Slumlord Millionaire: The Next Chapter

     

     Since I never felt comfortable putting personal stuff out on this blog (it is, primarily, a political one, so naturally you expect strictly political content), I've decided to hold off for the last week with the latest that actually happened on the first.

     The latest is that on September 2nd, we got the second notice to quit from our slumlord. The reason for this was that, just our luck, for just the third time in the five years he's owned this glorified crack house, he came sniffing around for his rent on the first of the month. As some of you may know, we'd just suffered a sudden death in the family last month.

     I made a public and direct appeal to past contributors for assistance, stating that, one way or the other, I was getting Mrs. JP to Florida even if I had to spend part of the rent money on the air fare. Since we got a whopping two donations totaling $55 (less, minus Paypal fees), this put us behind the 8 ball.

     So the slumlord shows up grunting for his bloated rent, I told him for the first time, "We don't have it" and told him we'd just suffered an abrupt death in the family. As I predicted, he didn't react to that and just asked when we'd have it. I told him after the middle of the month. All he had to do was resume his life and wait two weeks and that would've been that.

     Well, being gracious and reasonable was never and never will be his way. The next day, he returned and tried to strong-arm the rent money out of Mrs. JP, who obviously didn't have it and, minutes later, left another notice to quit on our door giving us 14 days to get out. 

     One of the reasons why I sent Mrs. JP back to Florida to attennd her sister's service was because of a certain emerging medical issue that made it obvious that this 4th trip to Florida would be her last. I'm not going to get into specifics because what's ailing her is no one's business but our own and family.

     But this latest notice to quit is proof positive of this sociopath's absolute obsession with getting Mrs. JP and I out of here by hook or crook. Bottom line, he's trying to throw two people in their 60s out on the street, during a pandemic, so he can flip our apartment and make a little more money that he plainly doesn't need. And, it ought to be mentioned once again, there are no shelters in the area.

     I don't know why right wing sociopaths like our slumlord keep entering my life. I don't know why state lawmakers keep writing and passing laws tilted in their favor. Here in "liberal" Massachusetts, it seems slumlords such as ours own many lawmakers on Beacon Hill. It's those same slumlord-friendly lawmakers who consistently refuse to pass the HOMES Act, that would remove the names of innocent and vulnerable people such as mine and Mrs. JP's when no eviction took place.

     And maybe I'm in the wrong line of work or moving in the wrong circles (perhaps if I was a Capitol rioter or a Stop the Steal activist, maybe I'd get tens of thousands of dollars in donations from like-minded individuals to cover legal fees and lost wages). And I'm not asking for any more donations because that ship done sailed if the last three or four crowd-sourcing drives are any indication.

     However, I will say that according to Massachusetts law, if I make the necessary restitution ($800 within 10 days of the notice to quit's issuance), it's automatically rendered null and void. That gives me until September 12th to put the skids to this latest attempt to throw us out on the street. At least for this month.

     It ought to also be mentioned that when my downstairs neighbor was late with his rent, he told the slumlord that he'd get it when he got his grant later that month and he'd made it an exception for him, an exception that he's plainly not extending to us because of his psychopathic obsession with getting us out of this unit.

     You have to believe me when I say that if we could afford to move out and get this sociopath out of our lives for good, we would. But here in MA, the rents are outrageous. They generally start at $1200-$1300 and require first, last and security. Further confounding our ability to get another decent place is the fact that his pack of lies last March is what put our names on the Commonwealth's court database, which other slumlords use to do eviction background checks. More often than not, once they see your name, they stop looking and decide not to rent to you. They don't bother checking to see whether or not the eviction took place or if the defendant was actually culpable of the charges. They just don't rent to you, which is why this is called, "Evicted for Life."

     I'm writing this just to let you know if there's a sudden dearth of posts in the near future, this is why. It'll be because a sociopath kicked us out because our rent was late by one day for the first time in 150 consecutive months. He lied his fat ass off at our mediation hearing on June 18th and claimed, literally in an innocent tone of voice, "I don't want them to go anywhere! I just want them to pay their rent!"

     Never once did he admit that he hadn't gotten his rent since February for the simple reason that he'd stopped collecting it to manufacture grounds for eviction. And he had them eating out of his grasping hand. Every time the mediator asked me what I wanted and I began answering, he'd immediately interrupt me and say he didn't have to extend us another lease (which we still don't have, by the way, despite his broken promises). In no time flat, I'd become the bad guy.

     Indeed, it was as if they were seeing to his interests and to hell with the two vulnerable people who'd done nothing wrong. Even my so-called attorney from Metrowest Legal Aid seemed to be representing his interests rather than ours. By the end of the hearing, I was essentially strong-armed into giving that sociopath the $3200 that we'd collected since March, essentially my only leverage over him, to keep him from proceeding with a lawsuit that was so legally flawed it should have been thrown out on purely procedural grounds.

     But I'm not done fighting. In fact, I haven't even begun. I'm not even going to put the broad strokes out there much less the details. But if this cocksucker is needlessly trying to destroy our lives, then the least I can do is return the favor. With Mrs. JP's health issues, my constant struggle to keep the gas and lights on, rebuilding my entire backlist that was flushed down the toilet by my last "publisher" as well as everything else, I will make trashing his life a top priority. I didn't ask for this. We didn't ask for this any more than we asked for this right wing sociopath to buy this house October 2016.