Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Steffan
Speaker 1: Never Told You production of iHeartRadio. And welcome to another
Speaker 1: edition of Monday Many. This is the one I kind
Speaker 1: of hinted at during your last Monday Many about home ownership. Samantha,
Speaker 1: I will say this is a bigger conversation we should
Speaker 1: come back to because I was specifically doing me search,
Speaker 1: as we call it. I was kind of looking for
Speaker 1: gender differences in landlords and in tenants, and so that's
Speaker 1: what we're largely going to be talking about. But there
Speaker 1: is definitely racial discrimination. There's discrimination against queer people, like
Speaker 1: it's big. It's a big issue, housing discrimination in general,
Speaker 1: big issue. So this is a very kind of targeted
Speaker 1: to me being angry by my landlord. Research fair enough,
Speaker 1: and if you've listened to this show, I have discussed
Speaker 1: my issues with my landlord about how I believe he
Speaker 1: doesn't communicate, he doesn't listen to me. Necessarily. That being said,
Speaker 1: he's like not the worst landlord I've had, which I
Speaker 1: guess is not necessarily a good thing. Right, I've only had.
Speaker 1: I thought we could go over this. I've actually only
Speaker 1: lived in I've lived overseas during internships. That was usually
Speaker 1: in a hotel or some kind of host situation with
Speaker 1: the host family. I've lived in dorms. In college. I
Speaker 1: lived briefly with a very nice guy, but it was
Speaker 1: a weird situation where I was essentially living in like
Speaker 1: his guest room. But I've never been like the person
Speaker 1: except in college. But in college you have like a
Speaker 1: very easy form. You're just like, right here, please come
Speaker 1: fix this. I've never been the person that had to
Speaker 1: like know what the landlord does with all of my
Speaker 1: issues with my landlord. I'm out of my refrigerator era.
Speaker 1: Now I'm in my toilet era trying to get things fixed.
Speaker 1: I looked up like the Georgia Handbook of what can
Speaker 1: you ask for as a tenant. I'm still kind of confused, Samantha,
Speaker 1: what's been your general experience.
Speaker 2: Well, you have more rights than you think, and as
Speaker 2: long as you're not the cause of the problem, you
Speaker 2: can request things being fixed if it comes down to
Speaker 2: like issues where which By the way, that refrigerator thing,
Speaker 2: what I told you, I was like, yeah, that's you
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to pay for anything. I am very confused
Speaker 2: about the situation. I still hold to that pretty sure.
Speaker 2: He took advantage of you with that nonsense, knowing that
Speaker 2: you wouldn't fight him because it has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with any of the situation because again you're not taking
Speaker 2: half of it with you and you're not getting paid
Speaker 2: for that. So that's absurd in itself, because also buying
Speaker 2: a new appliance versus like especially if you're not being
Speaker 2: completely negligent like it's it's just absurd. So all those things,
Speaker 2: there should be a timely manner when they get things done.
Speaker 2: I think it results in the fact that in the Georgia,
Speaker 2: he can also evict you as long as he has
Speaker 2: like a reasonable time frame, not a vict you, but
Speaker 2: ask you to leave and give you any time time frame,
Speaker 2: especially if you're not on a full term lease or
Speaker 2: refuse to do that. So like those are the powers
Speaker 2: that they have. But him being this like absurd. It's
Speaker 2: just pretty much that they take advantage of your patience
Speaker 2: and unwillingness to be confrontational.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is absolutely true. But it's also
Speaker 1: true that I for those reasons, I do not seek
Speaker 1: him out rights owned Yeah, which this research I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I see, yes, And I know we talked about your
Speaker 1: issues with your landlord. It's such an odd relationship. It's
Speaker 1: a very strange thing. I'm thinking, I don't know about you.
Speaker 1: My accept Except for my very first two apartments, I
Speaker 1: want to say most of them have been uh privately
Speaker 1: owned landlords.
Speaker 2: And most of them are not. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: had any I've seen horror stories. I've never had a
Speaker 2: bad one, and even the last one I say was
Speaker 2: just greedy. To me. I did not have the ordeal
Speaker 2: that a lot of people do because I like not
Speaker 2: to because it's not a bragging point. But I'm an
Speaker 2: easy tenant because I'm similar to you, and like, unless
Speaker 2: it's absolutely damaged, I probably won't be contacting you. Like
Speaker 2: I think. I called him because my stove started to
Speaker 2: click and sparks, and I was like, you know what
Speaker 2: I think I need. I think I need new stove
Speaker 2: and he was like, yo, yeah you do. Why didn't
Speaker 2: you tell me? I was like, well, it's just clicking.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what clicking meant. And then it sparked,
Speaker 2: and then I was like, oh, there that is. And
Speaker 2: then there's the time I looked at the ceiling. I
Speaker 2: was like, that is water and that is spreading. Where's
Speaker 2: that coming from and having to tell him to do
Speaker 2: that my refrigerator clicking at me and hissing at me.
