Short rant: Another popular littering season.

[ReluctanceTango]

17. Hate to say this

But roadside garbage always goes up whenever apartments go into an area where they were rare before.

One of the post offices where I worked was tucked into a neighborhood of upper middle class houses. Then an apartment complex went into the lot right behind us. Within two months of occupancy, they had more garbage in the road around them than we did--when we dealt with literally tons of paper on a daily basis.

Same thing happened north of my house. We had a middle school go in there, and nothing much changed--Roadside garbage remained the way it had for all the years before the school. Sure, we'd see some notebook paper blowing around sometimes that we hadn't before, but not all that often.

Then apartments went in, and the garbage is more prevalent. The city stays on top of it, for the most part, but they can't be everywhere at once.

Our city council district used to always vote for candidates who promised to restrict building new apartments here. It was nearly impossible to find an apartment in the area. What few complexes there were had high occupancy rates and unusually low turnover. Waiting lists were years long. Lots of complaints about it, but the local residents wouldn't budge on allowing more apartments. Things changed only when the Silent Generation and older Boomers started dying off in higher numbers.

But now I sorta understand why they resisted having apartments up here. The garbage and traffic congestion we now have are no fun, that's for sure.