Lost in the Mail

This episode of “Why’s My Rent So High” features the US Mail Service. First, the scene: a rural Northern Cal post office, a place that never has a line but sometimes smells like pot. Yes, some growers still deliver pot the old fashioned way, maybe with a bag of coffee tossed in to obscure the odor.

It’s the kind of place where employees come from the back room when a kid mails a letter to Santa. Lauren sent her letters from there, always in front of the whole staff and with enough homemade cookies for everyone. The lady who cleans that post office lives on my street. Even though it’s two blocks from the house, it takes an hour to walk there and back because a lot of chatting happens along the way.

When a new tenant said he couldn’t get his mail delivered, I popped in to talk with the post master. Let’s call her Pam. “What gives,” I said. “My tenant needs his mail.” That tenant lives in a small complex with five legal residential units. The building has been there since 1953. I’ve managed it for 15 years and nothing about it has changed, not even the crappy paint job.

Pam told me she wanted to make sure she wasn’t delivering mail to squatters, so my tenant had to come into the Post Office in person along with his rental agreement and ID. “Hmmm,” I said. “I’ve lived in a lot of places and I’ve never had to do that. Is this new?” I was batting down my inner cynic that suspected Pam was discriminating. The place where this tenant lives is low-income, and in my experience, people there get more than their share of smack downs.

Pam knows I’m a landlord. Over the years, she’s seen saw dust in my hair, paint on my clothes, filth under my fingernails. “I’ve been renting out that property since 2010," I said, "and can personally attest that this guy’s not a squatter. Does that work for you?”

It didn’t.

I explained that my tenant’s family member, a young man in the prime of life, just died. That family doesn’t need any more tasks right now. Especially tasks that are fake, I thought but didn’t say. Pam is in the power seat, so I have to be nice. As Hilary Clinton once famously said, “sometimes we all need to bite our tongues.” Or maybe it was my third grade teacher, Sister Delma, who said that. In any case, with effort, I glued my yap shut.

Pam was unmoved, so my tenant ordered a PO Box. Now he’s out $11 a month for box rental fees, but he’s getting his mail.

A few weeks later, another tenant at the same property came to me with the same story, and she doesn’t want to pay for a box. This time Pam asked me for documentation from the Assessor’s office to prove that the property is legally designated as multi-family. After four calls to Pam, five to the Assessor, and a slew of emails and texts, I tracked down the document Pam wants. It cost $4 and had to be picked up in person. But did the tenant get her mail?

No.

Pam wants the Assessors office “to clarify something.” But, government offices are closed on Monday for a holiday no one else gets paid to take off. And even if Pam gets her clarification, every tenant will then need to see her in person with their IDs and rental agreements. So far, I’ve spent many hours on this project. And eventually, I’ll need to send a letter to the tenants to let them know what’s going on. I just won’t be able to mail it, because, well, they still can’t get mail.