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[–] 308 points 1 month ago (12 children)

Fake. A report would list the violations, the code reference, and have a lot of extra text describing the municipalities rules regarding said violations and a list of consequences for failing to correct said violations.

It would certainly not list a price because the inspector doesn't set repair costs or estimate them, and these were fines they aren't "estimated," much less printed out on a sheet like this. Even if it were remotely real, why would the tenant ever get a copy? The notice of violation goes to the landlord.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Yeah, all of this. I'm pretty sure these cases happen, but that piece of paper ain't it. Also, time to correct these things is dependent on the amount of work to be done, and replacing all basement windows and fixing the electrical wiring especially when multiple units are affected can take a lot of time regardless of how fast the landlord acts (e.g. you need access to every single unit in which the wiring needs fixing in combination with opening up walls and so on). They set a time limit to pay fines, and they will probably be telling them a time frame after which they visit again for inspection where they want to see these things either fixed or what progress has been made towards it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    I still check r/all on libreddit (gotta keep tabs on the fascist propaganda) and I literally read a comment in the last couple of weeks that is the basis of this fake post. The commenter said they gave their landlord 3 months instead of the 30 day requirement, mentioned multiple other defects were found, and specifically included a part about their electrical wiring being crossed with a neighbour, resulting in many thousands more in expenses for the landlord than the few hundred their request would have.

    The comment appeared real, but it could have still been a bot copy pasting from an old thread. Either way, I'm certain that's the source.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    I found the thread you mentioned (https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1wds9vf/my_landlord_told_me_to_go_ahead_and_report_her_to/) and which is probably the basis for the AI prompt for this image.

    I did not find an identical post in the last years, but i found the following from 5 years ago, which is very much in the same vein and might be the actual origin of the story (especially since it got 22k upvotes at the time), which was being fed to an LLM with orders to add more details for more engagement: https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/u3668f/our_landlord_told_me_go_ahead_call_the_city/

    (thanks for MetaGer and DuckDuckGo with the search help, with google i would still sift through garbage. MetaGer sadly only goes back one year max for filters, or else they would have sufficed. MetaGer is actually my main search utility for 99% of things, and i have never been disappointed outside of this single limitation)

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Thanks for doing the thing I couldn't be bothered to do. This bot definitely ripped off the recent poster, as the noted defects in it are identical.

    They found a fire alarm that wasn't working, took note of the garbage around the property, and found windows that were boarded up in the basement that needed to be real windows to satisfy the city's 'at least 2 real windows in basements' rule or whatever.

    Makes sense really. Easier to have your bot farms rehash and cross post high engagement material between all sources. No matter what, only a fraction of total users are gonna see any one.

    Come to think of it, in the last month a custom meme made the front page using some western girls image as the background, then within hours I saw the same meme (identical "custom" text) posted to an indian sub, but with an indian girls image instead. Dead internet theory in action.

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  • [+] [S] -74 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    E: your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what makes you cheer.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    There’s an invisible line you can’t cross. No meme that’s fake should ever try to be real.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 1 month ago

    Legitimately, why is this the threshold? Shouldn't it be on the reader to decide if something is fake or not, particularly on a media format that's rife with misinformation to begin with?

    I give memes about 15 seconds of focus - it's not a big investment of my time. I'm not inclined to fact check them. If one pulls me in, then I dig a bit deeper. I'm not out here acting like some snake oil salesman. I just post stuff I find amusing.

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  • [–] 95 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    In cases like this, can the landlord mysteriously choose not to renew the rental contract?

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  • [–] 82 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    in some jurisdictions that have tenant protections, if a complaint is filed a landlord can't 'retaliate' by raising rents, not renewing, evictions would get much more scrutiny by the courts, etc...

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    On paper… no they can’t retaliate against you. But… if you live in a state like mine. Rules and laws aren’t worth a damn and you’ll be out on your ass faster than you can say renters rights.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

    One of the apartments I lived in as a kid had started with the best kind of landlord: completely absent unless something needed to be fixed. But after a year or two, he sold it to essentially the opposite: Always there unless something needs fixing.

    The actual owner was a retired guy who owned a bunch of apartments on the other side of town, and didn't want to be bothered with actually running this one building. He bought it so his weird son could move there and have a place to work on cars. So we now had a nosy neighbor that was always ready to tell us our business but wasn't going to be responsible for any actual upkeep, while the real landlord might as well have been in witness protection anytime we needed something. And as an added bonus, we had to move the car from the safe, spacious parking lot to the busy street in a fairly shitty neighborhood.

    When I got my driver's license, a friend of the family sold me a really shitty car for $5. I got it home but needed to get it worked on because I've always believed that when it comes to steering and brakes, a car should be able to do at least one of those things reliably.

