By Josh Carroll
The past few years, I went from being a married homeowner to a divorced apartment-dweller—the tired old story all too familiar to you fans of George Jones. During this time, I’ve had two landlords and they couldn’t be more different, but they agree on one thing: I am a hell of a great tenant. Not only do I pay my rent on time, I seem to have a natural empathy for their position, a genuine understanding of what it’s like to be (in the case of my first landlord) a guy who rents a place so rundown that everything has been repaired once and broken twice, and also what it means to be (in the case of my current landlord) a guy who rents a nice place to nice people.
I come by this empathy honestly. See, I used to be a landlord in Tucson. My grandmother and her sister-in-law bought these adorable little bungalows back in the ‘60s, a motor court of 10 tiny buildings arranged in a circle around a concrete fountain. They were built in 1910 and originally came fully equipped with cutlery, linen and even a maid.
By the time my grandma owned them, they had slid into serious disrepair—what we jokingly called “tenant improvements” that included terrifying modifications of wiring and plumbing, innovative uses of paint and even, in one dreadful case, the addition of a partial room. Granny’s idea of maintenance was to ignore everything, so by the time I came on the scene the houses were teetering on the brink of collapse.
There was one benefit to the lack of maintenance, namely the accrual of a fair amount of money in the kitty despite the low rents. My grandmother loved artists and was famous around Tucson for being a soft touch, so all variety of deadbeat ne’er-do-well tenants were the standard. Rents would sometimes go unpaid for months, and the sweet little old lady just let them right on living in their tenant-improved hovels.
This all went on until the new sheriff came to town—Sheriff Me. The dick. The tyrant.
See, I loved these little buildings. They were unique in Tucson and one of the only bungalow courts left in the U.S. Around 1920, these places were as common as dirt and you’d see them everywhere: 10 or 12 Arts and Crafts bungalows grouped together, often ordered in kits from Sears, so they’re sometimes referred to as Craftsman houses. The ‘50s and ‘60s were cruel to these places, and almost all of them were torn down. I felt ferociously protective of these remaining bungalows, plus I was angry that these folks were taking advantage of my grandma. I launched a strategy.
First up was the introduction of a novel concept: the one-year lease. Granny had a breezy style, with business conducted over cookies and tea in her kitchen. She came from the sort of fallen gentry where it is deemed impolite to discuss money, so the idea of rent was encouraged, but no more than that. Tenants would move in and out, and sometimes she would have no idea the names of the actual occupants. The bungalows were close to downtown and convenient to the University of Arizona, as well as several of the shadier bus lines, so full occupancy was the norm. Every so often, somebody would come by with a post-dated check or an incomplete sum accompanied by receipts from some improvement they had done that month. My great-aunt, Granny’s business partner, had once been very good about keeping books but had been afflicted with creeping Alzheimer’s and now had no idea of the state of things.
Suffice it to say, accounting was a mess. I remember looking at the disaster that was her record books and balance sheets, appalled at the inaccuracies of dates, amounts and even people involved. Weirdly, there was a pretty good balance in the bank, a balance that greatly exceeded what the check register showed.
So I talked to Granny and drew up a standard lease for a standard amount per month, payable on the first. I raised the rents by 25 bucks a month, but they were still far lower than average for the time. I did not demand deposits, back rent or any of the other things Granny was owed in common fairness. But Jesus, you should have heard the uproar. Excuses, demands, threats and even, in one sorry example, a plea for clemency based on character. I stood firm, told them to sign on the line and pay on the first. No exceptions. And then the fun started.
You see, these places were just about to fall down. I went around with a buddy of mine, a contractor who specialized in historic preservation. We dug around in the cellars, looked at the floors and windows, checked the wiring. What we found was chilling. In one of the bungalows, the original knob-and-tube wiring had been tapped to install more outlets. They had botched it every step of the way, too.
Knob and tube, if you haven’t seen it, is where you have these twin fabric-wrapped copper wires that run parallel to one another, separated by non-conductive porcelain knobs two feet apart. It was cutting-edge technology for 1910, and remains safe so long as you don’t cut into it. Once you slice open the fabric, as this tenant had done in their attempt to “modernize,” the old thread just unravels like a sweater, exposing the live copper wires beneath. These tenants had been hanging their winter coats from these live wires on metal hangers. But the worst part was that somebody had replaced the two 10-amp fuses with enormous solid metal fuses designed for mining machinery. It was a fire waiting to happen, and it wasn’t the worst we saw.
Though we had some money, it wasn’t endless. We needed to budget, so we worked out a repair triage to fix things in the following order:
Things that should have long ago destroyed the houses (mostly wiring)
Things that were actively destroying the houses (termites, roof leaks and plumbing)
Things that would soon destroy the houses (everything else)
The tenants were now prohibited from improving their houses. In the past, they had been allowed free rein resulting in such things as the “sculpture garden” kitchen, the plywood waterbed platform screwed through the oak floor, the guy who painted his windows black so he could sleep during the day and so on. All that was over. We expected an exodus, but it was more like the slow leak of a tire with a nail in it. We didn’t need to evict anyone, but there were some heated discussions about consequences that usually involved me saying “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for hustling a little old lady?” or something similar.
In the end, it was worth it. The tenants were better, my grandmother and aunt had steady income and, best of all, the Hinchcliffe Court in Tucson is still standing today despite the tenants’ “improvements.”
My lessons from Tucson are ones I take to heart. I never improve anything in my rented house.
Josh Carroll came to Iowa City because his wife wanted to go to the Workshop. When she graduated, she divorced him and he’s been here ever since. He does illustrations for this magazine and wrote The Englert Theater: an Illustrated Century. He’s working on a novel about a WWII bombardier. joshcarrollcomics.com
