Beating up the house
This is not the first time, and I regret to say, it will not be not the last… I just saw a house that was in foreclosure. We went upstairs first. The walls, and windows and fittings were all modern and pretty good. It was a nice, but not fancy, apartment. The back door had been opened with a crowbar. There were personal items left behind, sort of sprawled around the floor. There were a couple of pieces of furniture, too.
It looked like a police raid had taken place in the apartment. I was feeling pity for the people who were evicted. There were children’s things left behind along with adult clothes and books. I created a story in my head about how they were tenants who were up-to-date on their rent and losing their home because the landlord defaulted on his mortgage.
Then we went downstairs. The apartment had the same general layout, with newer windows and modern drywall which replaced old plaster walls. It would have been a nice-enough apartment, if it didn’t look like a flood-zone. The floors had buckled in waves. The walls were growing mold. It looked like the upstairs people turned on the bathtub faucet on the way out and locked the door behind them.
As I said at the top, this is not the first time I have seen this. I regret to say, it will not be the last.
It is not so common that a house is trashed by the evicted owner or tenant, but it is not so uncommon that I am shocked by it. I only feel regret. Regret for the property, where no one will be able to live again without extensive time and money put into the building. Regret for the people; especially whoever was living there and paying their bills on time.
Sometimes tenants drive a two-family owner into foreclosure by not paying the rent. Sometimes a defaulting owner loses a property to foreclosure; the tenants there have no recourse and can be evicted. They frequently lose their last month's rent and security deposit.
Do you understand the anger that would make someone destroy a house? Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can't.