    The next day, the bipedal rodent next door asked my mom about the car and she explained that it was mine and I was going to be getting it worked on so I could have a car. He offered $50 for it so he could fix it up and sell it, which my mom politely declined.

    Later that day, my mom and discount Norman Bates got into an argument about some trivial bullshit and the by the next morning, my car got towed away. The shit head then went on to explain that the street in front of the apartment would be restricted to two hour parking, and that my mom would have to move her car if she didn't want it towed. He didn't care that there was nowhere else to park, not his problem.

    So my mom showed up to work crying and on the edge of a nervous breakdown, which caught the attention of her boss, who just happened to be a member of the city council. She explained what had happened and he told her not to worry about it. Turns out the little unregistered business running out of our parking lot was about 7 different kinds of illegal, and while the place was being inspected by the city they also found several violations that would get very expensive if they weren't fixed.

    In the aftermath of the legal colonoscopy, the lost heirs to the Habsburg dynasty were suddenly willing to be a lot more reasonable. We still had to park on the street (which was bullshit) but dipshit junior talked to his dad and the right to park there was going to be added to the lease agreement and they were both going to be off our backs for at least a few months because they were too busy dealing with the city.

    Sadly, I never did get the gas guzzling death trap back. It would take a year and a half before I finally got my hands on an even more fucked up car.


    More relevant to this post, there was a time when the plumbing backed up and the toilet started backing up into the bathtub. It's Saturday afternoon, my mom calls dipshit the elder (now actually answering the phone in the wake of the previous story) who says he'll come take a look at it on Wednesday or Thursday. My mom hangs up and calls a city renters hotline and asks what would happen if, hypothetically, someone were in this situation and complained to the city. Turns out, a lack of functioning plumbing is a pretty serious code violation and the fines could start after twenty four hours. When my mom called the old man back, suddenly he found the time in his schedule to come look at it the next day. And then when he couldn't fix it himself (shocked-kirk.jpg) he had a plumber there on Monday morning.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago

    Why do you have this piece of paper and is there anything else on this page that tells us where it came from?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Writing at the bottom is off

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  • [–] [M] 12 points 1 month ago*

    Rule 5: Seems to be fake, mark it please.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago

    Aww, did someone find out?

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  • [–] 78 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    And then everybody clapped. "Wires are crossed. $6,500. 21 days to fix." Am I playing pretend with my nephew?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    it's not unheard of. i had an outlet that wasn't on my own electrical service. when they replaced the fuseboxes in the back with breaker boxes they double-checked what circuits went to which units and it got 'fixed'. the fridge was running on that outlet when i moved in.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Switching neutral with live generally won’t cause any issues. Switching neutral with ground is much worse but most likely would go without major issues. Switching ground and live would make things just not work at best, and become a huge fire and/or electrocution hazard at worst.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I'm 99% sure neither the original post or the one you are responding to are talking about crossed wires inside an outlet. They're talking about an entire outlet/switch/etc. being on the electrical service for a neighboring unit.

    So someone is paying for the usage of a neighbor. And if power is shut off for non-payment, they move out, etc. then one of the outlets will seemingly randomly stop working because it's on a different electrical service.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Yup that’s a service panel serving one or more units in a neighboring unit. Electrical plus ripping up drywall to run a new wire from the correct panel.

    Depending on the run this is probably about right.

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  • [–] [S] 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    You could save yourself some letters by reciting the old 4chan mantra:

    fake and gay

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I'm not sure.

    It's not saying it's real but I can envision a world where it's at least conceivable.

    They're not saying it should take 21 days of labour, just that they have 21 days to be compliant.

    And the runs between units might indicate other issues like insufficient panel sizes, or long runs of wall that are expected to get cut up and are expected to be repaired properly. Maybe permits and subsequent electrical inspections. They might even pad all their estimates too.

    It's high, but not impossibly high.

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  • Yeah, don't play chicken with the building official. Usually they'll work with you and brush off the more petty issues if you're working with them and it's clear that you're trying to be compliant. But if you act like a pompous dickbag or try to hide infractions then they will take immense pleasure in going through everything with a fine tooth comb and nail you for every single infraction they can find no matter how petty.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I played this card at an apartment complex I lived in years ago. We brought up multiple issues that they consistently failed to address, they replied with threats of fees or terminating our lease, and we shot back by getting in touch with a volunteer arbitrator at a local housing authority office. This huge guy showed up, assessed all the problems we had, then hand-delivered a notice to the office. Everything got fixed in the next 48 hours and we never heard from the office staff again. Not sure if these services still exist...

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (7 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    the paper image is AI generated

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