Speaker 2: I was like, that's not a good sounded me just
Speaker 2: like taking a video and sending it to him, be
Speaker 2: like is this the problem? Like that, that's how I
Speaker 2: want to do it. Because also I was afraid that
Speaker 2: they would think that I was just making things up
Speaker 2: if I did not have proof. So I was able
Speaker 2: to have proof of like he came over and turned
Speaker 2: it on and it clicked. The stove did and he realized, oh,
Speaker 2: and it sparked and smoked, and he was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a problem. Same thing. I actually had that with
Speaker 2: a ceiling where there was just a hole in no
Speaker 2: light or a fan, but or a fan and light
Speaker 2: are supposed to be it also started smoking. I was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what's going on. But those are the
Speaker 2: times that I would contact the landlord and or like
Speaker 2: I finally had enough when he promised me something like dishwasher,
Speaker 2: and I waited two years to finally get one, hounding
Speaker 2: him enough like am I getting one? Now? What about? Now?
Speaker 1: What about now?
Speaker 2: But yeah, so for that note, all of them treated
Speaker 2: me fine. I did not have any issues in that
Speaker 2: like the battle and then I always got my deposit back,
Speaker 2: although I very was concerned. I was very concerned because
Speaker 2: I was like, they're going to try to take my money.
Speaker 2: None of them did. None of them does. In my
Speaker 2: head though all landlords are bastards. And I say this,
Speaker 2: and like the horror story lies, and you know, there's
Speaker 2: and there's some things to be said about like, yes,
Speaker 2: owning things is not a bad thing giving, but like
Speaker 2: taking advantage of people, this is what's the problem. And
Speaker 2: we know unfortunately, even if you're not taking, you are,
Speaker 2: like that's what was happening towards the end of my rent,
Speaker 2: was like there's no need. There was no change here
Speaker 2: except for yes, your text did go up a little bit,
Speaker 2: but you're also not paying and not that you don't
Speaker 2: deserve to make a profit, but I know you don't
Speaker 2: need to make a forty percent profit, Like that's absurd
Speaker 2: per home, Like it just seemed unreasonable, especially for the
Speaker 2: fact that we had no upgrades. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting that you bring up the point
Speaker 1: that it sounds similar to me about how a lot
Speaker 1: of women, including myself, including you, I believe approach like
Speaker 1: going to the doctor, where it's like I have to
Speaker 1: have absolutely right proof this is wrong. It's right, something
Speaker 1: is really bad, because otherwise I think you won't believe me,
Speaker 1: or you'll be like okay.
Speaker 2: Which has been true. They don't exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that more in a second Man My
Speaker 1: toilet Drama. Oh my god. Well, I do think we
Speaker 1: should come back and do a whole episode on this,
Speaker 1: but I did briefly want to talk about like the
Speaker 1: origin of the Landlord. There's a lot of different stories
Speaker 1: about it. One of the main ones is that it
Speaker 1: goes back to the fourteen hundreds and it basically meant
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. There's like somebody who owned a
Speaker 1: lot of land. He owned it was usually he, of course,
Speaker 1: of course almost always he, that he would rent it
Speaker 1: out to tenants and then could really control aspects of
Speaker 1: the tenants' lives because of that, and there were some
Speaker 1: good experiences and really really bad experiences. Over time, it
Speaker 1: evolved to sort of mean like innkeeper, even though they
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily own an inn. But and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like rent acts and laws that came out
Speaker 1: of that. So it's got a long history but essentially
Speaker 1: it's like from this meaning of somebody who owned enough
Speaker 1: that they're like, I'll let you stay here. But in
Speaker 1: the original it was meant to you work here though,
Speaker 1: like you also work here.
Speaker 2: So is it based out of the British colonies type
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought, and that's what a lot of
Speaker 1: sources say, but I found I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different instances of a very similar thing. But that
Speaker 1: is a big one is kind of this like we
Speaker 1: own enough land, you will work on it, but you
Speaker 1: can stay on the land.
