Providing Hope Inspite of Eviction
Terence Price
July 14, 2009
Headlines for the past year have reflected the steady decline of the American economy - huge drops in the stock market by multiple hundreds of points, the appearance of tent cities (like the one in Sacramento, California), failing banks, defunct mortgage companies, bankrupt businesses, and a cascade of government bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars, to name a few, on an on the list goes. Further, events far and wide, in Europe, in Asia, in South America, as well as Australia, have shown the global repercussions of this decline; it extends well beyond America.
For many people in general, hard times are nothing new. Despite hard work, professionalism and "Protestant" work ethic many have still not gotten that piece of the American pie. Current hard times are novel for some. Could be the first time the rug has been pulled from under their feet, or the novelty may simply be in terms of degree of severity. Undoubtedly "novel" is the word for those hard workers, who paid their dues, those persons, not too long ago, who were flourishing, and yet, as the wheel turns, have still come to the dreaded – shattered plans for the future lost to the whirling turbulence of this current economic cyclone - an unpredicted, unpredictable, and unwelcomed encroachment upon their dreams and lives. For some the unimaginable has definitely occurred.
Some time ago, as I drove down the street what confronted me was a disturbing scene that I´ve seen a couple of times before. Every time I´ve seen it I´ve felt a bit of unease, and a bit of puzzlement, whose source and boundaries even till today still seems a bit undefined. The scene was furniture and clothes and other items strewn out in the wet grass along side the road. Was this garbage? Had someone piled up junk next to the road? These were all initial questions that ran through my mind. But the answer to these questions did not match their initial framing and the original assumptions of my attitude. The scene was an eviction, plain and simple; someone had been evicted from their apartment, and every item they had owned, that was within the walls of that rented space, whether they had retrieved anything or not I don´t know, was now out in the open, under the sky, exposed to the vicissitudes of the elements and the opportunism of passerby´s whom sad history has shown capable of too easily and carelessly donning the habit of thieves.
Ire can easily target landlords in such cases, see landlords as the bad guys, the black hats; after all, they are responsible for actually putting another human being, who is clearly in economic hardship, out into the open, into the urban and suburban wilderness. But landlords are in the business of renting space. I suppose "business" should be emphasized.
Argument can always be made that the apartment space has a value, a market value, defined by its rental worthiness. Could another person who can pay the rent be waiting for that space? Yes, possibly. But in many cases, it is not the force of an actual someone waiting in the wings, but more the force of a projected imaginary potential someone seen only in the calculations of a rental space´s market value that motivates evictions. This is business. But is the fact that it is business actually adequate justification? An eviction is always more than business because the parties involved are of two distinctly different classes; one is an amorphous inorganic corporate entity whose biological aspect is incidental and the other is an actual biological entity, a human being, who needs food, water, and shelter to survive. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of those areas where humanism and business acumen stand in staggering tug-of-war, though few seem to realize it. Except those who are on the receiving end of the cudgel of an eviction whose property ends up thrown next to the road, with some of it possibly turned booty in the home of a road-pirate. My central concern is not the eviction, or the landlord´s right to evict and right to market a rentable living space.
Seeing the pile of stuff in the wet grass made me remember. One day, many years ago, after I came from high school, I remember seeing an eviction scene before, in Maryland. Someone´s disheveled possessions were piled up outside. Strangers, persons I´d never seen before in the neighborhood, sauntered near the pile and quickly snatched whatever stuff they wanted, could carry, and had the expectation of getting away with "scot-free". As I stated earlier my first impression was someone had trashed the grounds. But in a few passing moments it became clear that it was an eviction. In the face of that here were people stealing from the ill-gathered pile of an evictee, people who clearly must have had some place of their own, where they could keep what they pilfered. Seeing this struck me, and made me wonder about human nature. How could a person come along, knowing another is so down to have lost their apartment, knowing the same person´s property has been cast off the premises, and add insult and injury to injury, by taking even more from them, adding their fresh contribution to the already raging piss-storm and justify it enough for pangs of conscience and self-reflective sympathy to fail to stay their hands?
People doing okay, deliberately taking the opportunity to pilfer the property of someone downtrodden, for shame! Greed and covetousness are wildly opportunistic, and while many can point to and say the problem is the fat cats of Wall Street, and for macro level stuff, that is tenable, they are only part of an expansive continuum that seems to also include the average, everyday Jane and Joe. I´m reminded of the exhortative lyrics of the late Michael Jackson´s song, ´Man in the Mirror´.
