My neighbor knocked at our door this afternoon, and asked me to look at an apartment upstairs. They are transforming the apartment into a group rental suite.
What is Group Rental
It is like shared rooms – many people share the same apartment to lower the cost. But it is not exactly shared room. It is a very professional business. It transfers some good apartment into a new type of suite – separate the rooms into several independent rooms and rent it out separately. The biggest difference between group rental and shared room is, either the number of people living in the room (low end group rental), or the change of the house structure (high end group rental).
Low End Group Rental
The low end group rental is pretty obvious: they put 20 beds into one apartment, and there are 4-8 people living in the double deck room which was originally designed for one person. That is very annoying and cause security and fire risks to the building and other residents.
High End Group Rental
I have visited one pretty high end group rental. It is located in a top residential area, and it is a normal suite from outside. But when you enters, there is a long hall way, and there are 3 secure doors on the right, and two on the left. It is that type of door used for external doors – robbery proof and noisy proof. Each tenant has two keys: one for the external public door, and one for the private door.
On the left, if you open a box, there are five separate water meter, and electricity meter.
For the rooms, every room is equipped with bed, TV set (with satellite!), network cable, micro-wave, and a shower room. Due to the constrain of the original house, they share the same rest room.
The cost for such a room is about 1000 RMB.
I was very impressed when I saw this. Think about the value of 1000 RMB! It is like a residential suite with everything you need as a single, and it enjoys the same view and service as other residents in the top residential area (look at the big grassland downstairs).
The Problem
The benefits for the tenant, and owner of such property are obvious. Cheap but good place to stay, and higher return than renting the whole out to one tenant. It just needs some professional work.
The problem is for the neighbors. What if there are a lot of people living in the same area designed for households? They change all the time, and they are more like party guys, and they by pass all the security checks – tend to leave all the doors open since they don’t have enough door passes.
It brings additional burden to the building, and cause all kinds of risks that a residential area shouldn’t face.
My Naughty Neighbor
So, back to my story. When we found it out, the room was under construction. Workers are shipping many security doors, many hot water machines into the room. It is obvious that all the stuff were used. I guess they were just kicked from another residential area.
Many neighbors gathered, and wanted to do something. Then, the problem is, what can we do?
I described this dilemma in another article . Without a working legal system, everything is within the same government/party system, and you have to keep your finger crossed to have a “good person” handling the case.
The property management company obviously don’t know what they should do. They said they will report to “the above”. That’s it, and I don’t have any hope about what they do.
Then I called 962121, the hot-line by the government to solve this type of complain. They promised 15 days to call back. I have kept the tracking number.
What will happen? I don’t know. The first thing I thought about was to sue them. But, Hmm… “Suing? Are you joking?”
My Recent Thoughts
I am aware that I started to complain more than few years ago. I acknowledge the change, since the more I interact with this society, the harder I feel to get things done. Not just me – I think many people face the same problem. For small stuff like this, I tried to use my own way to solve it, although I know a better solution is call my friend in the government – Hmmm. I don’t like to do it that way. But for really big things like getting my son into a kindergarten, who knows what I will do?
In a twisted and weird society, you just cannot say, “I will do anything for my son”, or “I will do anything for my principle”, because you find yourself in a strange position when the two conflicts.