Speaker 2: Because I know in UK, I guess the royals own
Speaker 2: all of the land. People just own the house, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that wouldn't surprise me. I ran
Speaker 1: into a lot of stuff like that when I was
Speaker 1: in Australia, where I was like, wait, what yeah, so
Speaker 1: listeners let us, but yeah, we should come back and
Speaker 1: through a bigger deep dive into this anyway, That's essentially
Speaker 1: where it stemshrim is that you don't own this land,
Speaker 1: but somebody is letting you stay on it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But the original question I asked was I wanted to
Speaker 1: know more about the gender differences of landlords. And there's
Speaker 1: a pretty good breakdown of it from Zipia. There's actually
Speaker 1: they have a breakdown on all kinds of things about landlords.
Speaker 1: So according to them, forty four point three percent of
Speaker 1: landlords are women in fifty five point seven percent are men.
Speaker 1: This is pretty more. This is closer to even than
Speaker 1: it was even within the past decade, like at one
Speaker 1: point women were only thirty percent, so that's been a shift.
Speaker 1: Women earned ninety one cents for every one dollar earned
Speaker 1: by men, which given other gender gaps wage gaps, that's
Speaker 1: not so bad. The income for men is forty seven
Speaker 1: seventy six dollars and for women it's forty and forty
Speaker 1: three dollars. Notably sixty four point five percent white. But
Speaker 1: I didn't find as much as I thought I would
Speaker 1: about that. What I did find, as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: your Monday Mini, is landlords being choosy about their tenants
Speaker 1: based on things like gender. So here are some quotes
Speaker 1: from this survey, which again they knew this was happening,
Speaker 1: they knew it would be published. These are some things
Speaker 1: they said. One landlord told the survey that he prefers
Speaker 1: mail renters men make better tenants. They say they can
Speaker 1: usually change light bulbs they know how the central heating works,
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to carry out minor repairs than women.
Speaker 1: They went on to explain their preference further, men are
Speaker 1: more easy going, they take care of the small things. Generally,
Speaker 1: they just want a roof over their heads. However, another landlord,
Speaker 1: and this is continued quote, would rather have a female tenant,
Speaker 1: they said. On average, females are tidier, which means less maintenance.
Speaker 1: Females also seem to like their outside space being picturesque
Speaker 1: and generally do more in the gardens, such as cutting
Speaker 1: the lawn and keeping it tidy. Females are also more
Speaker 1: in control of finances than males. I find I get
Speaker 1: on time payments from female tenants, and they are also
Speaker 1: more likely to stay put.
Speaker 2: That's a true story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Davis, who is a landlord himself, explained his preference.
Speaker 1: Both genders have their pros and cons, but ideally I
Speaker 1: prefer couples as tenants. You often find one is good
Speaker 1: at keeping things clean and tidy, and the other is
Speaker 1: good at sorting out the little things. Also, couples tend
Speaker 1: to be the best long term tenants, particularly if they
Speaker 1: have a child. I just tend to avoid sharers in
Speaker 1: favor of couples. Interesting hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay, so is that a heteronormative couple like us, like
Speaker 2: hes couple?
Speaker 1: Yes, because because the quote, yeah, well I did include it,
Speaker 1: but the quote goes further on where they're definitely saying
Speaker 1: like they're going back to the original. They're saying like
Speaker 1: the man can do the screw in the light bulb
Speaker 1: and the woman will clean.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: You know what. I did have trouble screwing in my
Speaker 1: light bulb, but it's only because I can't reach. It's
Speaker 1: trying to buy a ladder, but I bought the ladder.
Speaker 2: I have yet to meet one. And I've got many women, friends,
Speaker 2: lay friends, awesome friends that did not change their own
Speaker 2: light bulb. That is the most absurd statement I've heard
Speaker 2: in a while, unless it's like, hey, I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: killed because this your electrical wiring is so bad? Yes,
Speaker 2: aka smoking. Yes.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, like, as you said in your
Speaker 1: episode about home ownership, unless I'm specifically trying to make
Speaker 1: a point, I don't want to deal with you, man, right,
Speaker 1: I'm really happy I can fix this. I don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with it. Thank you. Leave wow, Yes, leave
Speaker 1: me be and to that point, I've also told this
Speaker 1: story before where one time my landlord just tried to
Speaker 1: come in. It was Sunday at eleven, it was Halloween weekends.
