Can We Call This "Living?"
Jan. 17th, 2009 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorThe Wife and I are quite happy in our little neighborhood, close to downtown, close to 6 bus routes, friendly folks, and generally great little houses.
Generally.
Three doors down lived an old woman. She kept to herself, choosing to keep the company of friends at the senior center and nearby relatives who she sought for "help." I put help in quotations because if she could not find someone to "help" her -- do the work that needed to be done -- it simply wouldn't get done. That work? The roof, the lawn, little things. Those little things started to add up.
A few weeks ago, The Wife saw a monster rat sauntering up the sidewalk in broad daylight. Not a good sign. Worse, the local mouser cat just lay there watching the rat. This told us that Paulo felt no need to hunt this interloper, probably because he was sated with ratty goodness and all hunted out. This says something about the number and size of the rats currently calling the neighborhood home, which says a great deal about their probable hidey-hole . . . the neighbor's unkempt property. The Wife emailed the city with her suspicions about rodent harborage; they dutifully sent out an inspector . . . who didn't like the condition of the house. A letter of condemnation followed.
Behind the cut you will see a bit of what they found. I say "a bit" simply because the family has had a chance to seriously clean up the property since the neighbor lady moved out.
Larger, anyone?
Here's the house's front entrance. You can see it's framed by two enormous trees, a juniper to the left and a cedar to the right. That material on the lower portion of the roof is a brown tarp, installed (IIRC) the year The Wife and I moved into the neighborhood, 2000. I recall a someone disgruntled man a bit put out about being yelled at by the neighbor lady, shifting tarp over an old, shredded predecessor. What I've heard since then leads me to believe this was the neighbor's niece's husband. Poor guy.
Make the antennae bigger
Clickee for Biggee
Here's a shot of the house's side wall with the monster juniper covering the corner and most of the chimney. You can see at the bottom of the shot that the sidewalk drops in elevation as the road and walk make the corner; the house and its yard maintain level thanks to a boulder retaining wall. This wall wraps around, carving a driveway between the neighboring property and the back yard. Not until the relatives cleaned up the property, though, have I seen (or remember seeing) this car.
Get a really good look
Note the mud clinging to the wheel. That's not the result of the recent nasty snows on the roads. You see, this car was hidden from all in a basement garage I for one had no idea existed. Heck, I didn't even know the house had a basement.
Look closer . . . closer . . .
Zoom your attention to the base of the garage door. Note the small pile of debris that defines where the garage door would rest if closed. When the relatives came to clean the property, they lifted the door. . . and were greeted by about a foot of water which emptied from the basement. It had been dammed against the garage door by that debris. That's what muddied the car's wheels.
Where did that water come from? Take a closer look at the back wall:
No, you really need to see this bigger.
See the roof damage? Look more closely in this shot.
Really, check it out.
Follow that broken gutter up to the hole. That hole goes right through the wall studs; you are looking into one of the bedrooms (I think; I haven't been inside). To the left edge of the picture you can see where the roof collapse has exposed the adjacent bedroom directly to the elements.
I don't know how long she has been living in this squalor. I do know the furnace dies years ago. She huddled on a couch in front of a space heater while she watched TV at high volume. You could easily hear it from the sidewalk. I also know the toilet quit working some time ago, as did the bathtub fixtures. She peed in a bucket and dumped it down the sink. What about number two? While walking around the house, I noticed a pile of debris outside one of the windows. This pile was shrouded completely from view by the cedar tree. It looked like a pile of stuff wrapped in old newspapers.
Let's all remember that this was not a stupid woman. She was born in and raised in this house. She worked as a medical textbook illustrator and professional painter doing mostly dog portraits. She simply had problems knowing which of her behaviors were problems. In fact, when she got the letter from the city condemning her house, she called her sister.
She didn't understand why her house was uninhabitable.
She is now living with that sister. I hope she gets the help she needs.
Generally.
Three doors down lived an old woman. She kept to herself, choosing to keep the company of friends at the senior center and nearby relatives who she sought for "help." I put help in quotations because if she could not find someone to "help" her -- do the work that needed to be done -- it simply wouldn't get done. That work? The roof, the lawn, little things. Those little things started to add up.
A few weeks ago, The Wife saw a monster rat sauntering up the sidewalk in broad daylight. Not a good sign. Worse, the local mouser cat just lay there watching the rat. This told us that Paulo felt no need to hunt this interloper, probably because he was sated with ratty goodness and all hunted out. This says something about the number and size of the rats currently calling the neighborhood home, which says a great deal about their probable hidey-hole . . . the neighbor's unkempt property. The Wife emailed the city with her suspicions about rodent harborage; they dutifully sent out an inspector . . . who didn't like the condition of the house. A letter of condemnation followed.
Behind the cut you will see a bit of what they found. I say "a bit" simply because the family has had a chance to seriously clean up the property since the neighbor lady moved out.
Larger, anyone?
Here's the house's front entrance. You can see it's framed by two enormous trees, a juniper to the left and a cedar to the right. That material on the lower portion of the roof is a brown tarp, installed (IIRC) the year The Wife and I moved into the neighborhood, 2000. I recall a someone disgruntled man a bit put out about being yelled at by the neighbor lady, shifting tarp over an old, shredded predecessor. What I've heard since then leads me to believe this was the neighbor's niece's husband. Poor guy.
Make the antennae bigger
Clickee for Biggee
Here's a shot of the house's side wall with the monster juniper covering the corner and most of the chimney. You can see at the bottom of the shot that the sidewalk drops in elevation as the road and walk make the corner; the house and its yard maintain level thanks to a boulder retaining wall. This wall wraps around, carving a driveway between the neighboring property and the back yard. Not until the relatives cleaned up the property, though, have I seen (or remember seeing) this car.
Get a really good look
Note the mud clinging to the wheel. That's not the result of the recent nasty snows on the roads. You see, this car was hidden from all in a basement garage I for one had no idea existed. Heck, I didn't even know the house had a basement.
Look closer . . . closer . . .
Zoom your attention to the base of the garage door. Note the small pile of debris that defines where the garage door would rest if closed. When the relatives came to clean the property, they lifted the door. . . and were greeted by about a foot of water which emptied from the basement. It had been dammed against the garage door by that debris. That's what muddied the car's wheels.
Where did that water come from? Take a closer look at the back wall:
No, you really need to see this bigger.
See the roof damage? Look more closely in this shot.
Really, check it out.
Follow that broken gutter up to the hole. That hole goes right through the wall studs; you are looking into one of the bedrooms (I think; I haven't been inside). To the left edge of the picture you can see where the roof collapse has exposed the adjacent bedroom directly to the elements.
I don't know how long she has been living in this squalor. I do know the furnace dies years ago. She huddled on a couch in front of a space heater while she watched TV at high volume. You could easily hear it from the sidewalk. I also know the toilet quit working some time ago, as did the bathtub fixtures. She peed in a bucket and dumped it down the sink. What about number two? While walking around the house, I noticed a pile of debris outside one of the windows. This pile was shrouded completely from view by the cedar tree. It looked like a pile of stuff wrapped in old newspapers.
Let's all remember that this was not a stupid woman. She was born in and raised in this house. She worked as a medical textbook illustrator and professional painter doing mostly dog portraits. She simply had problems knowing which of her behaviors were problems. In fact, when she got the letter from the city condemning her house, she called her sister.
She didn't understand why her house was uninhabitable.
She is now living with that sister. I hope she gets the help she needs.
