5th Anniversary of Apartment Life

As of today, I have been living in my apartment in Salem for five years. 

This had been the first time I’ve ever lived in an apartment.  To the best of my recollection, anyway.  It’s possible that sometime between my birth and the age of four I lived an apartment, but it was always houses for me from my earliest memories as a four year old up until, well, five years ago. 

I’ve lived in three different houses in Mount Angel, and then the basement of my brother’s house in Silverton.  And now, for the past five years, I’ve been an apartment dweller.  It does not seem nearly that long.  Must mean I’m happy living here. 

Section 8 Housing

At some point during the first few years of living in the basement, my sister filled out the paperwork to get me on the waitlist for Section 8 housing. 

When the paperwork was filed, we were informed that the current waiting list here in Oregon was about three years long. 

Then… three years later…

I get an official looking letter in the mail informing me that I’ve moved to the top of the waiting list, and that my appointment to meet with someone from the local housing authority was on such-and-such date and time at the Salem Public Library. 

So, at the appointed date and time, I had someone take me to the Salem Public Library.  (Wondering all the while, “Why a library?”)  There were a lot of people milling about outside the library, and once we were gathered up and led to one of the library’s largest meeting rooms, the need to meet at a library rather than at the Salem Housing Authority office was clear.  There were a LOT of us attending that meeting. 

Everyone was given a thick folder full of documents and a pen.  And told to sit quietly until everyone was accounted for and they were ready to begin. 

Eventually they started the meeting.  Showed us a film.  Went over the paperwork, some of which they had us fill out there.  Talked to us about how to go about looking for an apartment that fulfilled the low-income guidelines.  Talked about how the Section 8 housing voucher worked.  All that kind of stuff. 

Then they hit us with the timeline.  Normally you had six weeks to find a place.  If you hadn’t found one in six weeks, there was a possibility of getting a six week extension.  However, since the market for housing in Salem was craptacular (my term, not theirs), they were going to automatically fold the extension into our initial time, giving us three whole months to find a place.  But with no possibility for extension after that.  If you couldn’t find an apartment by that time, you were free to reapply and get placed at the very end of that three year long waiting list again. 

I wasn’t worried.  How hard could it be? 

The Final Days of the Basement

Fast forward to ten days before the deadline.  Now I was worried.  Turns out finding a low income apartment in Salem was indeed very, very hard.  Despite having spent a ridiculous amount of time online searching for a rentable apartment, I had not yet found one. 

I had one close call, where my sister took me out to look at a place.  We were met by a representative of the property, and while she was calling Salem Housing to get authorization to rent it to me, somebody else snaked that apartment out from under me.  By ten minutes. 

Anyway, ten days before the deadline.  I was making another call to another property management company about another rental unit.  And heard another familiar reply that it had already been rented.  I then explained that I was holding a Section 8 housing voucher that expired in 10 days.  Which is a tactic I’d started using in the past couple of weeks, in the hopes of getting sympathy (and maybe getting a jump on an upcoming rental unit). 

There was a pause on her end, after which she said, “Give me your number and let me call you back.”  That was new.  Normally, the fact that I had an expiring voucher was – while not stated in these exact words – definitely a ME problem and not a THEM problem. 

The initial excitement at the prospect of getting a place of my own had slowly turned into desperation to get a place of my own.  I wanted out of the basement.  My brother and sister-in-law wanted me out of their basement.  (After I was finally settled in my new apartment, my therapist told me that he had been seriously worried about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten out of the basement.) 

It took nearly an hour for her to call me back.  But when she did, it was to tell me that they had a one-bedroom apartment that had just been vacated, cleaned, and painted, but wasn’t yet listed anywhere.  Did I want it? 

Sight Unseen

With only ten days left to go before having to go back on the waiting list?  Of course I wanted it.  Gimme gimme gimme! 

Since they were just renting it to me instead of listing it, they wanted me to come to their office and sign the lease agreement in four days.  Which was fine with me for the most part.  The sooner we make this official the better.  My only bit of trepidation… both my brother and sister were working full time, and they were my sole means of transportation.  My sister had agreed to get me to the office to do paperwork and then would take me to my new apartment.  But I had no way to check the place out before I signed the lease. 

What if it was just four walls, a roof, and inside a big hole in the ground?  What if it was just a tent with holes in it?  What if—I don’t even know what, but something very horrible?  And I was going to agree to live there for at least a year? 

After we left the office and went to the apartment, I stuck the key into the lock but waited a brief moment before unlocking and opening the door.  (What if…?) 

Peering inside, I breathed a sigh of relief.  It looked nice.  Hardwood-looking laminate flooring.  (No dust trap carpeting to antagonize my allergies.)  Fresh coat of paint.  (Which my sister informed me still smelled like wet paint.  I haven’t been able to smell anything since I was about 15 years old, so that didn’t bother me in the least.) 

I stepped inside and started to take a good look around.  Kitchen was small, but I’d get used to it.  A good amount of cabinet space for its size.  One of the drawers was missing.  (Did a previous tenant steal it for a keepsake? Who knows?)  The stove was incredibly narrow.  (I have to put baking sheets in narrow-side first, which still seems weird to me.) 