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change
It was the way in which the evictee´s property was handled, the seeming disregard, and the life encompassing ripples of the chop of the circumstantial guillotine that concern me.
The same day I saw the evicted items on the rain soaked grass a resident meeting was scheduled where I reside. When the meeting arrived I posed a question to the property manager about the procedure of evictions, especially dealing with exposure to the elements and the security of the items. I was curious about the rules that led to people´s possessions ending up treated like trash. I referred to the scene I had seen earlier.
My question was why aren´t these possessions taken to a storage area, where they can be held, in some degree of safety, at least from the elements and would-be thieves, till the person, or persons, can come back and reclaim them? It is already bad enough to lose an apartment, but then to lose so many possessions to exposure or theft.
The property manager expressed her mutual concern and took the time to briefly explain several facets of the law that apartment complexes follow respecting evictions and the duties of landlords.
Writ of Possession in Unlawful Detainer (EVICTION)
Note: Unlawful Detainer and Eviction may be considered the same for the following discussion.
(8.01 - 470 & 472 code of Virginia) The Writ of Possession in Unlawful Detainer (Eviction) is a court order authorizing the Sheriff to physically remove a person and his belongings from a premises and to return possession to the landlord. Usually the court will not issue the Writ of Possession until the appeal period has lapsed. The appeal period is ten (10) days.
Every tenant has the legal right to live in rental housing unless and until the landlord follows the legal process for eviction. The process depends on whether your rental housing is covered by the Virginia Residential Landlord Tenant Act (VRLTA).
How the property of an evicted tenant has to be placed near a road that is maintained by the county. Near the end of her explanation she indicated that an eviction only occurred after three months warning. Several tenants at the meeting, let out "ohs", as if in a eureka moment, and slightly turned to me, to express with their body language that this was the answer that made it okay.
But it was not the eviction, the force vacation of the apartment that was ever the focus of my concern. My concern was how an evictee´s property is handled, and how to insure a small modicum of security to that property out of recognition of its owner´s basic human dignity.
To The Tenant
On the day of the eviction, all property will be placed along the nearest public right of way. Should the tenant leave any pets, they may be recovered through the Local Department's Animal Control Division. If the tenant cannot be present when the eviction takes place, the tenant may want to have someone whom they can trust be there to protect their property. The Sheriff or Deputy can only ensure the safety of the tenant's property while he is there. Once the Deputy leaves, they are no longer responsible for the property.
I put an idea out there that maybe the property should be placed in storage. My proposal was met quickly with objections, albeit no proposed solutions other than "put them out" and "tough luck". One objection was if the person could not pay their rent they could not pay for storage – because storage charges. I responded, maybe they could come back in the future to reclaim their property, pay a flat fee for the storage. What surprised me was how it was not considered that the person´s fortune might change in the future to allow them to return to pay a charge for storage and regain their possessions. In fact, the idea was less than not considered; it was outright rejected, and stated so by a member of the apartment staff. It was as if, an eviction was a death-notice, a tombstone on the life-line of the evicted, a dreadful blow from which recovery was considered impossible to near impossible. At least, that is the impression I got from the statements that were made by fellow tenants and staff. Should an eviction be so fatalistic?
Why isn´t there a program that exists, a government funded program, funded mostly by the federal, then the state, and lastly local governments, and possibly a small charge to landlords, to provide both moving vehicles and storage facility for the property of evictees, possibly using the labor of prisoners, wherein evictees can be held liable for the payment of a flat fine to reclaim their possessions at some future point? But at least know there is the possibility of some future point.
This would not be a monthly charge, which is again, an entrepreneurial business activity, which is what the critic of my idea, at the tenant meeting, failed to realize, but a flat reasonable fine that merely expresses that you don´t get something for nothing. This storage could have renewable terms to a limit. When the term is completed the claimant is responsible for renewal of another term or the property goes up for auction or disposal. If and when the limit of terms is met, then the property can be reclaimed by the claimant, auctioned, or disposed, depending on its condition and value. The storage proposed is a special case, storage lifted out of the ordinary business sphere, where concerns with profit are paramount – why no monthly charge is necessary for storage.
So while there is all of this talk of bailing out corporations like car manufacturers and institutions like banks why not extend this spirit to a little display of compassion aimed at preserving the dignity of another human being hard on their luck, regardless of the turmoil their lives may currently display.
Ultimately, a safety net would be created and provided by the government, which could allow for those who may be going through a hard time to redeem their lives and keep from losing everything. In the end, that valuable rental space is restored to the landlord´s market use, as it should be, but the evictee´s property is not treated like trash.