Speaker 1: I had a friend. We were in our pajamas and
Speaker 1: he just tried open the door and I had the
Speaker 1: chain on it and he couldn't get in. But he
Speaker 1: didn't announce he was coming. Nothing like that. Turns out
Speaker 1: I am not alone in that at all. I found
Speaker 1: this was from a university newspaper and it was about
Speaker 1: safety when it comes to landlords, and here's a couple
Speaker 1: of quotes from him. We said that it was really
Speaker 1: important to us that he told us when he was
Speaker 1: going to be coming over because we are three young
Speaker 1: women or women adjacent. Peep, it's not appropriate for my
Speaker 1: fifty year old male landlord to be over unannounced, Lee,
Speaker 1: a sophomore, said, Although he agreed, Lee's landlord entered their
Speaker 1: home unannounced on multiple occasions. They noted times when their
Speaker 1: landlord would unlock the door and come into their house
Speaker 1: without knocking or giving notice. He did not allow for
Speaker 1: curtains despite the home's large windows. Lee even found him
Speaker 1: walking around the property with the ability to see through
Speaker 1: the windows.
Speaker 2: Uh uh.
Speaker 1: Now, I think there's a strange thing that happens with
Speaker 1: some landlords where they just see it so much as
Speaker 1: their property that that doesn't matter to them, right, Like
Speaker 1: they can just come in. They can tell you can't
Speaker 1: have curtains, like.
Speaker 2: Which is actually I don't know about the curtains would
Speaker 2: but the whole like just entering that's illegal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I can't imagine in what world you think
Speaker 1: that that's okay.
Speaker 2: I think it's like emergency situations only. Yeah, which if
Speaker 2: it's that bad, you need to victim, Like if you
Speaker 2: have that type of like emergency, think that there's something
Speaker 2: bad happening and the fairy is happening in your home,
Speaker 2: or if you're just being an act or a pervert.
Speaker 1: Right right, or if you think they're dead maybe, But
Speaker 1: that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2: It's a different I think this is where like having
Speaker 2: a dog, it's not a bad thing, it's my dog
Speaker 2: hated my landlord.
Speaker 1: Some people said that, yeah, they brought up having these
Speaker 1: protections for the landlord. It's just such a like the
Speaker 1: power dynamic is very difficult because as you said, like
Speaker 1: you know, a landlord could kick you out at any time,
Speaker 1: and then you're without a place. In theory, they give
Speaker 1: you this period legally guaranteed period, but even that, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's difficult. So you're put in a situation where you
Speaker 1: really don't feel like you can voice things or complain
Speaker 1: too much, or they'll just kick you out.
Speaker 2: Right, okay, like unreasonably raising your rent to kick you out.
Speaker 1: And I do find it interesting the whole point about
Speaker 1: like wanting a couple, because my building has nine I
Speaker 1: believe it's nine apartments in it, and they're they're like
Speaker 1: not small, but they're not big, and there are most
Speaker 1: people are couples in here, and I'm just like, how
Speaker 1: do you live? I mean, I guess, I guess. Sure again,
Speaker 1: I'm very lucky. It's not like it's tiny, but it's
Speaker 1: if y'all had two people in here all the time, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And the fact that it's very clearly like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a more stable couple because you're not gay. It's
Speaker 1: just odd. I can't imagine having kids in here. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I that too, I know, I just I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it. And there's a lot of like this
Speaker 1: is a privately owned building, it has a lot of quirks,
Speaker 1: A lot of them I really like. But it is
Speaker 1: one of those buildings that like I have to give
Speaker 1: you know, oh this the door won't close all the
Speaker 1: way here, and if you need to do that, like
Speaker 1: you know, kind of race.
Speaker 2: The tricky things. Yeah, but then do this.
Speaker 1: But just an old building, I get it, that's okay,
Speaker 1: But I just imagining like a kid in here. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. The partment that I lived in was like
Speaker 2: a quadplex and it is old, old, well love it,
Speaker 2: like I think pre I think in a world World
Speaker 2: War one era type of thing. Was brick and had
Speaker 2: giant like nice little patios or or porches, and it
Speaker 2: was super cute. It had a lot of personality, has
Speaker 2: a lot of history. Like some of the you know,
Speaker 2: fewer ones that I have still remained, but like I
Speaker 2: had when I first moved in, they were just renovating
Speaker 2: all the buildings and the area was up and coming,
Speaker 2: but still kind of, you know, not the greatest in
Speaker 2: some certain parts, as it always goes with gentrification. And
Speaker 2: then but one couple lived in the home and they
Speaker 2: were very sweet. They were very nice to me. However,
Speaker 2: they did have like at first they had a toddler,
Speaker 2: and it was just the in it. They were a
Speaker 2: lesbian couple and they were sweet, and they had the
Speaker 2: baby and she was wonderful. The little girl was the
Speaker 2: cutest in the world. Didn't really hear much of them.