The bathroom was okay.  No way I could ever take a bath in the tub, but at my size I wasn’t expecting anything different.  Free standing sink, with no counterspace.  But what did I really need bathroom counterspace for anyway? 

The single bedroom looked like it would work for what I had in mind for it.  Yeah.  I could definitely live here. 

Furniture Acquisition

So there I was, standing in the middle of an empty apartment.  Completely empty.  No furniture to be seen.  And I wasn’t really planning to bring a lot of furniture over from the basement.  (I think a grand total of one piece made that move.) 

Fortunately, to paraphrase the Beatles, I get by with a little bit of help from my relatives. 

The first piece to come into the apartment was a second-hand recliner, courtesy of my Uncle Tom and Aunt Sue.  (My previous sleeping chair was staying in the basement, because the key to its structural integrity was being jammed in between braces in the basement’s architecture. If removed, it would no doubt fall apart like the Bluesmobile upon arriving at the building containing the Cook County Assessor’s Office.)  So I had a place to sleep in the apartment that first night. 

[That recliner did well for about a year, then the footrest no longer came up.  So from that point forward I slept with my legs propped up on a couch cushion on top of a Sterlite tote.  The chair held onto most of its structural integrity for about a year after that.  And I continued to use the increasingly broken thing for a year after that.  (And after that came the first stimulus check, a large part of which was spent on a big & tall recliner tested for 500 lbs of daily use.)] 

I got quite a bit of furniture from my sister and brother-in-law, including their old computer desk (where my computer still lives today), an incredibly sturdy wooden chair (where I sat at the computer until I got an actual roll-around desk chair years later), their old loveseat (about which I sadly have nothing to say in parenthesis—oh, wait!), and the world’s greatest coffee table (the top lifts up to reveal storage underneath – I’m not including a photo of it here because it’s currently weighted down with heavy stuff and thus doesn’t lift up at this particular moment). 

 

My Aunt Mary didn’t contribute actual furniture when I first moved in, but did her fair share with household supplies, including towels, kitchen garbage bags, toilet paper, and lots of other stuff.  Since then she’s also gotten me an infrared space heater (the apartment has baseboard heating, universally known as both the least effective and most expensive form of heat), a tall wooden chair for the kitchen, and she gave me her old flatscreen television when she upgraded to a larger model.  Not to mention lots of other odds and ends.  

The LEGO Room

Since I’ve got those pesky respiratory issues and sleep sitting upright in a chair, I don’t have a bed.  And since I don’t have a bed, I don’t need a dedicated bedroom.  So technically, instead of living in a one bedroom apartment, I live in a one LEGO room apartment. 

Another piece of donation furniture – a former dining table that my brother gifted me when I first moved into the basement – eventually followed me to my new home and took up residence in the room as my build table. 

 

Theoretically, that’s the room where the LEGO lives.  Or the room where I build the MOCs.  But up until very recently never both at the same time.  Usually, in the lead-up to conventions, I have towering stacks of totes full of brick in my living room, so that I can get to and from the build table. 

When I first moved in, there was a lot of stuff that was brought over to my apartment from the basement (without my direct supervision) that ended up in the LEGO room because of a lack of anywhere else to put it.  Which was not my actual plan for the room.  (It’s much better now.) 

In the five years I’ve lived here (which covers four years of LEGO conventions and the beginning of a pandemic), I’ve obtained quiet a selection of storage totes.  Including the most recent acquisition, a lumbering behemoth which currently slumbers beneath the build table.  (Shh!  Don’t wake it!  It’s huge, and tries to fill the whole room when it’s awake!) 

A year or so ago, I had my brother-in-law (who lists carpentry as one of his hobbies) build me a set of shelves to house my mighty collection of clear plastic shoeboxes filled with LEGO.  The major parts sort was supposed to happen shortly thereafter, but… didn’t.  (Hmm.)  Maybe after I get back from BrickCon? 

And, of course, no true LEGO room is complete without a towering stack of unbuilt sets.  (Unbuilt, not necessarily unopened, as many of these sets have had their minifigures harvested from them.)

 

Well Hidden

That first day when my sister drove me to the apartment, it took us a good while to even find it.  My new apartment proved to be fairly well hidden. 

I mean, it’s not hidden like 12 Grimmauld Place was in the Harry Potter books, but still… it’s pretty difficult to find if all you have is the street address and don’t know exactly where you’re going. 

Once someone finally found it, going to and from it proved no problem for people.  And I figured, “Hey, as I have no social life, there’s not really a need for people to find me.”  Then I realized that living in Salem had the perk of having access to Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, etc.  And the first time I ordered food from one of them, I didn’t even think that they were going to need directions beyond just the address. 

Later that night, about the time I was starting to wonder where my food was, I got a call from the driver, letting me know that he could not find my apartment.  So, after finding out exactly where he was, I gave him directions to get my food to me. 

I got a similar phone call the first time that medical transportation came to pick me up for a doctor’s appointment.  Since then I always include directions for anyone coming to drop stuff off or pick me up. 

