How I Became My Own Consumer Credit Counseling Service And Bounced Back From My Bad Credit Nightmare (part 10)

I eventually found a place in Van Nuys - that's right, it was more of a "place" than an apartment. It was as though there had been some sort of a cunning arrangement between the landlord and the tenants, an arrangement that was to be in effect only for the time when I was actively surveying the apartment.

The arrangement was that while any prospective renter was walking around checking the place out, the tenants would behave themselves.

The moment the rental agreement was signed, the arrangement was null and void, and the tenants could return to their shrill, debased lifestyles.

They would go back to parking their cars on the lawn. They would go back to partying themselves into a drunken stupor and urinating on the cars parked on the lawn. They would go back to playing their radios and CDs so loud that plaster would peel from the walls like acne.

But the place in Van Nuys was the only place that would rent to someone with a catastrophic credit history. The Van Nuys landlord had taken out a small internet ad on Westside Rentals that read, "Bad credit, Bankruptcy OK. We Just Don't Give A Damn!" This guy had put up a brightly colored sign in the property's front yard with the same little slogan. To the sign he'd also attached this tattered American flag that looked like it was about 12,000 years old.

I was beginning to see that declaring bankruptcy was not the walk in the park it was reputed to be ... (consumer credit counseling, to be continued)