A Toledo mother walked over to the garage at the home she had been renting before work one morning last week and found two people already there. The pair, she said, were polite enough despite being strangers. They told her they’d just needed somewhere to charge their phones and somewhere to stay.
How did they get in there, and why did they feel welcome enough to stay?
According to 13abc Action News, the renter, Lori Johnson, has lived in the home on Woodmont Road in Toledo with her family for nearly four years. Since the day she moved in, she said, the garage door hasn’t been able to fully close. The incident with the strangers, she said, was the first time the broken garage door had become a safety issue rather than an inconvenience.
Johnson installed security cameras around the property after the encounter. She said she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about what might have happened if her children had been the ones to find the strangers first. She’s also begun thinking about moving out.
That option, she said, is complicated. She doesn’t want to rush out of the home into something that could potentially be worse. Her landlord, meanwhile, said she’s asked Johnson to address certain cleanliness issues at the home before repairs to the garage door can be made.
The Garage Door That Won’t Close
From the time Johnson moved into her rental home, she says the garage door hasn’t been able to fully close. What had been an ongoing inconvenience for most of that time became a safety concern after the encounter with the two strangers, she said. She also attests that she feels unsettled by the incident.
She also said she doesn’t know what the two people might have been carrying with them when she walked up to the garage. Despite her attempts at making herself feel a bit better about the situation, the garage door issue remains unresolved. Johnson admits she feels trapped in the home until she can find somewhere safer, but doesn’t want to make a hurried move that could end up being worse.
What’s the Next Move?
Johnson’s landlord has allegedly come forward, saying that workers who have been sent to rectify the garage situation and others have told her they were uncomfortable going into the home to do work. They gave no further explanation about the state of the home. It seems Johnson and her landlord are at an impasse for now.
But that doesn’t mean strangers can make a home in her garage because it’s open. It remains to be seen how the situation will be handled in the future. There doesn’t appear to be a concrete solution at present from either Johnson or her landlord. It seems Johnson will either need to respond to requests to improve her home’s cleanliness or the landlord will have to perform the needed garage maintenance, or both parties will end up suffering.