(no subject)

[eye_of_a_cat]

Landlords now rearranging furniture. My desk is being moved to somewhere it won't get all that nice natural light, and my bookshelves are being taken down and emptied so they can also be moved elsewhere. I got told about this while on my way out of the door this morning. By tonight, me and my mutilated geranium will be sitting in some dank corner muttering quietly to each other.

At what point can I stop being irrationally annoyed in a funny way, and move on to being genuinely pissed off?

Comments

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I was going to say. [NB - based on experience with English letting contracts: check if you're going to use it] Legally, they're supposed to give you at least 24hrs notice before they arrive on the premises. I can imagine that it might be difficult to say exactly that, as they're also your housemate's parents, but 24hrs notice of any specific landlord-y activity is more than reasonable. The law does stress that it is your home, and I think student landlords tend to forget that, as many students continue to see their parents' house as 'home'. However, that doesn't change their obligations to allow you to live in peace. They own the building (and maybe the furniture) but they have explicitly allowed you the use of it, for money. This applies also to complaints about 'messiness' - they should not technically be able to see it without notice. Unless they have asked you, for good reason, to put certain furniture in certain places, it should be entirely between you and your housemate unless you damage something.

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the 24-hour notice period is the same here. And if they're going to seriously rearrange anything, for any reason, I'd appreciate all the notice they could give.

I had a really bad landlord experience a couple of years ago, with landlords who had even stronger views on rights to privacy (ie, none at all) than these - it was pretty hideous and ended with threats and police, and I wouldn't ever want to relive that. Still, it was at least simpler to deal with, in its way. This confusion of my landlords' rights as landlords and their rights as my housemate's parents is incredibly awkward; really they shouldn't be telling me what goes where at all, but when they do it in a friendly/patronising way with my housemate sitting across the table? argh.

Giving me no notice worked out okay for me this time, because I was out of the house most of the time they were here and couldn't be drafted in to help with moving/tidying/being lectured at about State Of This Place. (Which really isn't that bad!) I don't think they were too happy about that, either, but they couldn't exactly complain.