Housingcare

Man, I cannot figure out this new housing director we have in town.  He called a meeting of the town council and got his proposal rammed through late at night and the next morning we woke up to it.  It is supposed to get rid of a few homeless people roaming our streets.  What it says is that it has now become mandatory for anyone found after sundown who doesn’t own a home in our city to rent a house.  Well, at first that sounded good to me, since I am a landlord and it sure looked like things would be rented up more.  But then he kept delaying the definition of sundown so that now it is 3 am.  And he has granted 27,000 exemptions for homeless people he liked and drinking buddies who frequent bars until the wee hours. 

     Then he was going to double the number of poor who get Housing Assistance.  But the state doesn’t know anything about this and they refuse to go along with the scheme.  So a lot of people are required to get housing but can’t afford it.  And they get fined $95 if they have no house. Then he issued a decree that people could “speak for” my properties but pay nothing if they found a house on his website.  So about half my houses have received no payment but are sitting empty and locked up.  He told the renters if they liked their house they could keep it but then mysteriously gave eviction notices to half the renters in town.

    And then we find out that each home must have certain amenities.  Every house must have a TV.  An Amish family objected.  The Little Sisters of the Poor had to subscribe to the Playboy channel.  Every fridge had to have a meat dish and the vegans filed suit. 

    Meanwhile all the other landlords are retiring, closing their practices, or boarding up their properties.  If you aren’t part of a large landlord consortium, you can’t get paid rents.  But if you join, you may never see your own houses.  Everybody is put in a pool.  You get calls to fix a roof or plunge a toilet in another landlord’s rental. Last week I had to go feed a pit bull 3 times daily while a family was on vacation. 

   And meanwhile we got more homeless people milling around the streets than ever before.

    The other day someone lamented, “What can we do? What would the founders of our town do?”  I just nodded and said we could storm city hall, demand an impeachment.  The Founders would be shooting by now.