Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Camp Marigold
When you have a dog, bad credit, and low income, it's not easy finding a place to live in California's wealthiest county. So when we had to relocate from our studio apartment of nine years due to property foreclosure a year ago, we counted ourselves lucky to find an apartment in a nice neighborhood.
Our ground level unit faces the off street gravel parking area under a big oak tree, so we have a handy area to barbecue as well as for storing our Volkswagen Van. When we first saw the place, we named it Camp Marigold, after the stop over cabins we once stayed at up near the Klamath River.
The fourplex of apartments we're in -- two up and two down -- is complemented by two detached units out back behind the coin-op laundry facility. Both of those are public housing subsidized, and are occupied by middle age individuals--one female and one male. The male has mental problems, but generally behaves, with occasional late night loud music or visitors.
That unfortunately changed when our landlord inadvisedly rented the front lower unit next to ours to another publicly subsidized mentally ill middle age man with disposable income. The combination of the two quickly turned into a problem for the other tenants and neighbors. Now able to supply free beer and a place to hang out, they soon attracted a steady stream of derelicts from the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, including small time dealers and prostitutes.
As the daytime partying grew to be a regular nuisance, the host's mental health deteriorated, causing him to nail his windows shut and phone police when he thought people were trying to break in. We'll never know what was real and what was imagined, but after numerous visits from local police and the public housing authority, the cabin tenant is moving to a more suitable facility where he'll get greater supervision. We're hoping things will return to the normal trials of living in close proximity to people with different lifestyles, but for now we're just glad the homey hookers and other lowlifes have found other haunts.
Our ground level unit faces the off street gravel parking area under a big oak tree, so we have a handy area to barbecue as well as for storing our Volkswagen Van. When we first saw the place, we named it Camp Marigold, after the stop over cabins we once stayed at up near the Klamath River.
The fourplex of apartments we're in -- two up and two down -- is complemented by two detached units out back behind the coin-op laundry facility. Both of those are public housing subsidized, and are occupied by middle age individuals--one female and one male. The male has mental problems, but generally behaves, with occasional late night loud music or visitors.
That unfortunately changed when our landlord inadvisedly rented the front lower unit next to ours to another publicly subsidized mentally ill middle age man with disposable income. The combination of the two quickly turned into a problem for the other tenants and neighbors. Now able to supply free beer and a place to hang out, they soon attracted a steady stream of derelicts from the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, including small time dealers and prostitutes.
As the daytime partying grew to be a regular nuisance, the host's mental health deteriorated, causing him to nail his windows shut and phone police when he thought people were trying to break in. We'll never know what was real and what was imagined, but after numerous visits from local police and the public housing authority, the cabin tenant is moving to a more suitable facility where he'll get greater supervision. We're hoping things will return to the normal trials of living in close proximity to people with different lifestyles, but for now we're just glad the homey hookers and other lowlifes have found other haunts.
