For the past few months someone has been dumping unwanted items by my trashcan. If they fit inside the bin and didn’t cost extra to be hauled off I wouldn’t mind so much, but these items are big—a satellite dish, oven racks, shovels, and just this morning, a white book shelf.
When I saw it sitting there propped up against my can, I marched over, picked it up, and almost threw it over the fence into my neighbor’s garden. Something told me, she’s the dumper. I restrained myself and set it down. I scanned it and the street closely for a definitive clue that would tell me which neighbor was the culprit Nothing. I spent the rest of the day tossing my rage into a plan to install hidden cameras until I finally saw what was hiding beneath it: a deep sense of violation.
This isn’t new. Since foreclosure and becoming home renters again, after 12 years of home ownership, our family has come to know well the subtle and not so subtle forms of “right to possession” that emanate from our home-owning landlords and neighbors. Our last landlord felt it was his right to come into our home whenever he wanted, especially when we weren’t home. Yet, he refused to address a leaking roof and mold invading our daughter’s bedroom so we moved out. Then he refused to return our security deposit.
Our current landlord uses our property as his storage unit. It’s not uncommon to look up from my living room chair and be startled to see him standing right outside the window washing his hands under the spigot after dropping off or picking up a load. When we moved in he told us that we would be paying some “incidental” electricity for his storage areas, and he said the handyman would be around for a couple of months to fix a few things. That turned into four years of the handyman operating power tools and living in the attic above us in a makeshift apartment complete with a stove, refrigerator, computers (using our Wifi of course) and a constantly running dehumidifier.
We’ve come to expect these kinds of infringements from landlords, and with rent prices skyrocketing, absorb them and be grateful for what we have. But a few of our neighbors seem to feel they too have the same right to possession because they are on the side of ownership and we are not.
Lori, whose house perches above ours to the west, starts every conversation with the question, “Can I ask you something?” which really isn’t a question at all. It’s the lead in she uses to tell us to paint the wood septic tank cover dark forest green because it’s an “eyesore” and “looks like a piece of trash” from her balcony. Or it’s to tell us not to open our back door and throw out recyclables because it’s too loud when she is out on her back patio. Never mind her cigarette smoke blowing straight from her back patio into my daughter’s bedroom window. Only recently did she show any interest in us as people, which was to excessively congratulate us on the fact that our daughter got in to Vassar.
The latest instance is the trash dumper. I know it’s a neighbor. Our house is in no way convenient for a drive by dumping, and multiple ones at that. This afternoon I knocked on the suspected neighbor’s door (hadn’t I seen a satellite dish on her house awhile back that was no longer there?). Her name is Kristy. She inherited the house from her older brother who recently died of a heart attack and now she lives between his house and one she owns in San Francisco. She admitted to having had a satellite dish removed, but insisted that she’d paid to have it hauled off. After sufficiently denying any wrongdoing, she asked, “doesn’t Daniel [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][our landlord] pay for your trash anyway?” To which I responded, “No, we pay for everything, including the extra electricity for the attic and all his storage,” as I gestured toward our house with its blue metal roof visible from where we were standing on her deck. She took this as an open invitation.
“That roof is a horrible eyesore to the whole neighborhood. I’m going to talk to Daniel about having it replaced. I fly a lot and you can see it from miles away. It looks like a compound, I’m just waiting for the red Kool-Aid to come out,” she said forcing out a small laugh.
In the silence between her statement and me trying to catch my breath to respond, she added, “ And there are always so many cars parked down there, with people coming and going. It’s really bothersome.”
“Well, that compound is where my husband, my two daughters and I live and have lived for almost five years now. That compound is our home,” I said.
It was all I could manage to get out as I fought back tears, turned around, and walked as tall as I could back to the home that is not my own with the blue metal roof I have no power to change or to keep from changing.
I still don’t know for sure if Kristy dumped the bookshelf or any of the other items, but it was clear that she had no trouble throwing her right of possession all over my home and me. The word “own” comes from the Indo-European base oik meaning “possession.” She took her ownership view of my home and me all the way down to its root. Not all “owners” go to this extreme, but ownership in this country has been and still is the place from which power is gained and wielded.
I am scared about what this means for me and so many “non-owners” as hedge funds pay cash for foreclosed houses and more and more wealth gets concentrated into the hands of a few. I can only hope that in the end, Kristy isn’t one of them. And she can only hope that we never buy and own the compound because if we do, our blue metal roof will become a second story and her current view of the bay will only be visible from an airplane.
*Names have been changed to protect the guilty.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]