Tenant Rights,You Say? Let Me Tell You About My Landlord

Initially I wrote to close family and friends.

One of them suggested that the editor of this newspaper, Ari Noonan, read my material. As a result, I have a weekly column. Thank you, Ari, for your encouragement and support.

Others have been sending my letters and articles to their family and friends. Everything has snowballed. I have been contacted by people from all over the world who have enjoyed reading my reports on life here in Israel.

As a former peace officer and attorney, I always had plenty of “war stories” about events happening to me in those professions.

Here, though, I live a simple, unexciting life. My only “war stories” are about terrorism. And unfortunately, that occurs too often.

I review legal documents for an American company outsourcing to English-speaking attorneys at a salary that an average receptionist would earn in the U.S.

Considering I have been in Israel for a year and still cannot read, write or speak Hebrew, I am lucky to be employed.

Everything here is different. There is no such thing as rent control. Every landlord makes the tenant waive his rights.

The landlord pays for nothing, fixes nothing, and all responsibility for repairs, painting, cleaning, taxes and utilities are those of the tenant. There is no such thing as first and last month’s rent.

I had to post-date four checks of three months’ worth of rent and provide them to the landlord.

Every three months, he deposits the checks, and has the security of knowing he has been paid for at least three months’ rent in advance. In the U.S., it is illegal to post-date checks.

In addition to that, the tenant must provide two people to “guarantee” that the rent will be paid and repairs will be made. Those guarantors sign that they will be responsible if the tenant doesn’t follow through. No one wants to be a guarantor because their agreement with the landlord says that the landlord can unilaterally change the terms of the lease and the guarantor agreement, and the guarantor is still liable.

Obviously, the hardest part of all is finding a guarantor under those outrageous conditions. I lucked out because my ex-husband’s cousin agreed to guarantee me. It is a good thing that he and his wife like me better than they do my ex. I knew no one else when I came to this country.

I often wonder what I would have done without them.

The employment system is also different here. There is no such thing as getting an unemployment check if you haven’t worked for a company for at least one year. I worked for my company 10 1/2 months when I was laid off. I received my accrued vacation days, no unused sick days, and I got paid for every day that they did not give me two weeks notice of my termination.

If I had been with them a year, I would have received severance pay of one day’s salary for every month I had been with them. I hear that many firms do not keep employees over a year to avoid the severance pay and unemployment.

The Post Office is one of the most important places. In order to get medical care, you have to sign up for a health care company only after first getting a voucher signed by the Post Office.

If I want to pay my utility bills, I pay them at the Post Office. If I want a better rate of exchange between dollars and shekels or Euros, I go to the Post Office. Of course, it is one of the first places to go on strike, and its employees take a three-hour siesta every afternoon between 12:30 and 3:30.

More about day-to-day life here in Israel next week.

L'hitraot. Shachar