Journal of Property Management, Sept, 2000 by Donna Yates


Unfortunately, it's easier to remember the tenants who gave you the hardest time. Do you remember the tenants who took up a petition to get rid of you? How about the ones who put dead chickens in front of your door and put a curse on you? What about the schizophrenic who told you, "I am the mafia king and you will be my mafia queen?" Or the resident who told you he would kill you so many times, your employer hired a bodyguard? How many of you have had sugar put in your gas tank or been threatened by teenage gangs?

These are just some of my memories from the last nine years as an apartment manager. I'm sure some of you can relate to them.

The only thing that keeps me in the business is the memories I have of the tenants I've been able to help or who have taught me something valuable. I've enjoyed listening to the elderly tenants who are so wise and caring. I remember an elderly woman who never had any children and had no one to talk to when she was dying. I had visited her in the hospital the night before she died and, at 3:00 a.m., I heard her in my dreams telling me that "heaven was a beautiful place." That morning, I called the hospital and they said she started getting worse about 3:00 a.m. and died later that day.

As an apartment manager, I have worked to help those who deserve to be helped. If I have succeeded, it is because I've had many of the same experiences. I've been a single parent for the last 17 years. I've been with-out lights, had no groceries, married the wife beater, worked two jobs or more to support my children, and had serious medical problems with my children and myself I always wondered why I was going through all this because I had always tried to live right. It was many years later that I realized that these experiences helped me relate to my tenants. It's easy to sympathize with someone, but we all respond better to someone who has been there.

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These are my memories as an apartment manager. I'll hold onto the good ones and try to let the other ones go. Those of you who have good apartment managers, hold on to them. Maybe now you'll realize what they go through to keep your communities safe.

Donna Yates, ARM[R], is the property manager at Macon Properties in Georgia and has been chairman of the ARM Committee for Chapter 68 for the past four years.