FAMOUS CITYSCAPE Constructed by God 2020
The day before Thanksgiving on 25 November 2020 we we’re scheduled for a yearly inspection. It’s always the day before Thanksgiving. Don’t ask me why, except to disrupt poor people the day before a holiday. Make life miserable for the tenants, so they’ll get a job and get out from under the thumb of the government.
The yearly inspection is different from all the others throughout the year, the others being done mostly by banking institutions, but other entities inspect too; we never really know for sure who they are, plus pest inspections and treatments. They enter whether you’re home or not and spray everything. They claim it’s organic, like organically grown produce, so it’s safe. No it isn’t. Biological weapons, even when used in small amounts are not safe.
Complete strangers entering and going through the apartment, looking more at what’s in it than structural features. Breathing on and touching whatever they want.
In eleven years, not once has any inspection resulted in an actual repair or change in anything. I don’t know who passed the laws stating that if I live in affordable housing I have to give up my privacy and civil rights by allowing inspections by people I don’t know and who never, even when asked, show identification or wear a name tag with their institution’s name on it. I still don’t know who they are. That’s the way they want it – everybody in public or senior housing under their control.
I pay full rent because I was here before the building went public and Steve has a job. But even if I didn’t, what right does any landlord have to impose inspections? Inspections of what? One leasing agent said they were housekeeping inspections. What?? You mean when I rent an apartment the landlord/lady can enter at will and inspect the premises to check if I’m cleaning my apartment? What constitutes clean? Who passes these laws and why aren’t all renters, no matter if they get government assistance or not, subject to the same inspections?
It’s dictatorial, controlling, treating tenants as if the landowners, property owners, property management companies and the government own them. Like slaves. They know what’s best for us? No they don’t.
When you accept public assistance, meaning low rent housing for seniors, then you relinquish your rights to a bunch of leasing agents. It needs to stop.
With all those inspections (and some people count them and the number is high) there still was a massive bedbug problem, a massive cockroach and mice problem. So how do those inspections violating my privacy rights make anybody more safe, more clean or better control the pests? They don’t.
The bankers always say the same thing, that they choose random apartments to be inspected, but after being here so long I know that’s a flat out lie. They want to see who the new tenants are. Yet even so, that has not deterred drug dealers, prostitution and sex and child trafficking from profiting within this building.
What do they do in buildings that are not public housing? Drugs prostitution, and sex slaves are okay?
If no one inspects for that, then why all the inspections?
Why should I have my privacy rights infringed upon just because I’m poor? All these inspections say to me is that the government thinks I’m a criminal and they are within their rights to deny me my civil rights. If they don’t think I’m a criminal, then why check my apartment several times a year? For housekeeping?? Their inspections don’t stop the hoarders. So what’s the point?
There is no point. Where are democrats on this? I thought they supported people’s civil rights? Who writes the laws that suspend the civil rights of tenants when they rent an apartment in a building where some tenants’ get rent subsidies?
Because it has always been that way is no excuse, nor a valid reason. Just like that I get my rights swiped away, because I can’t afford more expensive housing, and even then this apartment isn’t cheap. But that’s not the point is it?
Let it be known that I am always here for an inspection. Always. And I’m always prepared. Always. They always say the same thing; we’re entering whether you’re home or not.
We’ve gone through many leasing agents, assistant managers, and maintenance personnel. My husband and I always make it clear to a new person that no one enters unless one of us is here. They always argue that they have the right to enter. We argue back that we have a dog who is a member of our family and no one is to enter the apartment when Lilly Belle is home alone.
They still argue and I personally have gone to lengths for eleven years to assure that didn’t happen. It still did on occasion and the leasing agent who bragged about it was quickly gone.
However, because we couldn’t trust management to stay out of our apartment when we are not there and Lilly is home alone, we had an alarm system installed.
So the day before Thanksgiving I’m all set for the inspection. I call the office the day before and the leasing agent confirmed the inspection. It was between 10:30 AM and 12:00 PM. Frankly I was surprised that they were going ahead with inspections given that Ohio was in a semi-lockdown status for 21 days because of severe spikes in corona/covid-19 virus in the state. Governor Mike DeWine is incessantly telling the people of Ohio to take personal responsibility and measures to stay safe. So why would I want anyone trapesing through every room I inhabit, spilling their respiratory droplets everywhere?
Who would care about inspections under those circumstances? What could they possibly find?
