Why Do People Live Like That By Choice?

Today my father recruited me to go help him do some work at one of his rental properties. As we were driving over there, he started telling me that this particular family has him thinking about getting out of rental property. I’ve heard his stories about them before but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. We walked in the house and the first thing I wondered was where all the furniture was. This lady has been in the home for over six months. She’s getting public assistance and could get a furniture voucher, so I’m not sure why she doesn’t have any furniture. She does have beds though and nice televisions, computers and radios (not covered by a furniture voucher). Everybody doesn’t want furniture, but with the amount of company she has, she needs furniture. There's no where to sit. She doesn't have enough furniture to furnish a one bedroom apartment yet she's living in a three bedroom home. She only has a few dishes. She doesn't have anything in her living room or dining room or kitchen. Not to mention the fact that she has more people staying with her than she said she would. It’s one thing to live that way when you have to, but she doesn’t have to.

The house stinks and is utterly disgusting. There were roaches everywhere. I hate roaches, even the ones that are the size of small ants. If I saw a roach in my home, I’d probably run out and buy a lot of bug spray and fumigate my home like a madman. I freak out when I see an ant or a spider in my home, I hate to imagine how loud my reaction would be if I saw a roach. Just thinking about roaches makes my skin crawl. While we were working at the house I was looking around like a paranoid person, afraid that a roach might crawl on me, and worst of all, afraid that the roach might hitch a ride on me to my home.

We completely renovated the home before this lady moved in. She had new carpet throughout, new paint, new fixtures, new doors, new locks, new kitchen floor, new shower, new railing and a lot of other things and she and her children have done more damage in six months than the previous different tenants did over an eighteen year period. This lady and her kids don’t give a damn about anything. They had water just running, but why would they care when they’re not paying the bill? My father told me that he was there over the weekend fixing a stopped up toilet. One of them flushed a small bottle down the toilet and then they were wondering why the toilet was stopped up. Why the hell do you think it’s stopped up? And another thing, they have two toilets in the house. They stopped up one and didn’t say anything until they stopped up the other one too. Who does that? Who waits until both toilets have been messed up?

I can see why my father is about ready to get out of the rental property business. He cut this lady a break because she gave him a sob story about her previous landlord. Her previous landlord had turned off the water on her. I understand why now. My father wanted a tenant who was working but he let this lady move in because he has a heart and he felt bad for her plus he didn’t want the house to be empty for too long. He realizes now that he should have waited for a working tenant, although who’s to say the working tenant would be better? The sad part about rental property is that bad tenants come in all forms.

The lady and her family have destroyed at least one thing in every room, and more than that in many rooms. The most shocking thing they did was knock down a small wall that gave people using the toilet in the basement a little privacy. When you’re renting, you’re not even supposed to paint a wall without asking the landlord first, why would you knock down a wall? I don’t care how small the wall is, there is no excuse for that.

Sometimes I wonder how people can live certain ways. Needless to say, I won’t be going in to the rental business.

Status: Happy I have some standards.