Chaudywogbaaga

"Home Sweet Home." The cry of a person returning to their cherished shelter. What if they only rent that home? I remember liking some of my apartments when I was renting but there's something different going on in mind of the renter in urban areas. I've been doing handyman work and some of my business comes from repairing apartments after a tenant moves out or is evicted.

I see some horrible things done to beautiful one hundred year old homes and hear more from people I work with.

I often think "Why would someone do this?" when seeing the damage done by renters. I could understand if someone trashed an apartment after finding out they were being evicted out of retribution but that's usually not what happens. Sometimes damage is done out of ignorance and I can understand that. A lot of the time the damage is out of laziness. Again, I can somewhat understand that to an extent but the scale of the laziness is absurd. Piles on piles of garbage heaped on the carpet, thick layers of food and grease spattered on walls and floors to the point where we stop trying to clean it off and just encapsulate it in another layer of flooring and paint.

Even more bizarre are tenants that are evicted but continue to act as if the police weren't coming to remove them from the property. They know they're being evicted but make no move to get their belongings out of the apartment. They get evicted and then they have to pick their things off the curb when the owner has them cleaned out of the apartment. Many times I imagine this is because they have no where to take their things to.

In the end, it's not malice that leads them to destroy the place they're living in. It's an acute inability to plan or imagine the future. They seem to lack the ability to set their current circumstances up to benefit themselves in the future. Everything they do is to benefit themselves NOW.

The people that are in this situation are almost invariably on the low end of the income scale. I makes me wonder why. Being economically disadvantaged does not mean you have to live in squalor. Soap, water and elbow grease would improve the living conditions of people greatly.

Maybe they think "Why bother cleaning, I'll be in a different place in a month or two." That shows blatant disregard for the future. One it makes their rent go up because of poor references. Two it makes security deposits go up because everyone is thinking the same way. Three it impacts their quality of life now while they're living that way. Four it reduces the quality of available apartments because the landlord is out a few months rent and now needs to repair the place. They won't be spending a lot to do so. They  say "Just get it livable."

It wasn't always like this. Look at the old tenements that the immigrants lived in at the turn of the century. The wives of the factory workers struggled to keep them clean. They kept them clean though. I remember being told over and over again by many different people that it was almost  a matter of life and death that I keep my apartment clean and in good shape. What changed? I don't think that is being told to renters today by their community. They get that message from the landlord but that's not the same. My grandmother would be disappointed in me if she found out I left a mess in an apartment.

Come to think of it, I hear less and less from grandparents these days. I hear less and less direction from parents these days. Youth culture has made it unpopular to tell young people what to do or how to do things. A disposable society has made it easy to throw away even big things, like apartments. So it would seem like a lack of basic education in how to live that has lead people to this state. This isn't college stuff, this is basic living skills that used to be handed down by parents and grandparents. Those messages have been co-opted by messages that say to only pay attention to the now.