Cold house

I awoke this morning to a downright frigid house. I reached over and felt the register and ice cold air was rushing out of it. I think that our house might just have central air because the thermostat downstairs does have a "cool" setting. The neighbor down there controls the thermostat for the entire house and had apparently gone ahead and set it to "cool" the house, never mind that it's only 35 degrees today. She has made it pointedly clear that she intensely dislikes heat and would prefer a chilly house, but it's unfair to me to subject me to her whims of what she likes in the way of the temperature of the house. What she seems to fail to grasp is that this is shared quarters, and as such, she is responsible for my comfort. But she seems quite selfish in wanting to keep the house at her preferred chilly settings and is content to tell me "put on a sweater". I am entitled to heat. That is the law. With only one meter for each of the utilities here, one for electric, one for gas and one for water, technically the landlord should be paying all of the utilities because by law, utilities that are master metered are the landlord's responsibility to pay. When the tenant who lived downstairs moved out right after I moved in, I was told, when I went to switch the heat into my name, that it was not possible since there were multiple units in the house and only one meter and furnace. So the bills have been sent to our landlord, who has graciously paid them. The tenant who lived down there this past year was unable to afford both rent and utilities, so I took on paying for both her electric and water as well as mine. I have estimated that I have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 in so doing that I will never recoup. For someone on my limited retirement income, that comes as quite a blow financially.

The newest downstairs tenant has been notified of what she owes in the way of half of this month's electric, but has so far made no effort to contact me with regard to whether she ever intends to pay it. I left a note in her mailbox informing her of what she owes this month and I told her than when the next water bill comes that I would let her know what that amount will be. Something tells me that she won't be able to afford this. She is not working, spends all day and all night in bed, lights out, and does not appear to be making any effort to settle in. I have no idea how she intends to support herself or whether she even has any money. As a result of the financial losses I sustained with the last tenant downstairs, I have understandably become quite risk averse and am afraid of once again being stuck paying 100% of the electric and water bills here. I just simply can no longer afford to do this. I am living on the razor's edge financially as it is with huge medical bills piled up from recent shoulder rehab. I'm retired and on a very limited income and I can't afford anymore expenses than those that I have already taken on. I'm not carrying another tenant on my back like I did this past year. I did that because I desperately wanted to keep a tenant here who, while she was a bad tenant, was at least a good neighbor, always checking on me to make sure that I was comfortable enough in the winter months. She looked after me, as I did her, and while I begged her to get her financial house in order, she just wasn't able to manage to do so. I'm very sorry about that because, while she was not the tenant that I had hoped for, was at least very neighborly and I went down there and she came up here and we visited with each other quite often, and I miss her company. I wish her the very best in the place where she moved and I pray that she is better able to afford the new quarters.

This new downstairs tenant exhibits all of the signs of someone suffering from a major depressive episode. She had a heart attack earlier this year and had recent surgery to address that. I think that she tried to do too much after her surgery. She recuperated over a weekend at a friend's house and then drove the 18 hours back to Kansas to pack up things and ship them out here and then drive the 18 hours back here to unpack what was in her car. She took ill shortly after moving in and the ambulance had to be called. I think that she figured that things would turn out a lot differently after her surgery and that she'd bounce right back, get a job and be OK, but that does not seem to have been the case. She's taken to her bed and stayed there since moving in and has been acting quite strange ever since, severing communication with me, changing the locks on the house and then when I alerted her to her half of the electric bill, turning the heat off and the cool on to freeze me out of my house, which seems like passive aggressive behavior on her part. I can't live with someone who is acting so imbalanced and strange like this and whose behavior is directly impacting my comfort. If I can't do something about this, I may be forced to up and leave, something that I would rather not do since I do like this house and how spacious and comfortable it has been so far. I'd rather have the thermostat up here, frankly, but that would be too involved with wiring it and all of that and I know that is not going to happen, much as I would love for it to be up here in my unit. It's far easier for her to cool her unit down by opening windows or buying a nice 5000 BTU air conditioning unit or two or floor fans or something, but it's far harder for me to warm my place up. I am using a medium room digital ceramic space heater, but I would rather not have to resort to having to use something like this because they can cause fires and I don't know much about the wiring in this old house. But I have no choice if I want to be comfortable. If the downstairs tenant insists that the house must be without heat this winter and if what we do have is central air and she wants it on all winter, then I have no choice but to wear gloves and a parka and curl up under blankets in my own home freezing my ass off all winter. I may have to find a good "warming center" to evacuate to if it gets too cold in this house this winter. But I do not want to be chased out of my own home by an unstable tenant running the heat here. Unfortunately, that's what I am stuck with. And I hate it. Just hate it. If the pipes freeze and burst, at least it won't be my fault, but I worry about my things in storage in the basement. Well, it's in the landlord's hands now. He's been notified. Let's see if he does anything about it or just tells me to bundle up and cope.