Sometimes as I’m giving directions, they’ll ask for the name of my apartment complex.  It does have a name, but I didn’t even find out what it was until I’d lived here for over a year.  There’s no sign telling people where they are. 

Mail Call

It took a little bit before the whole change-of-address thing had my mail start showing up at the new apartment.  In the meantime, I found myself receiving… other people’s mail.  It didn’t surprise me to be receiving junk mail addressed to a former tenant.  What did surprise me was just how many former tenants’ mail was arriving each week. 

After I’d been in the apartment for a couple of weeks, I had gotten mail addressed to five different people.  Which made me start to worry a little.  Was there a really high turnover of tenants for my new apartment?  What did they know that I had yet to learn?  Would a new tenant move in soon, and get mail addressed to six different people, including me? 

I’d already been here for a year when I started getting issues of Time Magazine in the mail, addressed to one of those five former occupants. What the Hell?  Did somebody order a subscription and forgot that they had moved at least a year prior?  Was if a gift subscription from someone that the recipient didn’t trust with their new address? 

There’s a level on which this doesn’t really surprise me, as I’ve already had similar problems with my celphone number.  The woman who had this phone number before me – Ashley – is apparently still occasionally giving out my number in situations where she doesn’t want to let them have her real number. 

I’ve had people calling me telling me to pick up Ashley’s prescriptions at the pharmacy.  I’ve had people calling me to tell me to pay Ashley’s student loans.  And on one notable occasion, I had someone sexting me who refused to believe that I wasn’t really Ashley, just playing a weird joke on him by pretending not to be. 

So yeah, both answering the phone and getting in the mail are sometimes strange here. 

Change in Management

About a year or two in, I received notice that the property was about to be under new management, being in the process of moving from one real estate company to another. 

There were some changes.  Some good (the new company allowed me to pay my rent online instead of insisting on a physical check – the original company is the only reason why I even own stamps and a box of envelopes), others bad (it didn’t take very long before my rent went up). 

That first rent increase was followed by a complete repaving of the apartment’s questionable quality parking lot.  Which was a very welcome upgrade.  And it made sense to me.  Raise the rent, use the money to improve the property.  Okay, I can handle that. 

But then came other raises to the rent that were followed by no noticeable improvements.  Hmm.  Quite a few raises in rent, actually.  Being on Section 8, my portion of the rent isn’t usually a huge increase, but still… every dollar is felt. 

The most recent rent increase came once again with a property improvement.  They apparently decided that it was time to paint the place. 

Recent Changes & Improvements

So for the past couple of weeks, there have been workmen milling about the property.  Removing the gutters.  Pressure-washing the building.  Performing little exterior repairs and whatnot.  Then the other day they taped up sheets of plastic over all the doors and windows, and painted.

The apartments used to be this kind of bluish-gray color (for the AFOLs reading this, that would be more of a light bluish-gray, not dark bluish-gray).  Now they’re a kind of yellowish-tan.  Not the greatest color, but it could always be worse. 

After they were finished painting, they put up brand new mailboxes.  Locking mailboxes.  (Fancy!)  I wish that I had known they would be doing that, as I would have taken a photo of my original mailbox for comparison.  Since there is no photo, I’m going to ask you to picture the absolute worst mailbox possible.  Got it in mind?  Good.  My old mailbox was worse than the one you are thinking of now. 

 

 

My only complaint about the new box is that there is absolutely no provision made for outgoing mail.  The only way I have to mail something currently is to actually catch the mail carrier as they’re depositing mail into the box, and thrust a letter or package into their hands, imploring them to send it on its way for me. 

And while the workmen were making the outside of the apartment look nice, I was doing the same to the inside as a result of a Section 8 mandated yearly inspection by the Salem Housing Authority.  (My second “yearly” inspection from them in the five years I’ve lived here.) 

My main focus this time (because it raised a couple of questions of concern during the previous inspection several years ago) was a complete reorganization of the LEGO room.  (The results of which are depicted in the photos you saw earlier.  Again, I didn’t think to take ‘before’ pictures.)  My personal goal here was to get everything non-LEGO related out of the room.  Which meant getting rid of a lot of stuff that was just taking up space.  (I really could have used recycling service that has more than just a biweekly pickup during this time period.) 

While absolutely nothing has been done yet regarding the actual sorting of the LEGO pieces themselves, the room is the most organized and functional it’s been since I moved in. 

Even after five years, I still occasionally get new furniture!  I was able to squeeze yet another piece of second-hand furniture out of my sister and brother-in-law in the form of a bookshelf (upon which stuff from the LEGO room made itself a new home).  And I am expecting the arrival of a metal clothing rack any day now, in an effort to get the majority of my wardrobe out of large plastic totes and onto hangers. 

 

(The apartment’s single closet is kind of oddly shaped for use.  Plus, being located in the LEGO room, it is currently filled with unbuilt LEGO sets.) 

Home

It used to be that when I thought of ‘home’, it was the house where I grew up that I was thinking of.  Even after I no longer lived there.  But that house doesn’t even exist any more.  

Now, this is home to me.  This is where I eat.  This is where I sit awake all night long not sleeping (stupid insomnia).  This is where I build LEGO MOCs.  This is where I surf the internet. 

This is where I live.