Speaker 2: Everything was fine, and I could I was like, still wow,
Speaker 2: having a child, but toddler reasonable. Then they had uh
Speaker 2: one of the women's daughters move in who also had
Speaker 2: two kids. So they had another couple. And this is
Speaker 2: like technically a two but it's not, y'all. It's like
Speaker 2: a bedroom and then maybe an office and then a
Speaker 2: very small bathroom with no washer, dryer anywhere. I think
Speaker 2: this one had a dishrushers, was the first one to
Speaker 2: have a dishrusher. But they had a five year old
Speaker 2: six year old, a lot of energy, a lot of energy.
Speaker 2: And also the where their house is, it does have
Speaker 2: a small yard, and the back does have a small yard.
Speaker 2: But the amount of fleas and because we had like
Speaker 2: wild cats roaming everywhere, the amount of fleas and bugs,
Speaker 2: like I couldn't go out back there without getting eaten up,
Speaker 2: like it was bad. Peaches would get my dog would
Speaker 2: get fleas every time. And it was just a whole mess,
Speaker 2: and like so the kids were not really getting any play,
Speaker 2: but you could hear them running in their house up
Speaker 2: and down, up and down so loudly that it was
Speaker 2: almost comical. I will say, respect that ten o'clock get stopped,
Speaker 2: but the amount of noise that was happening. Like I
Speaker 2: would come downstairs and there was nothing bad going on,
Speaker 2: but like the kid was trapped in between because we
Speaker 2: had like the security door and then the actual door.
Speaker 2: The kid was drafted in between. When I walked down
Speaker 2: then I was like, what's happened, what's happening? What is happening?
Speaker 2: And it's no like shade to the parents. It literally
Speaker 2: it was like in my head, I'm like, they have
Speaker 2: no place to play. This is such a small place
Speaker 2: that the fact that you had three kids here and
Speaker 2: like they're losing it because they do not have anywhere
Speaker 2: to lose it like get their energy and under that.
Speaker 2: One of them ended up going to like day care
Speaker 2: and she was fine, but it was just like wow,
Speaker 2: but having that kind of space and being in that
Speaker 2: kind of small space where there's nothing soundpre of you here,
Speaker 2: everything and that I did, I did hear everything, but
Speaker 2: like having that just reverberated through the house, But in
Speaker 2: my head, I'm like, man, and unfortunately, like the other
Speaker 2: neighbors were not happy about this and would like they
Speaker 2: got into like arguments about this and there's nothing to
Speaker 2: be helped. But I was like, yeah, I don't understand
Speaker 2: how this works. This can't be ideal. And granted, I
Speaker 2: know like that they in their mind, the landlords were
Speaker 2: probably thinking just that mid you know, couple who just
Speaker 2: got married with new kids or like youngest kids, where
Speaker 2: everything is ideal, and You're like, that's not Are you sure,
Speaker 2: because I don't think that's how that. It's not gonna
Speaker 2: be as pretty as you think it is, especially in
Speaker 2: like I'm not taking care of the front yard if
Speaker 2: I'm having to take care of kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That quote was strange. I was like
Speaker 1: women doing that, that's like kind of against stereotype. All right,
Speaker 1: the gardening, yes, but they're.
Speaker 2: Like loading gardening in their own home right right, Like
Speaker 2: I've had ideas about like, oh, I'm going to make
Speaker 2: this this way, but because the landlords haven't done half
Speaker 2: of what they needed to, like literally haven't mowed the
Speaker 2: grass in three weeks, why would I try to make
Speaker 2: it pretty m M.
Speaker 1: This is your responsibility, right, yep. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of disagreement about, you know,
Speaker 1: what they should do, but also them just trying to
Speaker 1: skirt the what they can get away with.
Speaker 2: Right, the least that they have to do to get
Speaker 2: their money. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The power again, that power dynamic of like, well I
Speaker 1: wanted this place to live, so oh yeah, Well we'll
Speaker 1: definitely come back to this one because it is a
Speaker 1: big conversation right now, just living spaces in general, but
Speaker 1: also just living but renting that whole situation. So listeners,
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts about that or anything you
Speaker 1: in particular would like to hear us talk about, you
Speaker 1: can email us at Stephanie Momstuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
Speaker 1: or in Instagram and TikTok at stuff One Never Told You.
Speaker 1: We have a tea public story, and we have a
Speaker 1: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always too, our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya,
Speaker 1: and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
Speaker 1: for listening. Stuff I Never Told You is production by
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