Cottage Report

I live in a cottage behind a house in Berkeley. This document is a record of the incidents related to living here. It was created in response to the property owner harassing us.

Network connectivity
Part of our rental agreement is that we have internet connectivity. This has been an ongoing issue, since the WAP and modem are in the front house, and over the approximately three years we've lived here, we have frequently been unable to connect to the local network. There is also a physical cable running from the front house to the cottage, installed in the first half of 2013. The idea was that I would purchase a WAP to put at the end that terminates in the cottage. However, I ended up getting a wifi booster that worked well enough, so I never bought anything to connect to the end of the cable. Of the ten devices we use to connect to the internet, only my laptop has an ethernet port.

If the physical cable didn't work, I had discussed with the property owner of having a company run a line back to the cottage for its own service, and in the past had mentioned a local ISP called Unwired, which uses radio. I have mentioned that it was worth it to me for my work to pay for my own service.

Confrontation, Sunday, July 14
In the two weeks leading up to Sunday, July 14th, at least once a day I was having to restart the WAP in order to restore internet connectivity. The wireless would be working, so I would log into the admin panel and restart it. A few times I had to go up to the front and ask someone there to intervene when that didn't work.

On Friday I wrote:

"We don't have net access at home. Please troubleshoot when you can."

The reply:

"I won't be back for a couple hours but will check when I get there."

Later that evening I confirmed that it was working again. I decided that I was going to go ahead with the Unwired folks, since I really needed to be able to connect for my work. Saturday, at 4:08PM I wrote this message to the property owner:

I haven't seen you around, so here is a query. I want to have the folks at Unwired (http://unwiredltd.com) come out and see if they can get line of sight to one of their towers. They send someone out to test it first, then they attach a device to the building, and run a line inside (I was going to have them use the existing hole that the cat cable is using).

I figured you would want to be here for that. Please tell me when you can be available, and I will schedule them to come out.

The reply came later that evening, but I didn't read it until the next morning:

"Yes I do want to be there for it and won't be around until Monday night."

I responded at 1:21PM on Sunday:

[name], you speak to me normally and respectfully, but I get a different sense from your email. I was asking for when you would be available. I will presume that you need to return home Monday night to figure that; please tell me when you are available once you've checked your schedule.

I began writing a response to an issue for one of my clients, and finished writing it directly after the confrontation, and that was at 1:46PM, I estimate that it happened about 20 minutes after I sent that last message.

The property owner come out the back of the house into the yard where our cottage is. E began yelling my name, but was getting closer so I thought e was getting my attention. I was sitting with my back to the door, and Susan and Clover were on the floor playing behind me. Our door was open, and the property owner walked just inside our home and proceeded to yell at me. I didn't catch anything e said, my first response was to ask em to leave my house. I followed em outside and e proceeded to yell at me on various topics that included:


 * me grunting at em
 * ignoring em in front of other people
 * me having emotional issues (and specifically in the last three months)
 * me being passive aggressive
 * something about me yelling at Susan when e was holding Clover's hand in the garden (I didn't understand, so I may have misheard)
 * how e wasn't going to pay for an internet service as it was included in the rent
 * e repeated multiple times that it was their yard too
 * e rhetorically asked if e should not go to the funeral and instead be there for the ISP visit I had emailed em about
 * e repeated a few times at the end that e was done being nice to me

After this e went into eir house.

It was a frightening and intimidating experience. I went back inside the cottage and our family left to walk around and think about what had happened.

The next day I had to work at a client's site, and on Tuesday I had to be in Oakland. I came back to Berkeley around 3:30PM and went to report this to the Berkeley Police, but their window was closed. I documented that experience at http://interi.org/2013/07/police-reports-are-complicated/. With my current workload I will be unable to wait an indeterminate amount of time to make a report on the unlawful entry into my home and the harassment against my family, so I am putting here instead, for reference.