to the goal of 250 million dollars raised for the program.

What a great pull to revitalize the city and increase home prices! This sure makes me want to stay in Pittsburgh for my son’s education. Wait…Mom, Dad - that education fund you were going to start for the little man for Christmas? Cancel that - I could use the money instead! Full Story »

ATTN: Caring Pittsburgh Landlords Needed

Oakland Series Continued…

“The majority of the current owners appear to use the properties strictly for investment purposes, and once sufficient return is generated by the real estate, it is sold to the next willing absentee landlord” – a study by Pitt’s Graduate School for International and Public Affairs, on Meyran Ave, a popular student rental street in Central Oakland.

As I’ve written before, the arrival of student renters into the Oakland community has unleashed a string of problems. The renters’ property is owned by absentee landlords who make a huge profit, but do not make necessary repairs due to the negligent enforcement of local building codes. The depreciating property values result in a loss of tax revenue on many local properties.

Based on the aforementioned study and other focus groups conducted by OPDC, it seems that the older residents are in agreement that the main problem is the absentee landlords, not the college students themselves. “They [landlords take care of their house in Upper St. Clair or Mt. Lebanon but they forget, they think Oakland is trash so let’s damage [it] and you know students live there, so let’s trash it,” one long-term resident said. A major concern is that landlords who do not live in the neighborhood do not maintain their properties suitably and any of us who  have lived there and suffered through trying to get a hold of an absentee landlord for housing repairs know that this is indeed a problem. Full Story »

“I have really never considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit.”

~Every Burgher’s Neighbor: Mr. Rogers!

Oakland: The Loss of a Community, Part 2

This is Part 2 of the Oakland Series. There’s so much to say about the Oakland community that you will see a number of posts devoted to Oakland, The University of Pittsburgh, and especially, bad housing conditions in Pittsburgh - one of my personal crusades for change. This entry is dedicated to the history of housing law and the older residents who have lived in Oakland for a long, long time (and who many simply have forgotten).

I would like to note that the University of Pittsburgh has done an excellent job to rebuild the bridges they broke in the late 60s and early 70s with Oakland’s long-term residents (as explained in this posting), but there is still more work to do when it comes to improving housing conditions for both the students renters and the long-term residents of Oakland.

Oakland in the 1950s: The Cathedral of Learning Mobbed by Many as the University Grows in Popularity!

Law and Housing Conditions

“Miserable and disreputable housing conditions…may indeed make living an almost insufferable burden. They may also be an ugly sore, a blight on the community which robs it of its charm; which makes it a place from which men may turn. The misery of housing may despoil a community as an open sewer may ruin a river”
~ Supreme Court Justice William O.Douglas, in Berman v.Parker. Full Story »

(2) Comments

The Cathedral of Learning [another photo] is the second tallest educational building in the world, topped only by a building [photo] on the campus of Lomonosov Moscow State University

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PS: The building in Moscow has a long tower of a star at the top (which isn’t very aesthetically pleasing), so Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning is technically the world’s largest pretty educational establishment!

Oakland Series: Part 1

The first year I moved out of the dorms to an off campus house was my sophomore year, when 3 of my Pitt girlfriends and I moved into a house on Chesterfield Street in Oakland [Google Earth shot]. Chesterfield is a 45 degree cobblestone road that leads down to a 5 minute walk to Pitt’s main campus, nestled between the UPMC hospital system and Carlow College.



Our landlord’s name was Robert “Bob” Eckenrode, a noted “slumlord” who even had an entire section of a June 2006 Pittsburgh Post Gazette article devoted to him. I wish that article was a little more timely because I would have known to stay away from him in 2004! The article states;

“Mr. [Robert] Eckenrode, of Mt. Lebanon, faced 34 complaints in Pittsburgh Municipal Court from 2003 through early last year. At that point, the court changed from a city operation to part of the county-run court system, and it no longer provides data on building code complaints. Mr. Eckenrode owns 28 Oakland properties.”
~ Pitt students find landlords slow to make repairs in off-campus apartments, By Rich Lord and Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday edition: 06/18/06

The stairs leading to our home on Chesterfield were crumbling and unsafe, one of many of the issues we noticed when we were looking at the house freshman year. But, we were late in the rental game, brand-new to looking for housing, and Bob promised that the stairs would be replaced before August, our move-in date. So, we signed a lease and move-in day came and went. But… no repairs were made. Full Story »