About the new apartment …

I’ve not finished settling in my new apartment, but everything I need works: the kitchen, the bathroom and the laundry room. As for the bedroom, it has its bed and dressers, but there are too many bookcases. This I can deal with …

But I don’t have a parking space in the basement garage, and, this, I cannot deal with …

Initially, this building had one interior parking space for each apartment. However, the first owners were given the option not to purchase their parking space, a mistake, and the parking space disappeared.

It could be that someone bought a second parking space, but I met with members of the Board of Directors, to whom I had written a letter, and they told me that realtors had offered prospective buyers a second parking space to increase their chances of selling quickly. Moreover, it is entirely possible that someone saw an empty parking space and started using it: squatter’s rights. If one has the gadget that opens the garage doors, they can drive in a second vehicle.

I was fine last winter. The people who sold me the apartment knew an owner who could not park her car in the basement during the winter months because she has studs put on her tires. She let me use her indoor parking space and I may be able to use that space again next winter.

But the problem has not been resolved. Persons whose parking space disappeared are inconvenienced in many ways:

• first, they do not have an indoors parking space;
• second, they pay to occupy an outdoor space;
• third if the snow plough has to clear the outdoor parking lot, cars must be cleaned and removed by 9 o’clock in the morning. Owners will otherwise pay a fine of $60;
• fourth, and foremost, these owners are unlikely to find a buyer if the apartment has to be sold. It could take a decade to sell this apartment, during which monthly fees would have to be paid, as well as taxes, insurance, etc.

Compiling Errors

Members of the Board of Directors with whom I spoke told me that errors committed in the past cannot be corrected. That’s not true. It may be difficult to correct an error, but not to correct an error is an error. To begin with, selling an apartment with more than one parking space can no longer be tolerated.

In the letter, and doctor’s note, I put in the Board of Directors’ mailbox, I proposed, indirectly, that it was probably best to give each owner a parking space in the interior garage. A warm car would always at the ready. Besides, what choice do we have? We cannot enlarge the basement. Morover, if an older person has to be outdoors scraping the ice off his or her car, it will be conesidered Elder Abuse: maltraitance des aînées.

As for the second or third car, it can be parked in the exterior parking lot and someone can be hired to clean and remove the car, and to return it to its place. With regard to penalties, these should be lifted. Penalties are offensive if a situation is prejudicial to owners whose parking space was “sold.” All that is needed is good will on every one’s part.

Last year, the government reimbursed my removal expenses, because I had moved to a building that had an elevator and could otherwise accommodate the needs of a senior citizen. It appears it is less expensive for the government to keep older citizens in their home and send caregivers.

I may stop driving in the near future, but I still think that it is in everyone’s best interest to find a solution.

The men with whom I spoke will no longer accept to serve on the Board of Directors. They sent everyone a note to that effect.

I apologize for telling you that story. Please concentrate on the pigeons.

Love to everyone ♥

This takes us back to pigeons, temporarily.

André Messager‘s ballet, Les Deux Pigeons (Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
25 July 2018
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