We all have access to an outside maintenance line should we need a repair. The office has continually told us not to contact them for repairs or anything else. In fact, they tell us not to contact authorities outside the building either, unless it involves FIRE, FLOOD or BLOOD.
I waited and waited, even waited till 3:00 PM, thinking they arrived late as they sometimes do. Finally Steve called the office and asked if they had come and gone, even though this inspection wasn’t random and they were supposed to inspect everybody. They said no, they never showed up. I have no idea who she meant by ‘they’, since I thought this was an in-house inspection.
Fine. What can you do? She said it was cancelled and they would reschedule later after the holiday.
My day is already shot. This is how they operate. Many times they’ll begin an inspection and it will last till 5 PM or longer and if you don’t want strangers going through your apartment while you’re not there, then you need to take the day off and stay home and wait for them. I do that, every time.
Thanksgiving is over.
Management is required by law to give a 24 hour notice before entering the apartment. They rarely do; it’s more like 15 hours, and sometimes not that. They didn’t show up on 25 November as scheduled.
On Monday 30 November I get up early, Steve goes to work, and I decide to rearrange the furniture, some of it in each room, for wheelchair access. I often think about safety and now that we’re all going to die from this virus or get very sick with side effects that can affect the nervous system and because we’re old I figure one of us might end up in a wheelchair as a result.
I’m thinking ahead. Better to prepare the apartment now while we both can still walk, than to wait and not have that access and not be able to move furniture at will to gain that access.
So I begin the process, slowly, methodically, trying to arrange a lot of furniture in a small space in rooms that are not typically sized or shaped, since the original building was all efficiency apartments that were remade into one and two bedrooms from the existing structure, so nothing looks like you might expect. We have an air-circulating system that takes up almost the length of an entire wall half way up.
I’ve got the entire place turned upside down, huffing and puffing to the movement of all of it, still doing it though, committed to the process for the desired result, when I hear what sounds like a small tap on the door. I’m also cleaning behind everything once again as I expose new surfaces as well as ‘spackling’ the blemishes on the wall where I once taped something and it removed the paint when I took it off.
I go to the door. Look through the hole, see the maintenance guy.
I walk over a few items, push a few others out of the way, open the door slightly and say, “I didn’t call for a repair” (even so, when maintenance has you on the schedule for a repair that they got from the maintenance hot line recording, they’re supposed to call you before showing up). I could have been in the shower. If I didn’t answer he would assume no one was home and enter at will. If I had a gun and he startled me in my own home, I could have shot his fuckin’ head off.
Remember, this is my home as long as I pay rent.
What’s with the tiny tap on the door? If I hadn’t been in the area or had the television on I never would have heard it and he would have entered. Most seniors are hard of hearing and I’m no exception, so it makes no sense to tiny-tap a door.
He mumbles something that I could barely hear, so I told him I couldn’t hear what he said, and something came out like, ‘I’m here for the inspection’. I’m immediately wondering why no 24 hour notice. I ask and he says you already got a notice last time, and he just stayed there, so I told him to wait while I made a path for him and he came in and did the inspection. Alone.
- Note that there is always supposed to be a member from the staff with the inspector, so why is he alone?
Before he left he told me I’d have to remove “all that” as he made a sweeping gesture at the window where I built a cityscape as a piece of art. He said I can’t have anything in front of the window, the same in the bedroom. I have a treadmill upright in front of the windows where there is an outlet. He said I’d have to move it. The inspector won’t allow it and he’ll yell at you for it.
He left.
I don’t know when these other outside inspectors are coming in, but if the way it was handled with the in-house inspector is any indication, they might just show up unannounced and force their way into my apartment whether I’m home or not.
The last time there were 7 people at one time in my apartment getting ready for the big inspection, but nothing was ever done. No repairs made. All they did was look around. One guy from Michigan said they were having several layers of inspectors to make sure no one missed anything.
When the big day came, the main inspector came in with a computer and began taking pictures. I was livid. Didn’t ask, didn’t warn me in advance, just did it. Steve was sleeping in the bedroom because he was working nights at the time. The inspector opened the door without knocking, looked around, walked around the bed, then left, shutting the door. Then after doing another room suddenly bolted back to Steve’s room, flew open the door and none of us could get there quick enough to see what he was photographing – something he forgot. So what? They know in advance what to photograph, that they forget and then remember? I was livid again. I still am.
