Housing Hell (long, multi-part)

[Cooper]

Part 1:

Just before the housing bubble, my parents were house-flippers. They bought the house next door, and flipped it. (It was owned by a hoarder, animals, electronics, clothes, everything. She was a very lovely woman who was like a 3rd grandmother to me, but her house was almost inhumane to live in, making the house super-cheap to begin with.) We lived there during that time, and it was a pretty nice place.

While we lived there, we rented the house next door, which was known as The Lighthouse due to my mother's fondness of lighthouses. (the lamps were lighthouses, the counters had lighthouses, and so did the wallpaper.) It was a weekly rental, primarily used during the summer. Being next door made cleaning it very easy.

By the time the recession was in full swing, my parents ended up with:
1 property, 2 liveable buildings: The Lighthouse, and a one-room (not one bedroom, one room. The bathroom walls don't fully go up to the ceiling) apartment above the garage.
1 property, 2 buildings: The garage was sold to my grandmother shortly after this, and she turned it into a 3 bedroom house. She lived up there until she moved out with her boyfriend, and rents the place full-time. The other building was called the Brown House (renamed Yellow House, after the siding was changed.)
1 property, 1 building: This was half-owned by my other grandmother, as her summer home.
1 business: The marina I work at now. It has a house on top, a storage lot at least a mile long, a workshop, and the main building. This is half-owned by my uncle.

As you can tell, at the time, my father was making a ton of money. (He designed factories, factory lines, and cars for the military. The cars were designed to be IED proof.) He worked upwards of 70 hours a week, and often slept in his car he worked such late nights.

It was decided the best thing we could do with all the vacant buildings we had were to rent them, to hopefully cover the mortgage and taxes for them until we could sell them.

Unfortunately, we didn't vet our renters.

[Cooper]

Part 2: The Yellow House

I have a huge family. My father was the youngest of seven, and each member of the family had at least two kids. The second-eldest member of the family hit a run of bad-luck from day one. She is a lovely woman, and I loved her as a kid for her tendency to take toys that my sister and I had lost, and use them as decoration. She has a wicked sense of humour, an infectious laugh, and a lovely smile. We'll call her D.

D married an alcoholic, and had 3 kids to him. Two girls, and a boy. The alcoholic was an outwardly-nice man, but was often very disparaging of D, and expected her to have dinner on the table when he got home from his job, despite the fact that she worked too. She eventually gathered up the courage to divorce him.

The kids kept his name, she changed hers back.

The eldest daughter, Ji, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She is either not taking medication, or her condition isn't managed by medication very well. She has been in a feud with the family for so long, the last time I saw her eldest kid was when he was just learning to walk. (He turned 13 this year, from what I hear.)

The youngest daughter, Ju, became a very capable and cheerful woman. She's extremely nice, and a lot like her mother.

The middle child, son Jo, was the problem child. (Even compared to Ji.) Jo got addicted to heroin, and lost everything. He seemed to be a perpetual screw-up. Never able to hold down a job, never able to quit drugs

Jo, during one of his more stable periods, approached my father. He explained to my father that he always dreamed of living on the lake, like his mother does. He had a girlfriend who was training to be an RN, and life seemed to be looking up to him. Mom and I didn't trust him, but my father seemed to empathize with him. He rented Jo and his girlfriend The Yellow House.

]b]Part 3: The Loft[/b]

My grandfather had been living in The Loft, the place above the Lighthouse's garage. He had a heart attack just before he moved, and he had a maximum of 5 years before his pacemaker was expected to give out. (From what I understand.) When he died, the loft was empty for about two years.

Part of this was grief, but the other part was that my grandfather had two indoor-outdoor cats, and he had such a bad flea problem, that I stepped in there once, and stepped out with fleas up to my ankles. Never looked back.

Aunt D had a boyfriend that made her very happy. He had hit some hard times in his life, but he was very, very good to her. Nothing like her ex-husband had been. We were all happy for her.

Aunt D had asked, on behalf of a friend of her boyfriend, if we knew of any places his friend could rent for cheap. We offered him the loft, trusting Aunt D's judgement on the guy.

I hardly saw him. In fact, the first time I met him was when he was shovelling our stairs for us.
It's hard to believe that, in the end, this guy caused us more trouble than Jo ever did.

Part 1 Addendum: Goodbye overworking!

