The always evil Landlord

I must have spent a good half hour screaming obscenities across the street and sometimes directly to her face and at the moment it seemed appropriate, I needed to let it out, my anger, it’d been harboring at the edge of my lips waiting to slaughter the appropriate person with ill words. And it was ever so satisfying to cuss over and over again, as if with every ill word spoken I released a bit of the dissatisfaction with humanity that I’d been carrying with me.

In hindsight I even think I’d do it all over again if the chance were to arise, of course, I imagine it’s not wise to lose one’s cool. But how can I remain cool when in spite of my efforts to be kind to others, my kindness only leaves me vulnerable to their malevolent ways. I realize now that I can no longer be kind, I also realize why so many others are unkind. You simply can’t be. Not in Real Estate, not as a landlord.

For weeks I provided the tenants in the adjacent building with free water. I felt it is was my duty and I felt I could not deny people of one of the most basic necessities. They have no water, because the building they live in was foreclosed and had had its water meter removed as well as any connection to city water. Before I was aware of the situation they had been stealing my water and even caused a pipe in the storage room to burst. They left the burst pipe to bleed water and I only found out because one of my tenants contacted me. This all occurred on the very same day I closed on the property.

The tenants living in the foreclosed building became a nuisance; I even lost a tenant because of their antics. So I capped the faucets and asked my tenants to no longer provide water when asked.

Shorty there after, I began the eviction process on one of my tenants. They hadn’t paid rent, clogged the pipes with baby wipes, were stealing power from the adjacent unit, broke the clean out pipe and were smoking pot with their one month old in the unit. Before the process could even begin, they left. The sheriff placed the notice on the door and one of the tenants in the foreclosed building took the notice, she then proceeded to threatened my cleaning lady if she went into the unit and later took her vehicle plate number because it so happened to be expired and she threatened to call the cops on her for driving around on with an expired tag. She was angry that I’d gone into the unit without letting the eviction process end, but she wasn’t aware that the tenants had left, taken their things and left me the key. She was protecting a bunch of delinquents instead of watching out for me, the one providing her with water. So why would she bite the hand that feeds her?

I arrived the next day and kindly asked her to stay out of my business and well that’s when all hell broke loose. There is no way to explain this nicely, but there is a reason they live in a foreclosed building, there is a reason she will once again be homeless. She’s nuts and although its illegal for individuals to reside in a building without water, the government will protect her right to be there and intrude in my business. As a landlord, I pay my taxes, I maintain the exterior and interior of my property, and I have worked hard to make my property a better place to live for my tenants. But in spite of doing what’s right, the cops won’t help, the government won’t either and the bank that currently owns the foreclosed property simply won’t answer my calls. The crazy lady will continue to be a plaque in the neighborhood until the justice system processes the cases against her (months, maybe years). She will continue to negatively affect my business and investment. I have no recourse other than to yell and scream, to beat her down with her dire circumstances, her meager existence, the reality of what she really is, a drug addict, a leach on society, schooled in the all ways to take advantage of the system and ignorant in every other. I don’t know what can be done with individuals like her, I don’t believe the government has quite figured out what to do about mental illness and its relation to drug use, homelessness and violence. I also don’t appreciate the way I’m treated by the government when I try to remedy this problem, treated like criminal, treated like I'm doing something wrong because I want to remove someone from a place that they are not entitled to be in. But that's right, Landlords are always Evil.