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somevestrit · 4 years

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Currently losing my mind

So I live in this really old really not well kept up with duplex that’s got a lot of issues. Some are aesthetic like shoddy paint jobs, tons of wholes in the walls from the last tenant hanging stuff and neither them nor my landlord filling them in, bits of the popcorn ceiling in my bathroom and bedroom (it’s a one bedroom duplex) have fallen off (sometimes falling on me while I’m in bed asleep). But then other stuff way more important is at issue, like how there’s a leak that causes water to collect in the vent above my bed which causes that one (1) of three (3) patches to falll, the fact that I have two broken windows that don’t lock (one of which is large enough and low enough to the ground someone can easily climb in through the outside if they knew it was broken. I have done so a couple of times), also also the lock on my front door is broken so for about a year it didn’t lock and I had to rely entirely on the glass screen door for protection (I have since had a friend over who broke it in a different way so that it now just doesn’t open, which is annoying but more safe).

When I told my landlord about the door and the windows as they were more obvious danger issues, and the water damage at the time wasn’t nearly as bad, she told me she’d have to think about what to do. A week later she told me she was selling the house. I stayed during the selling of the house because the place was so run down there was no way my rent would go up that much, and I hoped whoever bought it would fix the obvious issues.

The person who bought it did not do an inspection and was very surprised and upset when I asked her if she was going to be fixing the broken door and window if I stayed. She said there was no way for her to start making a profit if she fixed them so she wouldn’t.

I started looking for somewhere safer to live, but pre-COVID rent was stupid high every where around me. I make well over minimum wage here, and I didn’t have any student loans and just paid basic bills and insurance, but even with that I couldn’t get approved for an apartment in an area that was run down or dangerous. And I desperately wanted a place that wasn’t falling apart around me at this point.

I went back to my landlord to ask if I could stay for now while I figured out my finances so I could afford to move out. At first she said it was fine, but after coming in for an inspection of some kind, she “found out” I had a cat and that they didn’t allow animals in their rentals. The first thing you see when you walk in through the side door is a huge litter box (I have two cats and my litter box comes with a lid I always put on when people are coming over so they don’t have to see anything going on in there). She had visited the house before she bought it. She knew I had at least one cat. She also knew I had been living there for about two years before she bought it so at this point if there was going to be any damage done from the cats, it was already done. So I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why she was suddenly bringing it up and telling me I had to get out.

Knowing it was legal for her to do this, I started desperately trying to figure something out. I was looking for rental houses in lower income areas and I had applied for an apartment at a place I had lived at before and the building was fairly new and fairly cheap, but places were going fast and there was a wait list. I told her I was waiting on the apartment, but a couple of months went by, including the projected date they’d have a space open for me, and I still didn’t have an apartment.

My landlord was ok with waiting at first, but then she had someone lined up to come in after me. There was one month where she was telling me I was selfish and putting everyone in a bad spot because I hadn’t moved out yet, that I was inconveniencing people. My last landlord (someone I used to be close to) had told this woman that I barely made any money, that I just didn’t have a lot saved up. My current landlord thought I was poor, but was trying to kick me out.

But wait, it gets worse.

Towards the end of that month I am half packed, getting ready to move into my friend’s place while I waited for an apartment to come available for me to move into or to find somewhere else because it was becoming obvious she wouldn’t let me stay another month even if I had nowhere to go. Towards the end of the month, however, she told me the people who were going to move in after me no longer needed the place, and I was welcome to stay if I wanted to.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but figured I should take her up on her offer because the rent would still be much cheaper at my current place and I could work on getting a better paying job in the mean time. She still refused the fix anything and was raising my rent $200, well more than the place was worth, but I didn’t have much better options.

For this some context on this next part, my neighbors on the other side of my duplex, who are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, one of them actually works at the store owned and run by the new landlord. So, sometimes when I’d pass them in the driveway or something I’d hear bits of information from them that my landlord hadn’t bothered to tell me.

Like how when it looked like I was moving out, my landlord had apparently told my neighbor that she was planning on replacing all of the windows and some of the doors. I was pissed, but at the time thought I’d be moving out soon so decided not to let it bother me too much.

Then, after we started working through me actually staying and her working on sending me a lease to sign for a year, there was a night when I was talking to my neighbors. I had the front door open as at this point my friend hadn’t rebroken it to never open, and my neighbors could see inside my house to the mess of packing I had done and had yet to undo because I wasn’t sure if my landlord was going to change her mind or not. My neighbors asked how the unpacking was going and told them that I hadn’t started yet because I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to get to stay. My neighbor waved her hand and said “Oh, her daughter bought a house so they don’t need it anymore.”

They told me about how my landlord’s daughter and her family were moving back to the area and needed a place to crash while they looked for a house to buy, and my landlord was planning on letting them use my place.

Based on that, apparently the only problem was that I was already here and wanting to stay, but the good news was that I didn’t have a lease so they could kick me out whenever they wanted to, all they needed was an excuse and having a pet worked. The could force me out so they didn’t have to share a house anymore.

This landlord thought that I was poor.

Livid, but feeling a bit more secure with a lease now and, again, not really having any better options I stayed. I stayed for a year and they came and looked at the water damage once but fixed nothing. Not the water damage, which the ceiling still gets wet every time it rains, not the windows, not the front door. Nothing.