The job mentioned in part 1? My father hated it. Here's what it tended to do, to everyone:

You are discovered capable of moving one block from part a to part b in 1 hour. So they give you 2 blocks, and ask you to move them in an hour. Then they give you 5 blocks, and 4 minutes to move them.

It got to the point where he was being asked to design a plant in a day.

Dad kept up with them for a while after he bought the Marina, planning on starting his new life smart. They were going to pay off all the cards, and do everything that they could do to make the next few years easier now, before he quit.

Once he quit, it meant that if our renters didn't make the payments, we had problems. Especially as Jo's payment went straight to the mortgage company.

Oh yes, you CAN see where this is going.

My father was much happier working at the Marina full time, and I really can't blame him for giving up his job. It took too much out of him.

The scene is finally set. Let's have some drug-related fun and debauchery.

[Aethian]

*gets popcorn ready*

[Cooper]

Part 4: Renter comparison

There were some big changes going on in my life at this time. I was starting my first job, which was a combination of marina work (very tedious at the time, as I was put in charge of moving their card-based files to digital files) yard work (due to an accident in 2003, and my stubbornness and reluctance to do as the doctors asked, I have a limited lung capacity. This made any strenuous activity difficult for me) and cleaning at my mom's work (this was terrifying for me, as my anxiety had not been diagnosed, and I often had trouble keeping calm in some areas of the building.)

My biggest problems with the Loft Renter, LR, was that he left cigarette butts everywhere. I was always cleaning up after him. Then there was the somewhat selfish issue that he was doing some of my work when I wasn't around. I should have been grateful, but I felt like he was stealing money from me.

Still, LR was a VERY nice guy.

Another big change in my life was, I needed a car. My grandmother, afraid that the car I was currently driving would kill me, (another story for another day), took me to a used car lot. I took the cheapest car on the lot. But, we shopped around. One of the places we stopped at was Jo's workplace.

When asked about him, the workers gave each-other awkward looks and admitted Jo had been fired.

Jo and his girlfriend got premium coffee makers, and, they got a puppy. While it was hard to be disapproving of the puppy to the puppy, they were having trouble making their rent at this time as it was. So we were having trouble making our mortgage.

Part 5: Shit hits the fan. Yellow House Edition.

Jo's girlfriend came over in tears. She explains Jo has been arrested out-of-state for outstanding warrants, heroin possession, and driving without a license. And when he's done there, he's gonna get sent here for more warrants. She couldn't pay the rent on her own. Jo had been stealing from her for drug money, and not contributing on the rent as it was, but there was no way he'd be able to help her now.

We give her a month to find a new place. The puppy is given to a new home.

Oh, but it's not over yet.

[Cooper]

Part 6: Douchbag Bank

Well, shortly after International Day, the polish guys in that post gave my father beer. That beer was about 10x what he was used to drinking. So yes, my father got very drunk very fast.

His first thought, while being drunk, is to call the bank that mortgaged the Yellow House, American Bank.

Dad: I just wanted to let you know that we’re not going to be able to pay our mortgage this month.
AB: When will you be able to pay it?
Dad: How about never?
AB: Well can we refinance?
Dad: Unless you refinance us to zero, we can’t afford it.

We’re off to a great start.

AB calls us constantly. They call my parents at work. They call them at home. They call in the morning. They call in the night. They leave messages.

My parents discuss options with them. They are happy to short-sell in the summer, when the house has a chance of actually selling. They are also happy to just give them back the deed, which is considered an option. (Deed in lieu.)

Every time my parents agree to do this, they are asked to send paperwork. They do. It gets to the point where they’ve sent the paperwork for both options multiple times.

It’s now fall.

Dad’s tactic of dealing with horrible customer service is to ram them like a bull. He’s very disdainful of bad customer service, because he’s had to work in quality management, so his job was to fix problems so they wouldn't happen again.

He tries this with AB, but nothing happens. We’re still running in circles.

Eventually, AB forcefully takes the property that we were working so hard just to give back to them.

That house ended up selling for much less than it was worth to a family member of a co-worker, who ripped all the floors out, only to disturb asbestos. So…. Yeah.

Part 7: Shit hits the fan: Loft edition

It’s almost 11 at night, back in July. My parents have gone to bed, and I’m still up, watching TV in the living room. There is a knock on the door.

