People Across The Street Were Evicted.

[demgurl]

A couple of days ago I noticed the vehicles were different. I also noticed that it was not the same people going in and out of the house. Then things started appearing on the sidewalk. Now the entire street front is littered with things from mattresses to bags of clothing. Today they even put a washer out on the street!

I didn't know these people except for the one time they came over and invited us to their Halloween party last year. We couldn't make it because we would be out of town. Now they are gone and I do not even know their names. I do not have a clue as to where they went. They have small children and I do not even know if they are out on the streets.

This has haunted me for a couple of days now. It makes me very sad. I am not sure what I could have done even if I had known. Another friend of mine is about to declare bankruptcy and she and her family could very well end up residing in our house with us. It would be tight having two families here but almost impossible with three. But I would rather be cramped than to think of good people out on the street.

I do not want to blame * for this because quite frankly I am not sure of the families situation. I know what I suspect but this isn't a post to blame politicians. This is a way to try and find some catharsis for my sadness about this families situation. Their life is sitting on the curb outside. Everything they worked and saved for - beds, clothing, furniture and goodness knows what else. All of their life sitting on the curb waiting for garbage day. I am filled with sadness.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Catherine Vincent]

2. okay....

[DURHAM D]

3. Looks like "Alert" time. eom

[demgurl]

4. Ummm, I think you are replying to the wrong thread. eom

[Booster]

6. Don't fall off that soapbox - the fall will kill ya.

[Robbien]

16. Go a bit easy here. This new poster is from Singapore

Give him a bit of time to get his DU legs.

[Booster]

29. Ok, I apologize - am having a bad week.

[cliss]

7. Shivadijas, welcome

to the DU....and your point is.....?

[Subdivisions]

5. I feel for you, demgurl. I am old enough to remember a day

when neighbors knew each other and looked out for each other.

All to often these days, we live near people that we never meet or become friends with or socialize with.

Why do you suppose that is?

[Warpy]

8. I know most of my neighbors here

No one has been evicted on this street, and four out of six houses are owned outright. Foreclosures usually happen slowly enough that people are able to move their belongings to whatever they've found to live in; evictions generally happen to rentals.

There has been one foreclosure on my block, about four years ago, and nobody was sad to see them go, if ya know what I mean.

[demgurl]

12. Thanks, Texas Explorer..

My husband said we would make an effort to really know the next neighbors but that does not help right now. I really wish we had made the effort. I keep looking out my window hoping they will come back to try and get some of their things. I would give anything to speak to them again.

I wish I knew why it is the way it is. People do not reach out as much these days. I have always felt hated by our next door neighbor but I tried to make friends with them a few months ago and just got the cold shoulder.

Recently I ran into a girl who used to be a cashier at a local grocery store. She commented that she always liked my husband and myself because we were so friendly. She said she always felt out of place since she could hardly speak any English when she first got here. She said she really appreciated that we would talk to her every time we went into the store. I would even wait in longer lines just so she would check me out. You never know how a little kindness will effect someone.

[Sapphire Blue]

9. Do you have room to store any of their belongings?

[demgurl]

14. Sapphire Blue...

I have a small bit of room but not much. A few months ago we had a pretty bad flood and things had to be moved for carpeting and flooring to be ripped up. They have still not fixed the damage (we are patiently waiting for them) and until they do, we will not have much room because what stuff isn't moved into our utility room will have to be moved into a pod while they carpet and tile 9 rooms in our house. It almost feels as if we are moving. Our clothing is bagged up and we are packing toys - everything has to be easily accessible so that they can move and store it while renovations are done to our house. I could maybe get one or two things but that is even a stretch for the situation we are in right now.

[Sapphire Blue]

26. Do what you can, please.

Even if you can only save their clothes for them, it would be a kindness.

And for the kids, pay special attention to look for what might be a very special blanket, teddy bear, or something similar.

[demgurl]

27. Sapphire Blue...

It is so dark I am not sure I could make out anything right now. I will go over in the morning and see what I can scrounge up. Maybe I could look at some mail and try to discern their names? I might be able to track them down with some names.

[Sapphire Blue]

28. ...

:hug: O8)

[Sapphire Blue]

30. Years ago, I arrived home to find my neighbor w/a U-Haul truck...crying...

... "They took my babies' clothes. They took my babies' clothes. They could have taken the dressers. Why did they take my babies' clothes?"

His landlord refused to accept his late rent payment. During the time that he was gone to rent a truck, his landlord had his family's belongings put out on the street. When he got back, the vultures had already taken almost everything. All my neighbor could do was cry... and all I could do was give him some of my children's things.

[Catherine Vincent]

10. Another reason is they may have left in the middle of the night.

A lot of people do that. But who knows? I know I have been living in my neighborhood for over eight years and barely know my neighbors.

[demgurl]

21. If they left, it is still sad.

Not sure why people would just leave all of their things and take off. If you are going to ditch a house at least take your belongings because you can use it wherever you are going.

[Truthiness Inspector]

11. How do you know they were evicted?

I only ask this because I saw a situation like you described on my street, and it turned out the woman who lived there had passed away.

The people now living in the house may or may not know the story, but why not go over with a housewarming gift to welcome them, introduce yourself, and ask if they knew the previous occupants? That's how I found out about my former neighbor having passed away. :( I hadn't seen her in about a month and wondered why.

