which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2007-02-07 09:56 pm
which_chick) wrote2007-02-07 09:56 pm
(no subject)
Postings here lately have been tenant heavy. Sorry about that. I could, if you prefer, go on and on about how Light being handcuffed to L in volume 5 of the manga does really good things for my fangirl mojo. Wanna hear about that instead?
1. When you show up to look at the apartment and say, "I've got a Caseworker with Children and Youth and I need an apartment so that I can get my daughter back," that does not inspire confidence in me. Contrary to the urban legends believed by persons inhabiting the upper and middle classes in this country, Children and Youth Services is so totally overwhelmed with real cases of child neglect/endangerment/abuse that they only take your kids away if you have been horribly, horribly bad. Honestly, they're too busy trying to save kids from parents or caregivers who criminally ignore them, beat them, starve them, abuse them, or fuck them to chase after middle-class parents who are ten minutes late picking up their tots from daycare.
(On-the-ball readers will note that I just *had* a tenant who fled into the dark of night following an attempt to get her kids back from CnY (see post here). I don't know why ex-Tenant lost her kids in the first place but I do know that when she rented from us last spring (end of March), she looked clean -- she had white trashy, bleached blonde hair and bone structure straight out of the coal mines of West Virginia, but she had color in her cheeks and they weren't all sunken-in. Until about the end of November, she held things together pretty well -- the apartment was clean, the kids got fed, she answered the door in a reasonable timeframe. After that, everything went to hell. I do not *know* that she started back on the drugs on or about the middle of November, but that's the way I'd bet. I know that we just *did* a "My Caseworker says I have to get an apartment so that I can get my kids back from Children and Youth" post. Well. We're doing another one.)
2. The fact that you have multiple facial piercings (and so does your boyfriend, who showed up today in an armless t-shirt despite the fact that it was ELEVEN FUCKING DEGREES OUTSIDE, with a windchill of MINUS EIGHT), that does not say to me We Are Trendy Young Urban Hipsters. It says We Are Addicts.
3. When I have asked you where you are currently living, the correct answer is not I am homeless.
4. When you state happily that you do not need to see the downstairs apartment because you knew the guy that used to live there, that does not particularly count in your favor either, since he is no longer living there because he got arrested for being a fucking heroin dealer.
The really sad thing about this? I will probably rent her the damn apartment. She's currently in tolerable shape, carrying good weight, looks reasonably healthy. (People who are using drugs like heroin or meth on a regular basis look like utter hell. Their self-care goes south and they don't eat much of anything.) She has a CnY caseworker, whose name we are going to ask for. (We can't deny her the apartment if she refuses to give it, but she doesn't know that.) I am tired of thawing out the fucking pipes there and I'd like someone else to be paying the heat. I need two months until heating season is mostly over. I think I can tolerate her for that long.
1. When you show up to look at the apartment and say, "I've got a Caseworker with Children and Youth and I need an apartment so that I can get my daughter back," that does not inspire confidence in me. Contrary to the urban legends believed by persons inhabiting the upper and middle classes in this country, Children and Youth Services is so totally overwhelmed with real cases of child neglect/endangerment/abuse that they only take your kids away if you have been horribly, horribly bad. Honestly, they're too busy trying to save kids from parents or caregivers who criminally ignore them, beat them, starve them, abuse them, or fuck them to chase after middle-class parents who are ten minutes late picking up their tots from daycare.
(On-the-ball readers will note that I just *had* a tenant who fled into the dark of night following an attempt to get her kids back from CnY (see post here). I don't know why ex-Tenant lost her kids in the first place but I do know that when she rented from us last spring (end of March), she looked clean -- she had white trashy, bleached blonde hair and bone structure straight out of the coal mines of West Virginia, but she had color in her cheeks and they weren't all sunken-in. Until about the end of November, she held things together pretty well -- the apartment was clean, the kids got fed, she answered the door in a reasonable timeframe. After that, everything went to hell. I do not *know* that she started back on the drugs on or about the middle of November, but that's the way I'd bet. I know that we just *did* a "My Caseworker says I have to get an apartment so that I can get my kids back from Children and Youth" post. Well. We're doing another one.)
2. The fact that you have multiple facial piercings (and so does your boyfriend, who showed up today in an armless t-shirt despite the fact that it was ELEVEN FUCKING DEGREES OUTSIDE, with a windchill of MINUS EIGHT), that does not say to me We Are Trendy Young Urban Hipsters. It says We Are Addicts.
3. When I have asked you where you are currently living, the correct answer is not I am homeless.
4. When you state happily that you do not need to see the downstairs apartment because you knew the guy that used to live there, that does not particularly count in your favor either, since he is no longer living there because he got arrested for being a fucking heroin dealer.
The really sad thing about this? I will probably rent her the damn apartment. She's currently in tolerable shape, carrying good weight, looks reasonably healthy. (People who are using drugs like heroin or meth on a regular basis look like utter hell. Their self-care goes south and they don't eat much of anything.) She has a CnY caseworker, whose name we are going to ask for. (We can't deny her the apartment if she refuses to give it, but she doesn't know that.) I am tired of thawing out the fucking pipes there and I'd like someone else to be paying the heat. I need two months until heating season is mostly over. I think I can tolerate her for that long.
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How many non-troublesome tenants do you have for each heroin dealer?
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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.
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Yes, I was reminded of the fact that it's the bad ones that everybody knows about. You *always* hear about the horrible teachers (especially right now in Allentown), and rarely about the good ones.
That sort of thing.