The Rules They Don't Follow

Condo Living - Part I

I live in a condo complex. If you view the sales and rental listings for the complex, you’ll see the real estate agents list this place as “Luxury Living”. This is a misnomer. It is NOT luxury living. I can’t go into all that makes that not true but I’ve got some strange and funny things that happen that I will be posting.

Before you ever move into my condo complex, you are given a list of the Rules and Regulations. As a renter, they are shown on the screen before you fill out their Tenant Evaluation. You must fill out all the pertinent information. When I filled it out, they wanted an email address for each person who was going to be living here. My Mother is elderly and doesn’t use computers. So I tried to leave her email address blank. It wouldn’t take it. So I put my email address in, since she didn’t have one. It didn’t work. It didn’t like that I used my email address. So I had to go create a free email account for her just to allow me to fill out the rest of the form. After we were approved, I went out and deleted her email address. No need for it.

Skateboarding

Photo by Chikilino on Pixabay

The first rule on the sheet says, “Absolutely no skateboard use.” The first couple of days after we moved in, I saw a kid skateboarding. Another time, the same kid skateboarded right by our maintenance man. He did nothing. He knows the rules. In the five years we have been here, I have seen countless skateboarders with no one stopping them.

Why don’t they ever enforce this?

Cars Parked Without A Sticker

About a year ago, they instituted a new initiative. Each resident who has a car must have a sticker to signify they live in the condo complex. You are allotted two plastic placards for your visitors. They must put it on their dash or rear-view mirror. The sticker has the four digit initials of the condo complex and a number. The visitor’s placard has the same thing. You can also use the visitor’s placard for your extra cars.

Recently, our maintenance man put a ticket on a car that was backed into a spot and hadn’t moved in a few weeks. The car in question had no sticker or placard. He put the ticket on the front windshield that states that the car will be towed at the owner’s expense if it is not moved within twenty-four hours. He also took a photo of the license plate. There is a sign when you enter our complex that tells people about who the towing company is. I’m sure they thought that would deter people. Seventy-two hours later, the car still didn’t have the proper sticker. They didn’t tow it like they said they would. Outcome: A few days later, the car had the proper condo sticker on it.

There is another car that doesn’t have a sticker. It is a resident who has a garage but parks their car frequently in front our building and on the side of the building. I have seen the car several times during my walks. It has never been ticketed or anything. They just let that one go. I don’t understand why only certain people get cited.

No Abandoned Vehicles On Property

Back when they didn’t have stickers, we had two obviously abandoned vehicles.

First Problem Car

The car was parking at the end of the aisle right next to the garages. It was a tan Trans-Am from the eighties. It was there when we moved here in 2017. It was rusted. It had a license plate with a current registration sticker. I walked by it many times while I was on my walks. The car never moved. The owner only came to the car twice; once to add the new registration sticker on the license plate and one other time to show someone the car.

The maintenance man drove his golf cart by the car every day. Finally, he stopped and started looking at the car. He went to the front and tried to lift the hood. I guess it was so rusted that it opened. He would look underneath the car. He even tried the door handles. It sat there for at least 11 months before any action was taken. And not the action you might expect.

This is where it gets complicated.

In March 2018, the complex was getting the asphalt re-done. They were going to spray a black liquid over the parking lot. This was called sealing the pavement. The whole process would take several days to finish as the liquid was going to take several days to dry. Then they would do the re-striping of the parking spaces.

At the time, there were only the four condo buildings on the premises. Later, they would add an apartment complex (later story). So there were several open areas where people could park their cars to get them out of the way for the re-sealing. Some of those spots were a long distance away from the buildings. That’s why they would only do small sections so you could park in front of one of the other buildings if there was room. If there wasn’t room, you would have to park over in the vacant areas where there were overgrown weeds. The parking lot there was still viable. Or you could park in the vacant area east of the clubhouse.

The day of the spraying of the liquid came. The Trans-Am was still parked in the parking lot. The association manager came over to the car along with the maintenance man. The owner of the car was there too. Apparently, he couldn’t get the car started. The association manager had put a note on all the doors, weeks in advance, that any car left out there would be towed if it wasn’t moved.

The maintenance man left and came back with his vehicle. They were able to get the Trans-Am backed up. Then the maintenance man put some kind of harness around the front of the Trans-Am and on the back of his vehicle. Slowly, he towed the car down the street. Eventually, he got it to the vacant parking area east of the clubhouse. I say slowly because he had to stop several times. Outcome: The car sat over in the vacant area for a long time. You’ll hear what happened to it in another story. It’s too long to post here.