[demgurl]

18. I just kind of assumed they were evicted...

because I had seen them last week and everything seemed fine. I would usually nod and smile at them and sometimes say hi. Just seeing all the stuff like toys being put out in the garbage made me think that they were evicted. (someone was going through the items and picking out the toys and putting them in their truck for their kids I guess)

If the parent died I would think the kids would at least keep their toys. Whoever took the kids might need the mattresses so the kids would have a place to sleep?????

No one is living there now. Each day there is a cleaning crew gutting the place. I suspect the cleaning crew are actually the owners.

I guess there could be other reasons why this is happening but my husband told me when his sister was evicted it happened the exact same way with all of her stuff out on the street like that. Sometimes people try to recoup some money but most of the time they try to clean it as quickly as possible to rent it and get regular money coming in again.

Whatever the case, I know it would take something property big for me to abandon my house and all of the belongings. I would hate to be the person putting all of my stuff out on the curb!

[Robbien]

13. I blame commercialism

The number one hobby in the US is shopping.

So many get towed under because credit is so easy to get and commercials and malls are so hard to resist.

[demgurl]

25. Their stuff did not look brand new.

The only thing that looked halfway decent was their washer. The other items looked sort of on the old side. Well, everything but the mattresses which I bet were protected by sheets and such. I am not so sure this had to do with commercialism.

My friend, who is thinking of filing bankruptcy, does not even own a credit card. If she can not pay cash then she will do without. She has been juggling things for a while now and they are just sort of at the breaking point. It has nothing to do with commercialism for them.

I do agree that commercialism/materialism is very big but it does not apply to each case like this.

[cliss]

15. It is sad, isn't it?

For every house that's evicted, there is a family which has no place to go. I've often wondered (and even posted concerns) about the underlying dynamics about the foreclosure rates.

Just imagine, a city like Tucson with maybe 1,200 foreclosures within a certain time period. Now consider how many people are affected. If each house has an average of 4 people living in it, thst's over 4,800 people out on the street.

Imagine the strain on social services. The panic. I swear, we're just a short while away from having huge hordes of homless people wandering the streets, and large districts for the dead and dying, like Calcutta.......

[demgurl]

22. There is even more at work here than all of that.

And what you have mentioned is very sad. My best friend is the one considering filing for bankruptcy. Her husband works very hard and, in fact, I have never known him to ever work a single week without overtime. They have had a serious of hardships including an accident (not her fault) she was in. Even though they have insurance, the bills are still pretty bad. Her son, who has no insurance, was just in an accident where he lost his foot. They are going to take on the responsibility of his bills since there "is no use in both of them filing bankruptcy". The problem, I explained to her, is what the government has done by pandering to corporations. I told her she would still owe the hospital and even her house even if they filed bankruptcy. I tried to explain how even moving out of their house meant they would still be legally obligated to pat it off. Bankruptcy means squat as far as giving the regular Joe a second chance to gain ground. Now when the bills bury you, you are basically gone forever.

I never thought I would see this in America. I know a certain amount of this is inevitable but I see more and more. It is so, so sad.

[ikojo]

17. I'll never forget the time I saw a lady getting

evicted from an apartment in the city of St Louis. I had just moved into the complex and was walking home from the bus stop. I saw all this stuff on the sidewalk. Passersby were going through it. I saw a lady sitting up in the grass and asked what was happening and she said a woman had been evicted and she was watching the stuff while a truck was rounded up. I felt so sorry for that lady.

[demgurl]

23. I saw people going through their stuff today.

It felt a little like they were walking over someone's grave. When I saw the washer being put out I thought I should take that but only to keep it safe - in case they came back. I saw it when I left to pick up my children from school. I was running late and could not stop. When I came back it was gone. That is an expensive sort of thing that people can not afford to lose. Bet someone felt like they won the lottery when they saw that. I wonder how long it will be before the evicted people will be able to afford a washer.

[AzDar]

19. You have a good heart, demgurl. n/t

[midnight]

20. This is so sad. I understand your despair looking at

their belongings put out for trash. You may not be able to help these people physically, but keep them in your thoughts.

[Cleita]

24. Another sad story of the emerging banana republic of

the former United States of America.

[SoyCat]

31. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing I saw in New Orleans in Feb.

It was horrible seeing great piles of tenants' belongings on the sidewalk even in the French Quarter. Landlords were horrible. I would have boxed up a tenant's belongings and given him/her a chance to get them or I would have tried to ship the really important things to his/her new residence. I just couldn't be mean about it.

[area51]

32. "I do not want to blame * for this..."

Why not? Bush has cratered this country's economy into the 2nd Great Depression. The breadwinner may've lost their job & been unable to find another.

[demgurl]

34. I know he has created his type of economy...

and normally I am more than willing to blame him but because I am not sure of the circumstances I just did not feel like bringing politics into this. There are enough tings we can concretely blame him for and blaming him was not going to help this family. I guess ranting about our commander-in-thief would have only made me more depressed last night.

[eridani]

33. One way of possibly preventing this from happening again--

--is to become a Precinct Committee Officer. You have an excuse to bang on doors and get to know your neighbors that way.

[demgurl]

35. I know this is dumb, eridani, but....

what is a Precinct Committee Officer and how do I go about becoming one? I have never heard of this before. Thanks for the information.

[eridani]

36. I'm not sure that every state is like Washington--

--but the Precinct Committee Officer here is charged with representing the Democratic Party at the precinct level, doing GOTV, identifying supporters, doorbelling and passing out literature. A good way to get a sense of where your neighbors are at politically, and also be aware if any of them need some kind of material help.