Residents Say and Do The Darnedest Things 

• During a tour of my first move-out, I found a very pretty and quite healthy plant left behind. I took the plant and put it on my desk near the front window of our office. When our maintenance technician and manager walked in, they almost fell over with laughter, asking where in the world did I get that “pretty plant.” It turns out it was a two-foot tall marijuana plant. Needless to say, I immediately removed it from our office.
  
• A resident in an apartment with beige carpeting decid­­ed that the bathtub was the place to disassemble his automobile engine. As he carried pieces in and out of the bathroom, oil leaked onto the carpet throughout the entire apartment.
  
• A young couple and their children applying for an apartment listed their “current address” as that of a community that a friend of mine—who I met through a CAM class—managed. So, when calling that manager for a reference, I learned that this family was squatting in an empty apartment that had just been discovered that morning. It pays to know fellow managers in your area! 
  
• At one community where I worked, an immigrant family lived in one of the upstairs apartments. When they moved out, our manager went to do his walk-through and returned gagging and with a face as white as a sheet. This family, who had been living in the apartment for about a year, was not accustomed to using a toilet and used the bathtub instead.

Carole S. Gaddis, CAPS
Property Manager
Calais Park Apartment Homes
St. Petersburg, Fla.

• One of our residents lived with two caged birds. He must have been a big bird lover because we discovered that he had turned his apartment into a bird sanctuary by cutting the drywall out between the wall studs to create nesting areas. The entire apartment was full of flying birds—and their horrible droppings!
  
• One of our residents was convinced that our apartment building was built on a Native American burial ground. She said that ghosts of Native Americans roamed her apartment at night, so the resident constructed a system of strings and bells to try and trap them.
  
• Two elderly women who lived above/below each other once came into my office to sort out an ongoing noise problem. While trying to act as a mediator, I watched one of them slam the other one over the head with her purse! Our courtesy officer happened to enter the office at that time and had to help me separate the two women—both of whom were using language I didn’t think even a senior citizen would know!
  
• A previous manager typed up a resident’s lease renewal, signed it and put it on his door for him to sign and return. The resident inserted the renewal lease into his typewriter and typed the most amazing lease provisions onto it. His rewrites entitled him to have a pet without paying a deposit, to terminate early without penalty, etc. And he even discounted the amount of rent he’d be required to pay. When we took the resident to court, he won because he had a signed copy and we didn’t.
  
• A man claimed that every time his landline rang, someone upstairs answered it. He was convinced that the people upstairs were spying on him and monitoring his phone calls.

Christie Sanchez
Community Manager
Canterbury House Apartments
Dyer, Ind.

• When I worked at a senior housing community, I placed an ad in the local newspaper that said, “Affordable Housing for Seniors!” A few days later, a young gentleman called about my ad. He told me he was a senior in high school who was graduating in May and wanted to know more about the apartment.
  
• I had a resident call to ask me to put the leaves back on the trees near her apartment because she didn’t like the way the trees looked when they were bare. I had to explain to her I could not do that, but that the leaves would be back in a few months.

Stephanie Floyd
Leasing Consultant
Copperfield Apartments
San Antonio, Texas

• My manager leased an apartment to a woman in her mid-40s who was moving from another state. Everything seemed fine until she told us that she was in the witness protection program. I laughed because if you are in that program, someone will lease an apartment on your behalf to protect your anonymity. Later, this same resident called the police, fire department and HAZMAT team after our maintenance staff resurfaced her counter tops because she thought the new surface was poisonous. She told the team that the surface made her dog become unconscious, but that she was able to revive him. She also wore a gas mask and kept a machete by her front door.

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