Landlord Entering Apartment

[Brian F.]

I need some advice. My wife and I are both disabled and I lost my source of income. I was not able to pay my rent and my landlord said she would release us from our lease and had another tenant ready , which we agreed to. We are moving at the end of the month, but for the last week the landlord has been using her key to let herself in and walk through our apartment. She claims that she has the right to enter with 24 hours notice and when I asked what happened to the notice, she told it that was our word against hers and to prove that she didnt give it. The other night my wife and I were sleeping and we were awakened to her standing over our bed shaking the bed to wake us up. She said she was doing a walk through inspection and would be back again tomorrow for another. She said if we dont like the invasion of privacy then to pay her or get out earlier. She told us that it is unlawful for us to change the key or put in a chain, and she was within her rights as an owner to walk in anytime she likes. Is there anything that we can do ?? Please help. 

[Jim K.]

@Brian F.

You're obviously posing as someone you're not.

"I lost my source of income" at 92. How did you lose your social security as a source of income? Did you suddenly not qualify? Is there some miraculous cure to aging that, at the same time it turns back the clock biologically for you and alters the figures in the Social Security Administration's computers remotely, is also unable to manage in passing the trifling challenge of fixing what ails you?

Now you're pivoting away from the banal mechanics of digital record-keeping to theology: you invoke a lack of Jesus as what's wrong with America. If there was just more Jesus, this landlady wouldn't be frankly deranged as you steal rent from her this month, the posters on this website would be able to smell the BS just lying under your cover story, and the world will be a far better and kinder place. Charity, mercy, and understanding is what you want, yet the ogre landlady should receive her just deserts. Because that would be righteous.

Brian, I doubt you're 92. I'm more or less certain you're a barely functional grifter looking to work the welfare system more effectively than you already are. I suspect you really are stuck with an angry landlady whom you're screwing out of this month's rent -- that part of your narrative seems too specific and detailed to be wholly the product of an otherwise sharply compromised imagination. 

Why haven't you called the police on the landlady already? If you can pass judgment as you have on what's wrong with all of a nation, surely you can reason your way to the understanding that the clearly psychotic behavior you describe should be brought to the police's attention. Or is it that the obvious answer will not suit, that you want the police involved as little as possible in this, looking further into your business, and you're hoping that a community of real estate investors might be enticed to give you some sort of inside tip, a clever informed and foolproof way that only they know about that's guaranteed to get your landlady off your back and allow you to continue grifting off her with minimal stress for the rest of the month?

I very much want to understand, Brian. Please help. Do it for Jesus.