Surprised that there’s someone there this late, I approach the door and answer it, to greet two police officers. Note that at this time, I’m 17.

They ask about LR, and I say that he’s a very nice guy, never had any problems with him. They keep talking to me like I’m the leaseholder of the loft, and the owner of the three story, three bedroom, lake-adjacent Lighthouse. I haltingly say I’m going to get my parents.

I listen in from the top of the stairs. They believe LR has been using the loft to produce and sell meth. They searched the loft, interrogated LR and his girlfriend until 3 in the morning, booked him on not paying child support, and took him in. There was no actual proof he was making meth, except for circumstantial evidence. (Like having bleach around.)

We were dubious. LR didn’t act like he was on meth. LR’s visitors were all at least vaguely known by us, and there was a limited amount of them. Plus, we could smell meth if he was producing it, right?

That’s what the neighbours thought.

[Sapphire Silk]

LR might have been doing a "Bake and Shake" operation, making meth in 2 liter soda bottles. The bottles are then tossed after the meth is removed an dried out.

[Tama]

I imagine doing the bottle thing might also spare the maker from the unpleasant lung-related side-effects too.

[Pimento]

Even using the one bottle method meth production is pretty messy and the chemicals used make a smell like you wouldn't believe especially when combined. Probably just a nosey neighbor during the big anti meth kick

[bankworking]

any more to the story?

[Cooper]

Part 8: Nosy Neighbors

We aren’t on good terms with our neighbors down the road. We have three that are problems.

HC (H’s children.) H was an eccentric man. He met my family while he was shooting muskrats in the morning. He was very nice, very helpful, and generally fun to be around. When he died, his son and wife moved in, and they were very much the same way. Until his wife got cancer. I remember seeing HC’s wife when she was dealing with it, as when I was that age, I rode my bike frequently, but we didn’t have our own pumps, so I’d often have to ask the neighbors. H would happily pump up my bike, but I didn’t know he’d died when I went to ask him that year.

When his wife got cancer, she got mean. He did too. For example, when I was bringing a few of our rental boats home, all three boats stopped running. I couldn’t get any one of them to work. I ended up floating towards their dock. Seeing this, I went up to the front of the boat, and stuck my foot out, so my foot would catch the dock.

Their response was not to come help the girl clearly WAY in over her head, but to call my father screaming that I was about to touch their dock.

They were two doors down from the lighthouse.

2: The gay couple: Two doors down from my other grandmother’s house. The gay thing is only important for two reasons: 1, that local ordinances that are used against us later could have been used against them, so we had hoped we would have been offered more sympathy by them, and 2, that it’s the most distinctive feature about them.

The younger one is a very nice guy. His sister brings her kids over, and he always brings a bouncy house or something like that for them. The older one is the problem one.

3: Next door to GC, there is the archetypical nosy neighbor. The best way to spread news is through NN, and she’s always happy to stick her nose in your business. For example, the night my grandpa died, she called us to see what the ambulance at our house was about.

NN teams up with either GC or HC (the theory is HC) against us. We know this for two reasons. The first is that, the way our street is shaped, it is impossible for her to see our house through GC’s house, or the three other houses in-between. Meanwhile, GC and HC both have tall enough houses and direct views of us. Secondly, NN was still friends with one of my grandparents, and admitted somebody was watching us.

That’s right. It’s a home-owners-association conspiracy, people. I can’t make this up.

Part 9: Police visits and literal-condemnation

We also rented out our dock. When our dock renters parked there, NN called the police. The police came by to visit because there was a ‘white van’ in our driveway. We listed all the people who had right to be there that had a white van, and that was that.

LR is let out of jail. Due to not being proven guilty yet, and our previous uncertainty that he was guilty to begin with, we let him back in the loft.

One of the three parties mentioned in part 8, I suspect GC due to their personal risk with this law, knew that our neighborhood was zoned as ‘family only.’ This meant that only relatives or married couples could live in the same building.

This meant our renting to LR was against zoning laws. We were given yet another visit by the police, where we were informed of this. Regrettably, we evict LR.

The police are called again when they bring their truck to move out. In what feels like retaliation for being called so many times, the Loft is condemned. (The loft was not immediately condemned, nor was it even condemned within the legal period that they could do so after LR's arrest.) Nobody is allowed to live there anymore due to it now being labeled a meth-house.

Wrap-up coming soon.