They take cars and impound them, but chair, tables, sheets, rugs, pictures, clothes; they throw out in the rain.
Just a few ideas, surely there must be a better way?
For many people in general, hard times are nothing new. Despite hard work, professionalism and "Protestant" work ethic many have still not gotten that piece of the American pie. Current hard times are novel for some. Could be the first time the rug has been pulled from under their feet, or the novelty may simply be in terms of degree of severity. Undoubtedly "novel" is the word for those hard workers, who paid their dues, those persons, not too long ago, who were flourishing, and yet, as the wheel turns, have still come to the dreaded – shattered plans for the future lost to the whirling turbulence of this current economic cyclone - an unpredicted, unpredictable, and unwelcomed encroachment upon their dreams and lives. For some the unimaginable has definitely occurred.
Some time ago, as I drove down the street what confronted me was a disturbing scene that I´ve seen a couple of times before. Every time I´ve seen it I´ve felt a bit of unease, and a bit of puzzlement, whose source and boundaries even till today still seems a bit undefined. The scene was furniture and clothes and other items strewn out in the wet grass along side the road. Was this garbage? Had someone piled up junk next to the road? These were all initial questions that ran through my mind. But the answer to these questions did not match their initial framing and the original assumptions of my attitude. The scene was an eviction, plain and simple; someone had been evicted from their apartment, and every item they had owned, that was within the walls of that rented space, whether they had retrieved anything or not I don´t know, was now out in the open, under the sky, exposed to the vicissitudes of the elements and the opportunism of passerby´s whom sad history has shown capable of too easily and carelessly donning the habit of thieves.
Ire can easily target landlords in such cases, see landlords as the bad guys, the black hats; after all, they are responsible for actually putting another human being, who is clearly in economic hardship, out into the open, into the urban and suburban wilderness. But landlords are in the business of renting space. I suppose "business" should be emphasized.
Argument can always be made that the apartment space has a value, a market value, defined by its rental worthiness. Could another person who can pay the rent be waiting for that space? Yes, possibly. But in many cases, it is not the force of an actual someone waiting in the wings, but more the force of a projected imaginary potential someone seen only in the calculations of a rental space´s market value that motivates evictions. This is business. But is the fact that it is business actually adequate justification? An eviction is always more than business because the parties involved are of two distinctly different classes; one is an amorphous inorganic corporate entity whose biological aspect is incidental and the other is an actual biological entity, a human being, who needs food, water, and shelter to survive. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of those areas where humanism and business acumen stand in staggering tug-of-war, though few seem to realize it. Except those who are on the receiving end of the cudgel of an eviction whose property ends up thrown next to the road, with some of it possibly turned booty in the home of a road-pirate. My central concern is not the eviction, or the landlord´s right to evict and right to market a rentable living space.
Seeing the pile of stuff in the wet grass made me remember. One day, many years ago, after I came from high school, I remember seeing an eviction scene before, in Maryland. Someone´s disheveled possessions were piled up outside. Strangers, persons I´d never seen before in the neighborhood, sauntered near the pile and quickly snatched whatever stuff they wanted, could carry, and had the expectation of getting away with "scot-free". As I stated earlier my first impression was someone had trashed the grounds. But in a few passing moments it became clear that it was an eviction. In the face of that here were people stealing from the ill-gathered pile of an evictee, people who clearly must have had some place of their own, where they could keep what they pilfered. Seeing this struck me, and made me wonder about human nature. How could a person come along, knowing another is so down to have lost their apartment, knowing the same person´s property has been cast off the premises, and add insult and injury to injury, by taking even more from them, adding their fresh contribution to the already raging piss-storm and justify it enough for pangs of conscience and self-reflective sympathy to fail to stay their hands?
People doing okay, deliberately taking the opportunity to pilfer the property of someone downtrodden, for shame! Greed and covetousness are wildly opportunistic, and while many can point to and say the problem is the fat cats of Wall Street, and for macro level stuff, that is tenable, they are only part of an expansive continuum that seems to also include the average, everyday Jane and Joe. I´m reminded of the exhortative lyrics of the late Michael Jackson´s song, ´Man in the Mirror´.
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change
It was the way in which the evictee´s property was handled, the seeming disregard, and the life encompassing ripples of the chop of the circumstantial guillotine that concern me.
