A Tale of Two Buildings

About a year ago, my husband and I moved into an apartment complex which seemed to consist of two buildings connected by an extended archway over the entrance to the parking area. The buildings are physically fairly identical as they share color, architecture, apartment styles, door lettering, etc. Each has 19 units and a small coin-operated laundry room with two washers and dryers. The main difference is that

They are so alike that it is very common for both delivery people and visiting individuals to be confused about which one to go to. Two of my friends have gone to the identical-looking apartment in the other building. It doesn't help that the numbers of the building are very similar as well. Ours ends in "85" and the other one ends in "65", but the first two digits are the same.

The reason these buildings are so similar is that they were once owned by the same entity, but in the past several years were split up and sold to different owners. This change was sufficiently recent that some tenants in both buildings are still under the impression that they are under the same ownership. It's also an issue because there is only one manager's office for both buildings, but there are separate property managers for each.

It's often the case that people will wander over to the wrong place because they assume that that office applies to both. I know this because our assigned parking spot is in front of that office and, despite there being a sign which says the parking is restricted and those who park there without authorization will be towed away, people keep parking in our space when they want to see the manager. I have to keep kicking them out and get rude response from people who seem utterly put out by my cheekiness when I assert my right to the parking space that comes along with my apartment and its exorbitant rent. When I ask them to move, they never apologize and just say they've only there for a short time or are there to see the manager. The fact that I need to put my car there and have no other place to park isn't even a factor in their limited capacity to process. They need the space. The space is by the manager's office. Why am I asking them to move?

At any rate, the buildings are ran quite differently, or at least they seem to be. Our building does not allow pets and the other one does. Theirs has junk sitting around outside of some of the apartments. Furniture or children's toys often litter the area in front of some of the two-bedroom units. Ours are generally clean and clear. A lot of their metal screen doors are in a state of disrepair. Some have paint peeling off. Others have missing handles or hinges. Ours either have well-maintained screen doors or no screen doors at all. Their tenants put bags of trash out in front because people aren't quite ready to make the long and arduous three-minute walk over to the trash bins.

Our manager said when we moved in that people wouldn't be doing that in our building, and that is correct. Each apartment has its own labeled trash bin and recycling bin, but ours are locked and theirs are not. Homeless people stop by nearly each day and poke around their bins and their tenants dump trash next to the bins when they overflow. They get much fuller than ours because our tenants are too lazy to unlock the proper bins and just throw their trash in the other ones (and they believe the buildings are still essentially united).

All of this may seem like trivial differences, but the truth is that the tenants are also different. I don't know if that is because our property manager screens differently or if being in a place with stricter rules incites better behavior on the part of tenants. All I can say is that I've come to call the other building the "white trash building" for several reasons.

Before I get any further, I should hasten to add that I am white and come from poverty. I probably would have been called "white trash" growing up if the term had been popular then. However, I don't call people that based on socio-economic status, but based on behavior. What makes them white trash? Well, part of it is that most of them are white. Our building has a much higher proportion of non-white people, especially Indian and Asian, but there's also an African American couple. The other building has one elderly Chinese woman, a couple of Sikh men, and a biracial couple (white and African-American), but otherwise seems to be a lot of white folks.

The reason I've come to call the building the "white trash building" is well illustrated by a situation that occurred several nights ago, though it is hardly rare. Around 10:30 pm, a man parked his car between the buildings (partially blocking traffic into the parking area) and starts having a screaming match with his partner. I didn't listen to it directly, but it went on for some time and sounded very aggressive. This family moved in within the last six months and consists of a mother, father, and two children (a boy and a girl who look to be in the age range of 8-11). At the end of a protracted and very public fight, I heard the husband scream twice, "I want you to get your shit together and follow me."

I don't know what happened, but my guess is that she got her shit together and followed him because about a half hour later, three policemen showed up and started rapping the front door with batons and shining flashlights in the window trying to see if anyone was inside. They cased the place for some time and then gave up and left. The following morning, two policemen returned and were again trying to get inside. A woman stood near the street with a cell phone and they asked her to try and call someone. No one was home and they gave up again.

Today, about 3-4 days later, I saw the woman who lives there finally return. I'm not sure what happened or why the police were called, but my best guess based on the woman with the cell phone is that the woman herself called a female relative in a panic over what was going on and the concerned relative contacted the police. The police arrived too late to intervene and the whole lot of them took off for several days until things cooled off.

The thing is, this incident was the most protracted, but it's not rare. Shortly after moving here, a couple had an enormous fight in front of that building which included shoving. The woman was screaming and yelled for someone to "call the police" (it was not the same couple - they didn't live here at that time and these were younger people). In the past week, someone else stood outside and had an extremely loud and melodramatic phone call about how someone didn't love her, want to be with her, or care about her anymore.

Within the past three weeks, a mob of men stood in the parking lot between our apartments smoking up a storm, talking loudly, and clapping their hands for about an hour between 11:00 pm and midnight. I think they were actually buddies of the Sikh men, so I guess they technically weren't white trash, but were doing a pretty good impression with their rude and disruptive behavior. The thing is, if the office manager of that building called people on this sort of thing, it'd stop. She does not. 

I don't know what sort of mojo is going on over there, but there is more drama and loud behavior coming from there than from here. Our building is far from perfect. There is a 1000-year-old Chinese couple in the apartment beneath us that had been watching T.V. late at night (between midnight and 1:00 am) so loudly that it vibrated our floor. My husband or I went down three times to ask them to cool it, but finally had to enlist the property manager who, fortunately, heard it one night when he came home from work and told them to use headphones if they were too deaf to hear T.V. at a reasonable volume late at night. After that, they cooled it.

Our office manager is actually pretty good about trying to keep the tone of the building civilized. Our immediate neighbors, a very nice Indian couple with the most adorable little boy I've ever seen, were prone to having shouting arguments not only inside their apartment, but between their apartment and the parking space. He'd stand outside and she'd stay inside and they'd carp at each other. Since they did that during the day-time, I didn't complain, but our manager overheard it one day and asked me if it happened a lot. I told him the truth; it happened nearly every day. He put an end to it. They still fight, but less publicly.

I think that people generally are not aware of how their behavior impacts others, especially when they are acting in a state of emotion. However, when people live in a free-for-all environment in which those in authority don't act, others feel it is normal to publicly display their drama and to generally be rude. The tone is set by the authority figure and that other building has a property manager who simply doesn't give a crap. While I think sometimes that too rigid management goes on (and more former apartment would give the Third Reich a run for its money in terms of how uptight they could be), I can very much see the effects of an "anything goes" mentality in the nasty, messy-looking apartments (both inside and out - I've seen into a few of them while walking by and some of them are pig pens - probably because of the higher numbers of people with children and pets) and behavior.

The tale of our two buildings is an intriguing one because they are so similar in every respect except the property managers and (invisible) ownership. The rents are almost certainly close to the same. The location is the same, and they obviously are the same size and style. The factors that differ are the property managers and the tenants, and the latter aren't seriously screened in any way that I can see in either case. The differences in tone, behavior, and cleanliness really do come down to management, and I'm glad that I'm in this building instead of that one.