[Kagato]

That kind of BS simply isn't on if GC WAS behind it. If they force you to lose a tenant by pulling laws on you, no reason you shouldn't be able to pull the same laws right back on them. It certainly sounds like you'd be better off without them anywhere nearby.

That being said, I'd also recommend calling on the assistance of a lawyer if they did attempt to condemn your loft outside statutes of limitations. Granted it may be a stalling tactic at worst, but it may at least save you/your family from having to tear the entire thing down and rebuild it

[Gonzo]

Well the way I am reading this, this whole saga happen a few years ago so any advice at this point is probably moot. It is an entertaining story so far though

[Moirae]

Holy crap. Its like a soap opera. I would say it's time for some legal representation.

[Jay 2K Winger]

o_o Holy crapoly.

[Cooper]

Part 10: Resurgence

I’m 18 now, and decide for my mental health, I need to move out of the house. I need to be on my own, especially as my father and I are clashing quite often. The cheapest option for all of us is for me to move into the loft.

So we look at how to get it un-condemned. Knowing that just because a year has passed doesn’t mean NN is done watching us, especially because she was convinced we had to know about LR’s theoretical dealing and therefore were strung-out-drug-addicts-with-a-great-reputation, and she was the lone-savior-of-us-all-who-just-knows-we’re-terrorists or whatever, I decide to make it very clear that we are done with the police getting called because somebody sneezed in the direction of the loft.

The porch is covered with stuff. So how do I attract the most attention while still being conceivably within my rights? I throw everything off. Tables off the railing. Chairs go down the stairs. It was AWESOME. Most fun I had in my life, and very stress relieving.

Within an hour, the state police (as I guess she’d reached her quota for calling the county police on us) were at our door. They took my license and my mothers, may very well have tried to take my sister’s if she had one and my father’s if he was there, and ran them for a criminal background check. They of course, find nothing.

We explain that NN is harassing us. NN is banned from calling the police on us. Victory!

Part 11: Confirmation

We put new tiles in the place. Kilz-paint and regular paint the walls and cabinets. Wipe everything else down with bleach. We call the testing company. I am told once the testing company clears it, then I can move in by my father. I can’t wait.

It’s just a few days until we get the call.

Then, a kick to the stomach. Not only was LR manufacturing meth in there, as traces are found everywhere, but we didn’t pass on the floors. (We suspect cross contamination from the fact that we didn’t think to bleach before putting down the floors, then didn’t think to bleach the floors.)

We need to get the floors re-tested.

I am finally in the loft. I’m having my own normal sets of problems now (like an ant problem and the fact that my bunnies are unbelievably messy creatures), but nobody is accusing me of being a drug addict anymore, and I seem to have repaired my reputation within the community through my work, and rescuing a dog I found.

I have plans to replace the counters, and re-paint a few of the walls due to the fact he actually did find traces of meth, but right now, I’m just so happy to be on my own again.

We are still renting, to a very quiet military couple with kids, in my other grandmother’s vacation home.

However, this story wasn’t just about us, as you may have noticed. It was also about Aunt D. And Aunt D’s story isn’t over yet.

Aunt D’s brain tumor and life tumor

D was discovered to have a benign brain tumor when it became, well, not so benign. It was figured she was born with it.

She got an infection from the surgery, and due to this, her willingness to work with the hospital, and the community, she was not put in financial ruin by this. Talk about good-bad luck.

This puts her out of work for a year, and really knocks down her spirits.

Her boyfriend that I mentioned is also getting sicker. He worked at a place that was heavy on asbestos, and now can’t breathe properly. He has severe back-pain, so severe she has two beds, just in case he can’t make it down the stairs.

Neither one of them seem to be in any position to have sex (important I promise) so it isn’t odd to her that they aren’t having any.

But, it is odd to her that her ex-husband claims to have seen her terribly-bedridden boyfriend over by his house. So she plants a voice-activated tape recorder in her home, and catches him cheating on her.

She kicks him out. The family is split on this man, as he has been a part of her life for five years at this point. Some are willing to forgive him, but a lot just want him gone. By July (this recent one) she accepts him again. Then, catches him cheating again. She kicks him out again, and this time, he leaves the state. She sells of his things.

Last we knew of him, he said he: ‘didn’t lie anymore. He had nobody to lie to.’

Aaannd rest.