Are his eyes blinded by the shades? Wayne Whitney's window blinds at his 16 Benson Street, Albany rental property

Apartment Repair Fails: or My Idiot Landlord

Adventures in Slum Living

Episode Number Two : Broken Window Shades  

In my last blog post, I explained how I had come to rent an apartment from a man named Wayne Whitney, a man who despite refusal to fix his apartments and a willingness to use harassment and intimidation to threaten his tenants into not asking him to fix things, does not like to be called a "slumlord." As stated Wayne Whitney and I had a verbal agreement where he would give me supplies to fix an apartment of his should I live in it. This sounded win-win to me, then he rescinded and refused the supplies. He also refused to fix the apartment himself despite countless problems. 

In the most recent blog post, I showed pictures of the door knobs in his apartment at 16 Benson Street. In this one I focus on window blinds. 

There are seven windows in the apartment, six exterior windows and one interior window. One would hope they all had decent window blinds. Do they? Let's check and count. 

Here are some more photos of the blinds in one of Wayne Whitney's apartment at 16 Benson Street. 

These are my bedroom window blinds. These came with the apartment. Wayne Whitney, a man who does not like to be called a "slumlord," yet consistently refuses to fix things in the apartment and has sought to intimidate me into not complaining about the shoddy state of his shit-hole apartment, insists there is nothing wrong with this apartment. Apparently he thinks window blinds should look like this and are manufactured with holes and broken slats.

Here we have the kitchen window blinds. Notice how one slat is clearly broken. This is how it was when I moved in. It has not been fixed. The landlord, Wayne Whitney, assures me, when asked to fix things in the apartment that  "There is nothing wrong with it." 

Here are the living room windows. You will see that there are two windows, yet just one blind. Again, ask Wayne Whitney if he thinks this is how quality landlords maintain their apartments. But don't call him a "slumlord." He doesn't like it. 

The bathroom blind, not too terrible, but I'll share a series of photos of the rest of the bathroom at some future date,

This is the interior window blind. It goes from the interior of the apartment to what was once a back porch. Being the least used window blind in the apartment, it;s not surprising that it seems to be in good condition, although the holders for it could be improved. 

These are the window blinds in the former back porch of 16 Benson Street, an apartment owned by Wayne Whitney, a man who does not like to be called a "slumlord" but nevertheless refuses to fix his apartments while intimidating tenants who seek repairs. By the way, you will not the miscoloration of the walls. When I moved in there were several nail holes in the walls. Per the verbal agreement that existed between Wayne and I, I started to fill them with spackling compound, not the garbage spackling compound that Wayne had provided, but the good stuff. His stuff was worse than nothing if you wanted things to look good. Wayne has never shown the ability to be a competent repairman or even to judge competent repairs in my presence. He then refused to provide paint so my walls have the strange blotches of unpainted spackling compound on them, making the place look like a slum.

OKAY, so heres the final tally. We have eight windows, Of these seven have shades and one is completely missing. Of the seven that are there, two are pieces of crap, which leaves five that are suitable for ordinary use by ordinary people. OKAY, so the score is 67.5% of the window shades pass inspection. If this were a high school class, Wayne Whitney might get a D if the teacher wanted to pass him and he behaved well.