Dissipation
Mar. 2nd, 2005 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaOkay, so I had intended to do a write-up yesterday night about my weekend, but was so wiped out when I got home (after being up pretty much nonstop since about 10:00 Monday morning) that I slept, more or less, through the entire evening. I say more or less because I apparently, in my sleep-deprived, weakened-immune-system state, contracted some sort of bug that caused me to need to get up every few hours, and I'll just leave it at that. So I took a sick day today since it was still making life very unpleasant for me about the time that I would have had to leave for work, and am feeling much better rested now.
So I fully intended to do the weekend write up tonight, but then I rememebered that there was this big town hall meeting for those of us being evicted at the end of May due to the renovations that are being performed on the apartment complex. I went because I have a few questions pertaining to that whole thing, e.g. can I get out of my lease a month earlier since I have a potential roommate lined up who is looking to move at the end of June? The answer, by the way, is apparently "no," I can only leave on the day that they pick for me. Gotta love a caring, sympathetic apartment company. Which is what this post is going to be about, and then the one about the weekend, I promise :)
Therefore, let it be known that I am looking for potential roomies--preferably near metro stations since I do not have a car--who would be interested in having someone move in towards the end of May. ;) I've got a couple of potential people already, but one wants me to move a month earlier and so that may not pan out, and one lives kind of far from the metro. Hehe, alternatively, is anyone out there looking to sell a car for cheap ($1-2k)? ;)
Now, to get to the actual reason I'm writing this post: There were a LOT of angry people at this meeting, and I figure that this is a decent place for me to try to get some of that out of my system; I feel tainted by it :-p
I mentioned above that you "gotta love a caring, sympathetic apartment company." I was being sarcastic at the time, but I've checked my lease and, while I'm no lawyer, I don't see any obligation on their behalf to accomodate my desire to get out a month early. I might be able to get out with a fee, but I have no idea what that fee would be--will be trying to find the answer to that question tomorrow. In the meantime, however, it looks to me like they have not done anything that they said they would not do, or failed to do anything that they said they would. So really, I have no grudge against them. It would be nice if I could have that extra time, or if I could switch to a month-to-month lease, or if I could rent a different apartment in one of the other buildings at the same rate that my current rent is at, but they are not obligated to do any of that for me. That's cool. It sort of sucks, but I'm a rolling stone anyway, and I actually did read my lease before I signed it and didn't have a problem with it.
In some ways this is actually a nice thing for me, because it means I'll be changing my life again. I've had trouble settling in here. Not as much trouble as I've had in the past places I lived in here in DC, but still, this doesn't feel like "home" to me. I think that in some ways, "home" is what you make it, but if that is the case then there is a part of me that's saying, "No. This is nice, and I like what I have here, but this is not where I am going to settle down." And then I start to get restless after six months or a year and I am ready to say, "Okay, I gave that place a fair try and it didn't work out. Maybe over in this area will be better for me."
However, all that is dancing around what I actually wanted to talk about in this post: the amount of hatred in the lobby when I got to the meeting. It was packed wall to wall when I got down there, and there was some sort of ruckus going on about how there were supposed to be handouts provided but nobody got any. Ouch. Apparently there had been a massive miscommunication on AIMCO's part (they're the company that owns Riverside Park), because the paper that they had distributed to us said that it would be an opportunity for us to voice our concerns and get our questions answered. The people that were there from AIMCO, however, had a presentation lined up about what the changes and expansions and improvements were all going to be.
