Being poor or on the verge of being homeless isn’t something that’s easy to explain unless you’ve been there firsthand – but if you try, you can probably imagine how scary and stressful it is.
Especially if you’re a kid losing the only home you’ve ever known.
OP lived in a rough neighborhood that wasn’t always kind to him, but it was his – and there were good people there.
To set the stage, I used to live in a big but not huge city, let’s call it palmville. I lived near the corner of a dense suburb nestled between overstuffed apartment buildings, a river that smelled like diesel when at low tide, and two busy highways.
I was a minority in this neighborhood and I caught a lot of heat for it, people didn’t really like white people there, but enough of our neighbors were accepting of us that aside from a few disagreements between families and the beatings that came with them I didn’t feel like I was in danger when leaving my home.
It was a rough neighborhood, but it was my home, and it protected its own.
The Community Center was like a temple, and…let’s call her A.M. was the priestess.
In our neighborhood she was respected like a living deity, and her calm and understanding reflected her status. I never once saw her behave without a strong moral code.
His family’s first landlord was a sweet lady, but when she died and her sons sold the properties, their new landlord was nothing of the sort.
And the final piece to set this stage, our former landlord. Short asian lady in all the stereotypical ways, kind and sweet. Our house was above my parent’s pay grade and she knew it.
She went out of her way to find house repair and maintenance jobs for tenants that were having money problems. She’d pay them by taking chunks out of their rent, often times a bit larger than how much the work they did was worth.
Looking back, that was probably illegal, but that’s irrelevant because she died. The circumstances surrounding her death were suspect, but none of the suspects play a part in this story so there’s no need to go into detail on it.
Her sons, who wanted nothing to do with real-estate, took over the business. They couldn’t make heads or tails of how she managed to float books with so much red in them and began dumping properties, ours was on that list.
I harbor no ill-will towards them, and still wish them the best, but the guy who bought the house…enter the sociopath and today’s victim.
No matter what they did, his family couldn’t get ahead.
This guy wasted no time in making our lives miserable. His first action was to raise the rent.
Apparently when the account changed hands, he was allowed to update the rent to modern pricing. We’d been there for several years and were paying below market even from the onset, so this was a huge blow by itself.
The second blow came when he said that the rent had to be ready, in full, on the first of every month, no partial payments, no work to reduce it, no extensions.
Full rent on the first of the month or an eviction notice on the second.
This was hemorrhaging our savings, but we were surviving for the moment.
When a neighborhood revitalization began to happen, the new owner made it his mission to get them evicted.
Meanwhile, A.M. had lobbied hard for the city to co-fund a revival project to renovate the entire aging suburb and she succeeded.
One street at a time had conga lines of work trucks almost every day and people were getting old leaky pipes replaced, sinkholes in yards patched, fences repaired, paint renewed, it was an amazing thing, and an enticing thing for The Sociopath.
Being at the corner of the neighborhood, our house was on the last street on the list, and Sociopath wanted us out so he could relist the house after renovation. He never said this directly, but multiple conversations made his intent clear even for 10 year old me.
Random inspections, overhyping of minor problems with the house, even so far as trying to bring us up on completely false animal abuse charges because our cat was attacked by what we believe was a raccoon and he tried to claim we did it, yeah, because a vet can’t figure out the difference between knife wounds and a mauling.
OP and his parents moved away but one brother stayed behind.
We read the writing on the wall and began preparations to move. We decided to move in with my oldest brother in a place I’ll call banjoland.
Most of us had moved except my other brother, who stayed behind because he still had a lot of social ties in Palmville and his new job meant if he cut corners, he could keep paying sociopath’s inflated bills.
Then his time was up, too.
Well, despite his best efforts, he came up $20 short one month and sociopath jumped on it.
He had 30 days.
We made the 400 mile trip from Banjoland to Palmville to get the rest of our stuff and I can’t say as I approved of my brother’s living conditions, but I guess that’s beside the point.
The month passed rather uneventfully, I guess Sociopath figured he’d won so there was no need to burn the gas to drive out and gloat.
The neighborhood had learned what was going on and that was the first time I’d ever been back in that neighborhood where I didn’t get a single callout, a single glare, a single racist remark.
Everybody behaved reverently. It was kind of disturbing in all honesty. I guess people in lower incomes all know what eviction means and felt like I was having a bad enough time already.
Well, 20 days later he says it’s time to leave.
We still had a week left, but it didn’t matter, we didn’t have the money to try fighting it with a lawyer. A.M. descended from the heavens and bought us a couple extra days, but it was evident he really really wanted us out, possibly because the work trucks were now one street away.
The last time I ever saw the house I grew up in, workmen were throwing my childhood possessions into a large bin when we supposedly still had three days left to leave.
Everything that follows is a collection of information I got through the grapevine and phone calls with people present at the events.
Immediately, Sociopath moved into the house himself. Why you may ask? People who owned the homes they were living in were getting the full cost of renovations comped by the city.
He figured that by moving in himself, he’d be able to get this house he bought at liquidation price renovated for free and flip it.
They might have had to leave, but thanks to the neighborhood benefactor, the new owner wouldn’t get everything he wanted.
A.M. was having none of it.
She explained to him that at the time the revival project was approved, that house was a rental lot, and they can’t change the budget now.
She then explained to him that the partial cost coverage that had been approved for the lot was in our name, not his, and he wasn’t eligible for partial cost comping either.
He’d have to pay every penny himself, and since the entire neighborhood was getting a facelift, he was required to at least renovate the exterior, otherwise she’d see the house condemned as an eyesore or dilapidated or whatever the legal term is.
He went really cheap on the renovations, basically put in new carpets and a coat of paint, this would later come to bite him in the rear.
In fact, he wouldn’t get anything he wanted.
He then began trying to sell the house in earnest. The neighborhood remembered what he’d done.
There were vandalisms when nobody was there, and loud noises from the neighbors when people were there to look the house over, and anytime a prospective buyer asked around, they got the full stinkeye from anybody they talked to.
They made sure he simply couldn’t get that house sold at market value.
After three months of this, he lowered the listing price. Then a month later he lowered it again and finally got a bite. A.M. personally made sure he had to file every. single. piece. of paperwork before it changed hands.
Every single part of the house had to be inspected thoroughly.
And that’s when Karma herself caught up with him. In his hasty and cheap renovations, he’d somehow damaged the pipes.
Black. Mold.
Including the house itself.
A.M. remembered how he’d treated us and she decided to pay him back in kind.
I never heard how exactly she pulled it off, but she managed to delay him getting the news about the black mold being discovered for several days, long enough that by time he did get the news he didn’t have enough time left to try getting it cleaned or make a last ditch effort to save the house.
The house was condemned days later.
In their final act, A.M. and members of the neighborhood filed every single complaint and injunction they could and arranged for him to be compelled by the city to demolish the house immediately. A cost he had to pay out of his own pocket.
He tried to destroy a family and broke laws just to make some quick cash, and instead was left fighting a year long legal battle and ended up losing thousands.
The neighborhood remembers. The neighborhood punishes.
Sometime the perfect story really does come along.
The top comment says this is one of their favorite comments ever.
The neighborhood knows.
It’s a feeling of satisfaction that’s hard to find.
You’ve gotta respect a good neighborhood.
Anger it at your own risk.
There was something so satisfying about this one.
Although I wish we could go back in time and help the kids involved before the trauma happened at all.
Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2024/01/their-landlord-threw-them-out-without-notice-so-their-neighborhood-made-sure-he-paid/