Knowing I didn’t want to stay another year, I decided I was going to use my savings and buy a house. I had inherited quite a bit of money recently and decided I wasn’t going to deal with landlords anymore, that I was going to live somewhere where I knew if something was broken and was dangerous to me, it would get fixed. I let my landlord know that I would not be renewing the lease. She was fine with that. A few minutes later, she asked if she could send someone in a few days to measure some windows and doors.

The moment I told this woman I was leaving, she decided to fix the things that were putting my life in danger. The thing she refused to fix because “she wouldn’t make a profit off the house” if she did.

I don’t know how else to interpret that other than a big “fuck you” for not getting out of my home when she wanted me to because her daughter’s family needed a place to crash for a month while they bought a house. I don’t know how else to take this except punishment. My friend said she probably knew she couldn’t rent the place out again with it being the way it is. I don’t know how long she would have waited to fix anything, if she ever would have gotten around to it, if I resigned the lease.

Fuck. Landlords.

FUCK. LANDLORDS.

I am lucky that I had friends who were willing and able to take me in when it looked like I was about to be kicked out. I am lucky (in a way) that I happened to inherit enough money to help me get out of this situation. I’m so inexplicably angry over what she did to me, but I also can’t stop thinking about what might have happened if I didn’t have any of those fall backs, if I was as poor as she thought I was.

I repeat: FUCK LANDLORDS

#rent #landlords #landlord #disgusting #eat the rich #classism #unjust #fuck landlords

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treehugginglibrarian · 4 years

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You Don’t Get to Kill My Friends

There are 2,234 students in the South Butler County Public School District, encompassing the middle and high schools I went to, and the elementary schools that feed into them. Assuming an outbreak in the school district would infect roughly 80% of the district, and a fatality rate of .05% for children, the school district will lose nine children to COVID. If it turns out that the speculation regarding children's mortality rates- that they are artificially low because children were some of the first to go into quarantine and, unlike adults, haven't had to leave it yet- you can up the number of dead kids to 16.

There are 147 teachers, give or take, in SBCSD right now. Assuming a 1.5% mortality rate to account for the fact that some of those teachers are over the age of 60 and others have underlying health conditions, we'll assume we'll lose two teachers to this disease if the district reopens as normal.

Why the interest in this school district? Because a lot of my high school classmates never left the area, which means their kids are now in the same school district we graduated from. A lot of those same high school classmates really "need" schools to open next month. Their kids really "need" schools to open next month.

So, which children are you ready to sacrifice? Which two teachers are you ready to sacrifice? Baring in mind, of course, that many of the teachers most at risk are ones that taught us when we were students there. If you can't provide the names of 9-16 students and 2 teachers that you're ready, and willing, to lose to this virus, I don't think the fact that you "need" schools to reopen is particularly relevant. If you're not ready to have a sincere conversation about the sacrifice of students and teachers, because that is what will happen, for the sake of your convenience, you're not ready for schools to reopen. Full stop.

You don't need schools to reopen, you want them to because you want your kids out of the house. You want to deal with your Zoom calls in silence, you want to have your afternoon glass of wine, and in some cases you may actually need to physically go back to work. Absolutely no one owes you their life so that you can go back to work, though. In telling teachers they have to take your kids, in person, you're effectively telling them their lives are worth less than your job.

Your kids don't need schools to reopen, either. They may want them to reopen, but I guarantee that once they see what school will be like if it's going to actually be safe enough to reopen and prevent an 80% infection rate, they'll lose interest. No congregating in the hallways to talk. No working together in groups. No reading time on the floor. School will really just be an instructor overseeing what has, more recently, been overseen by a parent or a computer, but with other kids in the same room. Kids they cannot really talk to, cannot play with, cannot get close to. Is that really what your kids want? Because I don't think it is. Your kids want what existed in March, pre-quarantine, and that's solidly living in the "not a fucking option" territory. Particularly if y’all keep screaming about how masks are a violation of your freedoms or some such nonsense.

People keeping talking about schools reopening like it's a hard conversation to have, except it's not. They cannot reopen yet. The end. I don't care if it's inconvenient because parents need childcare. I don't care if it sets kids back. I don't care that parents are tired. Teachers and administrators are not sacrificial lambs to be dedicated at the altar of your convenience. It's not a school district’s job to figure out your childcare crisis and, when they can't, willingly sacrifice their educators just so you can go back to work. If the job is that important, find a way to figure it out that doesn't involve the spread of a possible deadly disease. Educational benchmarks can be shifted as necessary, to ensure kids ultimately learn what they need to when they need to, once it is safe to do. Parenting is an exhausting job, which is why so many of us (at least 45% of women of child baring age) have noped the fuck out of that shit. No one owes your child their life just because you're fucking exhausted from the execution of a conscious choice you made.

This isn’t a difficult conversation at all. Either you’re on the side of “no teacher should have to die to do a thankless job they’re not paid enough for just because parents are cranky and need free childcare,” or you’re the selfish prat who thinks that risking those teachers lives is worth it. There is no middle ground here. You can argue about single parents, you can argue about roofs over heads, you can argue about kids needing food, blah blah blah, NO. Those are ALL the same fucking argument- that teachers are childcare providers who should be forced to do their jobs under hazardous conditions so that parents of their students will stop being inconvenienced. Educators do not owe this nation their lives. They already give you, and your children, significantly more than either of you probably realize. You do not get to demand they risk their health, and the health of their family, to make your own life easier. That’s a bridge way too fucking far and, yes, it is the COVID hill I will happily slay your ass upon.

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