During the corona/covid-19 virus outbreak I think it should be my decision if and who I allow in my living space. Steve has heart failure. He was hospitalized 7 times for 3-4 days each time over 3 months and just recently returned to work. I don’t want any humans besides us in this apartment. Yet, I don’t have that right. Why? The governor tells the citizens of Ohio to self-protect, yet when they try to, someone who has the authority to evict you – 3 months to vacate – barges into my living space without notice to do an inspection.
A few days later I received another notice saying that a resident was diagnosed with COVID-19. It was addressed 11/30/20. It is supposedly the first in the building.
In reading it I could not tell if it was a form letter issued by the parent company or by the management staff of this building. It stated clearly that:
- Management is requiring impacted staff to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Due to the fact that a staff member was in my apartment inspecting it on or about the day the notice was typed or copied, I wanted to know if he was one of the staff under self-quarantine.
In the print-out it states that 15 minutes of close contact is required to catch the virus. THAT I did not know. Why?
With all that’s out there in the media why did I not see that 15 minute rule?
That’s a serious claim.
The office denied that any staff member was under self-quarantine. She didn’t know why that was in the letter and said that they had done 13 versions of it.
Why are leasing agents, a social worker and 2 maintenance people drawing up policy regarding COVID-19?
My concern was whether I had come in contact with this mystery person, who evidently has privacy rights that I don’t, because the office said they would not release the name for privacy reasons.
How about taking pictures against my will inside my apartment, even in my closets? To me that’s in violation of search and seizure rules protected under the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Cameras can be and should be considered instruments of search and seizure, no matter what the offending parties claim the information is being used for, or what third parties it is being transmitted to. Write it down, take notes. Keep your cameras out of my living space.
They’re protected by law. Why?
Why is no one trying to trace the exposure history of this resident? Maybe they never leave the apartment. Maybe the health care aides are passing it to whomever they come in close contact with. On the elevator? Mask down from nose as most of them do.
Why do I have to let possibly infected inspectors into my space when it is not essential, but this known infected person can infect the whole building and all they say to us is to self-quarantine. Everybody? Two hundred maybe people?
There are too many gaffes and too little facts being disseminated.
So, I made our apartment wheelchair accessible, at least the smaller chairs, not the huge motorized ones. I also took down our famous cityscape – famous to us.
We live on the lake side of the building, facing north, which means we don’t get direct sunlight in any room.
I formed an art piece of colored water in bottles and built what we later called ‘the cityscape’. I made it secure so it would be difficult to knock it over, even when opening the windows, which we often do to get fresh air into the dwelling. Though we didn’t have sun, we had light that passed through the colored glass making a beautiful sight – like a perpetual rainbow. It became a sun substitute. It made us happy whenever we looked at it.
Now it’s gone. The government must claim to own my windows and own me and own the floor and window plans to my apartment – that I pay to live in.
The inspector also told me I could have nothing in front of the breaker panel box. I explained that nothing was in the way of opening fully the box – I made sure of that. There was no obstruction. It’s right inside the door with a little table under it for COVID-19 sanitizer supplies. We use it as we enter from the outside. But the inspector says, according to this maintenance guy, that he wants nothing in front of it.
So this inspector aka government approved person has power over my furniture arrangement. The government regards my windows on the seventh floor as exits that firefighters need unfettered access to when they come in.
What are they going to do, jump out the window? What that means is on one entire side of my apartment in every room except the bathroom I can have no furniture. That’s impossible without dumping my furniture.
Nothing that happened here in this short article was for my own good, as management always claims. I decide what’s for my own good, not a bunch of leasing agents, maintenance people and banking representatives who all claim their actions are sanctioned by the USA government. Who made them my power of attorney?
I protest. Yes, a protest of one. Every person needs to count. Stop treating us like inanimate objects and standardizing us with statistics.
CITYSCAPE. ALL GONE. SAD.
Our sun and rainbow that made us happy is gone.
The government took it from us. Now it looks like a funeral parlor. That’s what they all want – for poor people to just die. They keep telling us we’re dying, and to protect ourselves, then they allow strangers into our apartments. Potentially carrying the virus in every apartment they enter. I wonder how many other apartments were inspected by the same person?
Instead of living in a place full of life and light, I live in a funeral parlor per order of the USA government who wants unfettered access to the windows on the 7th floor. Next step, the grave.
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