I’ve mentioned the family I’d let into an empty house I bought to satisfy some property concerns. I’d owned the ground on three sides of the house and lot, and didn’t want it sold to someone who’d complain about the pre-existing use of the surrounding property.
That’s a common occurrence in rural areas. After people move here from the city, they frequently want to get rid of nearby business or agricultural activities that reduce their property values. Oddly, they don’t complain before they purchase, knowing that the price has been discounted by the surrounding use. Eliminating, for instance, an adjacent pig farm greatly increases the value of the property they were only able to afford because the pig farm was there when they bought it.
I didn’t plan on renting the house because the septic system was broken. But, when I was told about the family with five children living in their car, I let them move in “temporarily”. Between the wife’s job and the husband’s welfare/disability payments, they had an income of 60-70,000/year. The move into my house was supposed to be “very short-term”, until the “deal they were working on” came through to get their own house. They agreed to pay 900.00/month in rent that I soon reduced to 700.00. They made an initial, and only, 700.00 payment beginning in the four months they were there. Their presence in the house, immediately reported to the local Sewage Enforcement Officer, caused the spending of $8,0000.00 to fix the septic tank that otherwise would have just left alone for the coming year.
When they made no further payments in the following months, I realized they were taking advantage. “Listen, pay me the 700 a month for the next couple of months, find a place, move out by Thanksgiving, and I’ll give you the rent you’ve paid me back to you for a deposit on your next place. That’s the only way you’ll ever accumulate enough for a first month’s rent and a security deposit.” They agreed. But, even knowing they’d get the money back, they were unable to choose to divert even a tenth of their income to honor the rent commitments to which they’d agreed.
After a couple of months of lies and evasions, I explained to them: “I don’t mind being nice, but I cannot, in good conscience, let you use me to set an example for your children of how to go through life taking advantage of people.” They were honest enough to agree with that conclusion, but still could not discipline their spending enough to pay even a tenth of their income in rent.
I had to go through a magistrate and an eviction process that cost $2,000.00. Between the heating oil they used and did not pay for, along with cleaning up the huge mess they, their three cats, two dogs, and pair of cockatoos made, legal fees, and the unpaid rent, I was out between four and five thousand dollars. Plus, of course, the cost of the septic tank repairs.
One of their five children was a boy of 17, a personable, but helpless kid whom they basically abandoned. He ended up moving in with my daughter and her two children. She was recovering from a major operation. The boy was too much of a strain on their meager resources, and had to live somewhere else. He would arrive at other kids’ houses, and stay until their parents would force him to leave after a few days or a week. It was a horrible life. I couldn’t let him live with me, in my house, where I live alone. His older brothers could not be stopped from visiting him when I was at work. The likelihood that they would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down to support their alleged drug habits was a bigger risk than I could take.
Yesterday, our extremely personable and hard-working Deacon gave the homily at Church. I hadn’t realized how far to the left some of his political positions were. In his sermon, he encouraged all of us American citizens to “open our borders” so that we prosperous Americans could do “our Christian duty to take care of the world’s homeless”. Not sure if he included those who truly believe that they’ll get into Heaven by killing us Christians in the groups he’d allow in, but my guess is that answer would be in the affirmative.
He is a very nice man, a retired public school teacher from a big city. As such, I’d guess his pension is close to a hundred thousand a year. “Wow!”, I said to myself. “He is just the person to take care of this poor, lost child!”
I emailed him, reminded him of how his sermon enthusiastically encouraged us to take responsibility for the world’s homeless, and asked him when we could drop this fine, young, homeless man off at his house.