Pop quiz, class! Multiple choice: You are facing a packed room of people that you are evicting so that you can build this wonderful new apartment community and you want to give them a presentation about all the great things that you're doing and most of them won't be here to appreciate because they all had to move out so you could do your renovations. If you get five or six belligerent questions about what you are doing to help cover the moving costs for people who four months isn't enough time to save that much money, or how much the new rent is going to cost, or since this has obviously been in the works for a year or more why didn't you give us more advance notice, do you:
A) Stop the presentation and address their questions in as straightforward a manner as possible
B) Stop the presentation and do your best to evade their questions with half answers or moving onto the next person instead of answering
C) Insist that you came here with a presentation and you're going to stick with it, then move on to talking about the wonderful new clubhouse and fitness center that you will be building
D) Run for cover
My thoughts on the subject are that the correct answer would be A. They decided that C was the wisest course to take and did their best to brush aside the questions and move on with the presentation. However, there's only so much that you can do when you've got a hundred people ranging from irritated to full out angry on your hands. Apparently they didn't realize that fury has such a strong tendency to replace manners, and that if you try to keep giving a presentation under such circumstances you will keep getting interrupted with questions that are irrelevant to your presentation and full relevant to whatever it is that these people are pissed off about.
Once they finally grasped that C was not going to work, they switched to the brilliant B strategy and I got an interesting phenomenon confirmed for me: The more time people have to build up their anger (about a month or so in this case), the lower their tolerance for bullshit drops and the more they feel you are trying to bullshit or evade them, the more pissed they get. I felt kind of sorry for the guys up front, actually. There they were, with all their sales training and conditioning telling them, "If you tell them that they can't go to month-to-month leases, or that they can't leave before their lease termination date, or that you're not giving them compensation for kicking them out, they are going to get even more pissed and either leave as soon as possible or they are going to cause even more trouble, bring lawsuits, etc. which even though they might not win, it will still look bad for you." The reality is, as I see it, if you tell people they have to move out in four months so you can renovate their apartment into a more expensive one, they're not going to be happy. That's pretty much a fact, especially when some of them have lived in the same apartment for twenty or thirty years. Now, I am not a communication expert. I am not a relationship expert. I hate management positions. Despite all that, I feel that I can say with a fair degree of confidence that when something like this happens the best course of action is to deal with it. Work with the people that you're displacing. Help them find new homes. Help cover relocation costs. Be flexible with them with regards to move out dates. As far as I can tell, that's the best way to minimize hurt feelings. Yes, it will probably cut into your profits, and that's where things get tricky.
You have to ask yourself a lot of questions: How much do I value these residents' goodwill? How much of a profit cut am I willing to take for them? How much of a profit cut will it really be if I help them out through method X, method Y, method Z? The bottom line, the optimization problem, at least for a company like AIMCO, seems to be this: how do I maximize my profits? That seems reasonable. That's what it seems American culture is all about these days. They have stockholders to whom they have to answer. (I don't personally agree with that attitude, by the way, but I can understand why they have it). So, is it best for the bottom line, overall, to kick people out by only giving them notice 120 days before they have to leave (the bare minimum required by VA state law, apparently) and not provide any compensation or flexibility about it? You're likely to lose a lot of residents in the sense that they'll be so upset about the whole thing that they'll simply take up residence elsewhere. You may also lose potential residents because your current residents tell them bad things about what you did, kicking people out with only 4 month notice and not providing any compensation for them. On the other hand, if you do provide compensation, then the people who are being displaced are more likely to simply move to a different building while theirs is under renovation, and then move back once it is completed. They're also more likely to tell their friends or people who might be looking for a place to live how great you were about working with them when you renovated--even if they move away, they're likely to be more positive about you when telling their friends if you help them out.
Bottom line, then I'm done: I think they're making a lot of bad PR decisions in responding--or failing to respond--to resident complaints and issues with this eviction. However, I think that many of the residents are being unreasonable as well. After all, they all signed leases too. They all agreed to the same things that I agreed to. If this caught them by surprise, it is partially their own fault for not taking more responsibility for finding out what AIMCO is obligated to do if they plan to renovate the apartments and planning accordingly. It seems to me, anyway, that if your landlord can terminate your lease with 120 days notice then it only makes sense to have a plan and resources in place for that scenario. That, or find a new place that they can't or won't do that. While I think that AIMCO could be doing a better job of dealing with this, and I do feel for the people that aren't prepared to make such a move, and I know that their anger is probably from fear of not knowing how to deal with this situation, I do not agree with or support that anger.
