wait in my car while I have a discussion with the gentleman in the leasing office? I can bring it around and find another place to park.”
While I appreciated the courtesy, I shook my head. “Thank you, but I’ll take my chances with the flying cockroaches in the lobby. At least there’ll be another witness if he tries to do something stupid.”
“He won’t, not unless he’s been hitting up some drugs or something, but I doubt it. He looked disinterested more than anything else. He could be stoned out of his mind, though. Stoners are mostly harmless.”
Moving to New York was turning out to be more of an adventure than I’d expected, and all I could do was pray the next apartment wouldn’t try to kill me, too.
As promised, the next apartment complex was located near my work, and it was a mix of apartments and condominiums, with the condominiums taking up the upper ten floors of the skyscraper and the apartments taking up ten floors beneath that. Several businesses occupied the lower floors, with a clubhouse offering a limited buffer between the commercial and residential floors. To give me a better feel of the area, Margaret walked me around the building, showing me where the grocery store, coffee shop, and bookstore were before giving me a rundown of the building’s history. “I didn’t know they mixed buildings like this.”
“In New York, anything’s possible with enough money. This building is an oddity, but it works out well. The landlord was required to install soundproofing between the residential and commercial floors, and the commercial floors have certain restrictions and a different zoning than the residential floors, but it works. There’s odd stuff like this all over Manhattan, but they’re all odd in different ways. Don’t ask.”
“Oh! Like those stores in the basement of townhouses I saw driving in?”
“Exactly. You’ll see a lot of that here. This building is pretty nice, as the landlord keeps everything maintained. Pricy, but you get good service for what you pay. There is a commercial entry on the other side of the building, but this is just for residents. Remember that condominium I told you about? It’s on the top floor of this building. The penthouse owners have their own entrance and a private garage, too.”
“That is really cool. Can’t let the riffraff mingle with the rich and famous, right?”
Margaret chuckled. “Right. The apartment entry is this way. The condo entry is right around the corner, so sometimes you’ll cross paths with your other neighbors, but that won’t be often. They usually use their private garage and elevator rather than share space with the apartment dwellers. But don’t feel too badly about that. You get a similar security team and concierge. You’ll have to check in any guests or have them on an allowed list, as it’s a part of the requirements for leasing here. This property is touted as one of the safest in the area, and they do a background check of all tenants. A criminal record won’t bar your application, but they are rather picky about who they will accept. They will not allow anyone who has been convicted of a violent crime of any sort to rent a unit, and being found guilty of a violent crime is grounds for lease termination.”
“That’s legal?”
“It is. The Federal Fair Housing Act doesn’t bar landlords from denying tenants guilty of violent crimes. A landlord can’t realistically bar someone with a single conviction from a decade ago necessarily, but they have a lot of leeway if they think the tenant might bring violence to other tenants in the building, as the landlord does have a base responsibility to provide a safe environment for residents. He’s particularly strict regarding domestic violence, and he has evicted tenants for violence to their partner in the past. That’s actually why this apartment opened. The tenant beat his girlfriend, and he was evicted as a risk to others and for breaking the terms of lease, which strictly bars violence on grounds. He provided an attorney for the young woman, as the incident happened in an elevator and had been reported by security.”
Damn. “That’s terrible. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. The landlord moved her to a different complex he owns and has made a renting arrangement for her, as she was the boyfriend’s dependent.”
“But why were you told about this?”
“There’s some repair work that will need to be done, as the resident decided to take his fist to the wall after it was