I wish I could take you all with me on a trip to the Enchanted World of Property Management. Just for a day. It’s a wild ride. Like a suburban safari through the land of insanity.
Today I would like to introduce you to someone we simply refer to as Crazypants.
Crazypants came to live in the community where our office is about six years ago. He’s an older dude who was actually TAKING his MEDS at that time. He purchased a medium sized mobile home from us and moved into it. All was quiet for a while, while agoraphobia was his gig.
He got over the agoraphobia.
Things started to appear in Crazypants’ yard. Pallets of cinderblocks, for example. No one knew what he was doing with them and frankly I’m not sure we’ve ever found out. At least, not yet. Then there was the collection of wood pallets. And garbage.
He recently told a judge (yeah, there’s a judge involved) that we need tolerate his behavior because we knew of his psychiatric condition when he moved in. Sure! We absolutely did! And we gave him the home anyway because we don’t discriminate!
This does not mean it’s okay to march over to the office periodically and yell things at us like, “I’m going to kill you all!” or “I’ll eat your grandchildren!”
It does not make it okay to erect a TENT practically the same size as your trailer on the lawn and move someone into it – yeah, there’s even a port-a-potty in that tent.
It doesn’t make it okay to disconnect your own septic connection and dig a trench in the yard because you’re afraid the FBI is getting DNA samples from your septic.
Oh, but now WE’RE the BAD guys for filing that eviction. We’re the crooks who are stealing this man’s home. There’s no stealing going on – he owns the mobile home, the company owns the land it’s on. The name Mobile Home suggests mobility. Easy enough transport that sucker somewhere else, which he’s welcome to do. Or he can sell it to someone else and have done with it. But we’re the crooks, and the tyrants because we’ve warned him over the last two years to clean that mess up and the mess has grown instead. We gave him sixty days and when he didn’t do anything in those sixty days we went to court. The court granted the eviction and now we’re just waiting to see what he does because that time is just about up.
All I know is that when I make my weekly trip to the office I make sure I’m packing.
Tracy Petry 