Whew, glad I got that out. That feels much better :)
So I fully intended to do the weekend write up tonight, but then I rememebered that there was this big town hall meeting for those of us being evicted at the end of May due to the renovations that are being performed on the apartment complex. I went because I have a few questions pertaining to that whole thing, e.g. can I get out of my lease a month earlier since I have a potential roommate lined up who is looking to move at the end of June? The answer, by the way, is apparently "no," I can only leave on the day that they pick for me. Gotta love a caring, sympathetic apartment company. Which is what this post is going to be about, and then the one about the weekend, I promise :)
Therefore, let it be known that I am looking for potential roomies--preferably near metro stations since I do not have a car--who would be interested in having someone move in towards the end of May. ;) I've got a couple of potential people already, but one wants me to move a month earlier and so that may not pan out, and one lives kind of far from the metro. Hehe, alternatively, is anyone out there looking to sell a car for cheap ($1-2k)? ;)
Now, to get to the actual reason I'm writing this post: There were a LOT of angry people at this meeting, and I figure that this is a decent place for me to try to get some of that out of my system; I feel tainted by it :-p
I mentioned above that you "gotta love a caring, sympathetic apartment company." I was being sarcastic at the time, but I've checked my lease and, while I'm no lawyer, I don't see any obligation on their behalf to accomodate my desire to get out a month early. I might be able to get out with a fee, but I have no idea what that fee would be--will be trying to find the answer to that question tomorrow. In the meantime, however, it looks to me like they have not done anything that they said they would not do, or failed to do anything that they said they would. So really, I have no grudge against them. It would be nice if I could have that extra time, or if I could switch to a month-to-month lease, or if I could rent a different apartment in one of the other buildings at the same rate that my current rent is at, but they are not obligated to do any of that for me. That's cool. It sort of sucks, but I'm a rolling stone anyway, and I actually did read my lease before I signed it and didn't have a problem with it.
In some ways this is actually a nice thing for me, because it means I'll be changing my life again. I've had trouble settling in here. Not as much trouble as I've had in the past places I lived in here in DC, but still, this doesn't feel like "home" to me. I think that in some ways, "home" is what you make it, but if that is the case then there is a part of me that's saying, "No. This is nice, and I like what I have here, but this is not where I am going to settle down." And then I start to get restless after six months or a year and I am ready to say, "Okay, I gave that place a fair try and it didn't work out. Maybe over in this area will be better for me."
However, all that is dancing around what I actually wanted to talk about in this post: the amount of hatred in the lobby when I got to the meeting. It was packed wall to wall when I got down there, and there was some sort of ruckus going on about how there were supposed to be handouts provided but nobody got any. Ouch. Apparently there had been a massive miscommunication on AIMCO's part (they're the company that owns Riverside Park), because the paper that they had distributed to us said that it would be an opportunity for us to voice our concerns and get our questions answered. The people that were there from AIMCO, however, had a presentation lined up about what the changes and expansions and improvements were all going to be.
Pop quiz, class! Multiple choice: You are facing a packed room of people that you are evicting so that you can build this wonderful new apartment community and you want to give them a presentation about all the great things that you're doing and most of them won't be here to appreciate because they all had to move out so you could do your renovations. If you get five or six belligerent questions about what you are doing to help cover the moving costs for people who four months isn't enough time to save that much money, or how much the new rent is going to cost, or since this has obviously been in the works for a year or more why didn't you give us more advance notice, do you:
A) Stop the presentation and address their questions in as straightforward a manner as possible
B) Stop the presentation and do your best to evade their questions with half answers or moving onto the next person instead of answering
C) Insist that you came here with a presentation and you're going to stick with it, then move on to talking about the wonderful new clubhouse and fitness center that you will be building
D) Run for cover
My thoughts on the subject are that the correct answer would be A. They decided that C was the wisest course to take and did their best to brush aside the questions and move on with the presentation. However, there's only so much that you can do when you've got a hundred people ranging from irritated to full out angry on your hands. Apparently they didn't realize that fury has such a strong tendency to replace manners, and that if you try to keep giving a presentation under such circumstances you will keep getting interrupted with questions that are irrelevant to your presentation and full relevant to whatever it is that these people are pissed off about.
