ext_59375 ([identity profile] which-chick.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] which_chick 2007-02-08 12:01 pm (UTC)

There are about sixty apartments. (An exact total would take more brainpower than I can currently assemble.) Of the apartments, approximately two are inhabited by troublesome tenants at any one time. We try to get rid of the troublesome tenants in fairly short order because they upset our other tenants.

Rather a lot of our tenants are poor. Mostly they are not *troublesome* -- they aren't trashing the places, they aren't selling drugs, they aren't having disturbances that upset the neighbors. If anything, they sometimes are late with the rent because the transmission went out on their car or they had to pay the water before it got shut off or they got laid off and haven't gotten a paycheck from the new job yet or they haven't gotten their child support check this month or they spent the rent money on fuel oil. This does not make them bad people. They aren't *bad people*, they're *poor people*. There is a difference. Poverty is not a moral failing.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting