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[TorchTheWitch]

71. at first I was thinking more of a novel

I've always been good at creative writing even as a young kid as long as I had an assigned theme or subject to start with anyway. It's the bit about coming up with an original story that wasn't something I'd actually read before and didn't realize it until later. I just never seemed to be able to come up with an original story idea on my own.

It was the mess with the district court and the township code enforcement office that it suddenly dawned on me that this just can't be only me. There had to have been loads of people that went through that system that were run over as well but unlike me had no idea their rights and the law were being bulldozed. And this is hardly the worst township. This is a money area where the citizens insist on a good well paid police department, fire stations, school system, roads, etc., so in most other places it's probably even worse. Maybe even a million times worse.

Then I started thinking what if I was a senior citizen or disabled or just didn't happen to be particularly smart? This situation would be a million times worse for someone not like me who is intelligent, healthy, what I call a "young" 50 years old, I've got no children to have to be concerned about (ok, there's Yoshi who's like a hairy son to me, but he's still a dog rather than a human child), I have no one but me and my dog to care for, I've got a car (such as it is) and capable of doing any number of kinds of jobs since I've had experience in lots of things.

And then there's the totally innocent people like neighbors who aren't personally involved with a slumlord situation themselves but can be just as badly effected by it. I live in a row house so I share walls with the neighbors on either side of me. Because this ceiling leak has been going on forever that I had no idea about until it busted through the ceiling has been causing water damage in my next door neighbor's house for years but have had no better luck than I have in making my landlord fix it. They own that house, so their damages are on them to pay for, yet they may be just as effected by mold as I am... mold can creep in where ever it wants to. They aren't poor, but they aren't well-off either, and they have no connection whatsoever to my landlord but are being so badly effected by her negligence. Because they own their house they're in no position to just pull up stakes and leave. They would have to sell the place first, and they certainly couldn't do that with the water damage and heaven forbid they've got mold from the leak in here as well.

There's also the plumber who my landlord slandered all over the place during both hearings. His business depends on his good reputation since that's how he gets more business. He's also stuck between a rock and a hard place because though my landlord is causing him problems with the terrible things she said about him in court (and hearings in the district court aren't private... all the other people scheduled for a hearing in their own cases sit in the same room and just wait for their turn before the judge), yet he still wants to be the one to do the repairs in here because it makes him money.

You don't even have to be poor either though certainly it's a hell of a lot worse if you are. Until I lost my job I WASN'T poor. It just turned into a nightmare trying to get another job for the first time in my entire adult life. All the way along I knew that if I didn't pay her the full amount of the rent on time she'd evict me. Even if I decided to put the rent into escrow to try to force her to fix things she'd still evict me or at least try to. If I could have just gotten a bloody job, none of this would have happened. With something like 75% of the country's population being one or two paychecks away from disaster and the horrible lack of decent paying jobs anymore, this could happen to huge swathes of renters poor or not.

Even what I've found out about the landlord/tenant laws are just jaw dropping teeth gnashing horrible. According to the law as long as the tenant occupies the property regardless if it's a ruin or they're being harassed by the landlord, etc. they're still required to pay the rent every month and on time. That's why even with the appeal I still have to keep paying the rent as long as I'm still here, but at least now it goes into escrow and paid to the court so my landlord isn't getting so much as a penny to do with as she will. And when she gets the notice about my appeal and finds this out she's going to be fit to be tied and piss rings around herself.

So, now I'm really thinking that if I were ever to write a book it really should be a factual non-fiction thing.

Oh boy, I think that's the sun I just saw peeking out! We've had days and days of wet, cold, and just miserable weather it's been feeling like winter all over again.