Other Problems during the Asphalt Resealing

So we were done with the mayhem right? Nope.

There was an older gentleman who had a silver car. He parked in the handicap spot in the front of the building on the other side of where I’m at. His car had not moved by the time you were supposed to. The next thing I know, they are towing his car. I don’t know if they couldn’t get him to come to the door or what. On a side note: one time, I saw the police pull him over. He pulled right into the handicap spot he always parked in. He got out of the car and started to go up to the sidewalk. The police officer came up to him and stopped him. I believe the police gave him a verbal warning because after he talked briefly to him, the officer was back in his car and left. But there was a problem. I noticed the gentleman still had his lights on. What had happened was, he still had his car running. He left it running for over one hour. I didn’t know where he lived or else I would have gone and told him. Eventually, someone told him about it because when I looked out later, the car was turned off and the lights were off.

Now, the most incredibly stupid thing to happen. That’s a strong word to use but once you hear what I have to say, you’ll think the same thing. So the parking lot is now clear. There are no cars anywhere in site. Completely empty in front of our building. Completely empty in the carports. Completely empty all the way down the road. There were no cars. Absolutely none. You get the picture.

This guy who lives in one of the condos drives his car down toward our building. He pulls into one of the spots in front of the building and parks. He gets out of the car and starts walking down the sidewalk to his condo. The workers have to tell him that he can’t park there and to go around the corner and park. I couldn’t believe it. There are no cars anywhere and he parks there. How stupid can you be? He got the sheet of paper on his door just like the rest of us. What was he thinking? I call him the Brazilian Guy because he was wearing a shirt once that said Brazil. This isn’t the only time he did something stupid. You’ll hear about him again in another story.

Back to the Abandoned Cars

The second car was a blue SUV. It had a license plate from Kansas. It used to be driven by a man in his fifties. He had white hair and always carried some kind of fanny pack draped over his shoulder. He was a smoker. He was always on the second floor smoking. I had seen him there when I walked down the stairs once. He would look out at the golf course in the rear of the building. Sometimes he smoked in the front of the building. I would see him traverse over to the carport area and smoke away.

Suddenly, the car sat there and didn’t move. I didn’t pick up what was happening until one day I saw him driving another car. That car was driven by an elderly woman. I believe that was his mother. Now he was driving her car. Other times, she would drive her car too. But then, he was the only one driving her car. And the blue SUV sat with no one driving it. I wondered how long it would sit there until they did something about it. It sat for months. In fact, I think it sat there for at least 9 months. Our condo complex does not allow solicitors but somehow some got through. There were now fliers on the front windshield. The guy would drive by in the other car and never take the fliers off. So he wasn’t even paying attention to his car anymore. A month or two later, he finally came and removed the fliers. He opened the car door and threw them into the car. But he didn’t move it. One day I saw him out at the car with the maintenance man. He was finally told to get rid of the car. There was a tow truck that came to get the car. Could you tell that the car had been there a long time? Yes. The car tires had made a mark on the pavement from all four wheels being on the pavement so long. Just think of it. The extreme heat that we endure on a daily basis here in Florida baking the rubber into the pavement. This was after they had done that nice resealing. Basically, by leaving his car there abandoned, he destroyed that parking space.

Other Resealing Issues

The resealing was supposed to take two days to dry. You couldn’t walk on it until they told you to. They had cones and crime scene tape set up all over the place. You were told to stay behind the barriers. Do you think that happened? No. Beyond the garages and carports on our street is another street and garages and carports. To get over to our building, you were supposed to walk down the street and around the garages and then back up the street and walk in front of the cul-de-sac. People didn’t follow that and they stepped over the barriers and onto the pavement. This caused them to get black all over their shoes and they tracked it all over the place including into their condos. The correct way was to follow the directions on the sheet of paper that we all got. I followed it with no problem. I didn’t get black on anything. But some of these people in here don’t follow directions very well.

You could really tell they didn’t follow instructions when the sidewalks and inside the building had black marks all over the place. Even over at the mailbox kiosk, there were black prints all over. I had to be careful not to get anything on me. That’s how bad it was.

Conclusion

I know that was a very long story but I could probably write a book about this whole place. I subtitled this “Condo Living – Part I” because there is so much information. I’ll be expanding on everything else in later posts.

Until next time, happy reading.

-Matt