Managing commercial and apartment buildings affords property managers unique insight into human activity unlike any other portal.
We see people at their best, at their worst, and in the everyday aspects of their lives.
After almost three decades in the property management business, I thought I’d seen it all until recently when I toured an apartment complex that I was considering managing and watched as a young boy and his playmate pedaled their bikes through a waft of marijuana smoke coming from a neighbor’s unit.
They skidded to a stop as if they’d both stumbled into a crime scene.
The joy of their play now ripped from their faces, they began planning what to say to their moms when they came home smelling like weed.
“My mom is going to kill me” said one.
“It’s all over me” said the other.
Their neighbor, also out enjoying a sunny day on his first floor patio, lifted his head up sort of acknowledging the scene he’d created, then went right back to take another hit.
This is the new reality of the loosened marijuana laws laid upon ordinary lives in apartment buildings and dense neighborhoods. Weed and weed smoke seems to be everywhere now.
Unlike cigarette smoke or the inviting smell of a barbecue, people still have a reaction to marijuana smoke. Estimates are that 15 percent of apartment dwellers in the state of Washington regularly use marijuana.
This predictably affects children and parents especially.
How do the boys convince their parents they were just riding through the apartment complex and not smoking pot themselves?
There’s no way to shed the unique smell of pot when it’s on your clothes, after all.
The fear on their faces was as real as if they’d witnessed a murder.
Complain as their parents might to management, landlord’s hands are tied in the absence of a lease agreement that prohibits the use of marijuana in apartment units. It’s the law now and people are just exercising their rights.
Where this settles in is still hard to see just yet. After all, pot smokers aren’t all characters from a Cheech &Chong movie.
They’re school teachers, grocery store clerks and software engineers.
Like other forms of freedom, they will need to find a sweet spot between exercising their new rights and courteousness extended to their neighbors and others.
In the meantime, parents might have to get used to their children coming home from a bike ride offering the blended smell of marijuana and barbecue as an ordinary part of apartment living.
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