Thread: Photo Contest! Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!

I would take pictures, but every time I have tried to use Photobucket, it does not cooperate. So, I can tell you what this complex is like, in words.

Recently, one of the tenants left in the middle of the night, I believe he owed the landlord money. However, this guy had been sharing the place with his sister and her kids, but somewhere in the last four months or so we stopped seeing them. The landlord told us that this guy was gone and that EVERYTHING had been left behind, I mean everything, including food and clothing, all the grooming products.

Well, he also left behind a totally awful mess. First, there had never been opened windows (now out here that is an invitation to black mold due to our high moisture levels, even in summer it is in the soil, and yes, I had a massive headache just seconds into the walk thru), and in winter here, most of these people will not use their heat, only the heat from their cooking, and it adds to the mold.

Mold was growing up the walls and windows, the carpet was black from either the mold or filth, not sure. There was dead cockroaches all over the walls (they had been smashed and left). The bathroom looked like it had never been cleaned. I just have never seen anything like this. The landlord told us that every place he has had vacated was like this.

The patios and balconies, you cannot imagine. There are bags of garbage on them (usually around six or seven) bags of recyclable cans, junk, sometimes a clothes line, huge stacks of nursery pots, some have blue tarps stretched over the patios, some have the blue tarps on all sides as well, acting as "walls". Then there is the dumpster situation. On a good day, you would be lucky to not see half a dozen bags strewn on the ground nearby, because the dumpster was way too full.

I could go on. I won't, you all get the picture. I feel for this landlord, good guy, means well, but his biggest problem is that he hired a guy who is Latino as all the rest are, and he cares little unless the landlord wants him to care, then he takes care of something. The landlord lives way across town, and is here far too little to keep track of what goes on and how things are being done here.

AmericanElizabeth...I place more blame on the landlord than you do. He needs to take stonger measures to make sure his manager isn't renting to illegals. It CAN be done.

By the way, I've seen places as bad as you describe (in San Diego). Once you see something like this, it changes you forever (with regard to feeling compassionate toward illegal immigrants).

AG, I do blame the former landlord for setting this precedent in not doing background checks, which require a social, which would also deter illegals from renting here. Now this new landlord is trying to slowly work his way into changing things here, but he even said it is going to be a long road, he said "I am trying to start eliminating the people who "do not belong here"". He was trying to be careful about saying illegals, but he did mean it, he has indicated it many times.

He is very frustrated with the way they live and the way they trash their units.

On a good note about that, our city finally decided to start having inspections done on rentals out here. They have had so many problems with sub-standard rentals, and either non-existant landlord ,or downright slumlords. So they decided that cracking donw on the cheap, lousy rentals was another way to start eliminating problem people from our town as well. They stated that unkept rentals is the main reason certain neighborhoods have slid downhill quickly, and by making landlord keep up, they are less likely to rent to just anyone when they are having to mantain a nice place.

As for the compassion thing, yeah, after living amongst them, we lost our empathy (what little I had left after having lived in the area of town for 8 years called "Rockwood", might as well call it little Tijuana) for them. They have been nasty to us, their kids are monsters, and worse. We see them trash not only their places, but also the grounds too.

this is Crystal Lake Illinois.