The same day I saw the evicted items on the rain soaked grass a resident meeting was scheduled where I reside. When the meeting arrived I posed a question to the property manager about the procedure of evictions, especially dealing with exposure to the elements and the security of the items. I was curious about the rules that led to people´s possessions ending up treated like trash. I referred to the scene I had seen earlier.
My question was why aren´t these possessions taken to a storage area, where they can be held, in some degree of safety, at least from the elements and would-be thieves, till the person, or persons, can come back and reclaim them? It is already bad enough to lose an apartment, but then to lose so many possessions to exposure or theft.
The property manager expressed her mutual concern and took the time to briefly explain several facets of the law that apartment complexes follow respecting evictions and the duties of landlords.
Writ of Possession in Unlawful Detainer (EVICTION)
Note: Unlawful Detainer and Eviction may be considered the same for the following discussion.
(8.01 - 470 & 472 code of Virginia) The Writ of Possession in Unlawful Detainer (Eviction) is a court order authorizing the Sheriff to physically remove a person and his belongings from a premises and to return possession to the landlord. Usually the court will not issue the Writ of Possession until the appeal period has lapsed. The appeal period is ten (10) days.
Every tenant has the legal right to live in rental housing unless and until the landlord follows the legal process for eviction. The process depends on whether your rental housing is covered by the Virginia Residential Landlord Tenant Act (VRLTA).
How the property of an evicted tenant has to be placed near a road that is maintained by the county. Near the end of her explanation she indicated that an eviction only occurred after three months warning. Several tenants at the meeting, let out "ohs", as if in a eureka moment, and slightly turned to me, to express with their body language that this was the answer that made it okay.
But it was not the eviction, the force vacation of the apartment that was ever the focus of my concern. My concern was how an evictee´s property is handled, and how to insure a small modicum of security to that property out of recognition of its owner´s basic human dignity.
To The Tenant
On the day of the eviction, all property will be placed along the nearest public right of way. Should the tenant leave any pets, they may be recovered through the Local Department's Animal Control Division. If the tenant cannot be present when the eviction takes place, the tenant may want to have someone whom they can trust be there to protect their property. The Sheriff or Deputy can only ensure the safety of the tenant's property while he is there. Once the Deputy leaves, they are no longer responsible for the property.
I put an idea out there that maybe the property should be placed in storage. My proposal was met quickly with objections, albeit no proposed solutions other than "put them out" and "tough luck". One objection was if the person could not pay their rent they could not pay for storage – because storage charges. I responded, maybe they could come back in the future to reclaim their property, pay a flat fee for the storage. What surprised me was how it was not considered that the person´s fortune might change in the future to allow them to return to pay a charge for storage and regain their possessions. In fact, the idea was less than not considered; it was outright rejected, and stated so by a member of the apartment staff. It was as if, an eviction was a death-notice, a tombstone on the life-line of the evicted, a dreadful blow from which recovery was considered impossible to near impossible. At least, that is the impression I got from the statements that were made by fellow tenants and staff. Should an eviction be so fatalistic?
Why isn´t there a program that exists, a government funded program, funded mostly by the federal, then the state, and lastly local governments, and possibly a small charge to landlords, to provide both moving vehicles and storage facility for the property of evictees, possibly using the labor of prisoners, wherein evictees can be held liable for the payment of a flat fine to reclaim their possessions at some future point? But at least know there is the possibility of some future point.
This would not be a monthly charge, which is again, an entrepreneurial business activity, which is what the critic of my idea, at the tenant meeting, failed to realize, but a flat reasonable fine that merely expresses that you don´t get something for nothing. This storage could have renewable terms to a limit. When the term is completed the claimant is responsible for renewal of another term or the property goes up for auction or disposal. If and when the limit of terms is met, then the property can be reclaimed by the claimant, auctioned, or disposed, depending on its condition and value. The storage proposed is a special case, storage lifted out of the ordinary business sphere, where concerns with profit are paramount – why no monthly charge is necessary for storage.
So while there is all of this talk of bailing out corporations like car manufacturers and institutions like banks why not extend this spirit to a little display of compassion aimed at preserving the dignity of another human being hard on their luck, regardless of the turmoil their lives may currently display.
Ultimately, a safety net would be created and provided by the government, which could allow for those who may be going through a hard time to redeem their lives and keep from losing everything. In the end, that valuable rental space is restored to the landlord´s market use, as it should be, but the evictee´s property is not treated like trash.
They take cars and impound them, but chair, tables, sheets, rugs, pictures, clothes; they throw out in the rain.
Just a few ideas, surely there must be a better way?
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