Once they finally grasped that C was not going to work, they switched to the brilliant B strategy and I got an interesting phenomenon confirmed for me: The more time people have to build up their anger (about a month or so in this case), the lower their tolerance for bullshit drops and the more they feel you are trying to bullshit or evade them, the more pissed they get. I felt kind of sorry for the guys up front, actually. There they were, with all their sales training and conditioning telling them, "If you tell them that they can't go to month-to-month leases, or that they can't leave before their lease termination date, or that you're not giving them compensation for kicking them out, they are going to get even more pissed and either leave as soon as possible or they are going to cause even more trouble, bring lawsuits, etc. which even though they might not win, it will still look bad for you." The reality is, as I see it, if you tell people they have to move out in four months so you can renovate their apartment into a more expensive one, they're not going to be happy. That's pretty much a fact, especially when some of them have lived in the same apartment for twenty or thirty years. Now, I am not a communication expert. I am not a relationship expert. I hate management positions. Despite all that, I feel that I can say with a fair degree of confidence that when something like this happens the best course of action is to deal with it. Work with the people that you're displacing. Help them find new homes. Help cover relocation costs. Be flexible with them with regards to move out dates. As far as I can tell, that's the best way to minimize hurt feelings. Yes, it will probably cut into your profits, and that's where things get tricky.
You have to ask yourself a lot of questions: How much do I value these residents' goodwill? How much of a profit cut am I willing to take for them? How much of a profit cut will it really be if I help them out through method X, method Y, method Z? The bottom line, the optimization problem, at least for a company like AIMCO, seems to be this: how do I maximize my profits? That seems reasonable. That's what it seems American culture is all about these days. They have stockholders to whom they have to answer. (I don't personally agree with that attitude, by the way, but I can understand why they have it). So, is it best for the bottom line, overall, to kick people out by only giving them notice 120 days before they have to leave (the bare minimum required by VA state law, apparently) and not provide any compensation or flexibility about it? You're likely to lose a lot of residents in the sense that they'll be so upset about the whole thing that they'll simply take up residence elsewhere. You may also lose potential residents because your current residents tell them bad things about what you did, kicking people out with only 4 month notice and not providing any compensation for them. On the other hand, if you do provide compensation, then the people who are being displaced are more likely to simply move to a different building while theirs is under renovation, and then move back once it is completed. They're also more likely to tell their friends or people who might be looking for a place to live how great you were about working with them when you renovated--even if they move away, they're likely to be more positive about you when telling their friends if you help them out.
Bottom line, then I'm done: I think they're making a lot of bad PR decisions in responding--or failing to respond--to resident complaints and issues with this eviction. However, I think that many of the residents are being unreasonable as well. After all, they all signed leases too. They all agreed to the same things that I agreed to. If this caught them by surprise, it is partially their own fault for not taking more responsibility for finding out what AIMCO is obligated to do if they plan to renovate the apartments and planning accordingly. It seems to me, anyway, that if your landlord can terminate your lease with 120 days notice then it only makes sense to have a plan and resources in place for that scenario. That, or find a new place that they can't or won't do that. While I think that AIMCO could be doing a better job of dealing with this, and I do feel for the people that aren't prepared to make such a move, and I know that their anger is probably from fear of not knowing how to deal with this situation, I do not agree with or support that anger.
Whew, glad I got that out. That feels much better :)
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-02 10:40 pm (UTC)P.S. No matter what the lease says they can't really FORCE you to live there... just to pay rent...
P.P.S. if you really want to get out 1 month early just do this...
1) Find a 3rd party appropriate to the following task (I'd reccomend a law student)
2) Have said person write an angry letter with a lot of legal terms and threaten ACME (yes I know that's not their real name) with "legal action" if they do not release you from your lease one month early.
3) Place said letter on Official looking letterhead
4) Make sure that said letter does everything, short of lying, to look like somthing made by a lawfirm (one of the reasons a 3rd party help with the effectiveness of this particular task.
This works more oftin than you actually think.