Jack of Harts

You all know the story. Obamacare ended health care as we knew it. It ended my 100 dollar a month health care plan, and graciously offered me a 700 dollar a month plan that covered less than the old plan. I could not afford to pay for Obamacare, so when my appendix exploded four years ago I got a bill for around 40,000 dollars. The Mayo Clinic linked me up with various charities and hardship services that dropped the bill to around 10,000 dollars, but that was still more than I could pay.

So I took out every loan I could get, and sold my retirement home up in Northern Minnesota. The real estate agent I was working with up there negotiated a Contract for Deed with a buyer he found, and the 200 dollars a month I got for the next two years was often the difference between solvency and not. But the buyer transferred the Contract over to their cousin, and then their cousin stopped paying me anything at all in January of 2019.

In the nearly two years since, they squatted in my house without giving me any money. 200 dollars a month for nearly two years comes out to approximately 4,000 dollars in mortgage payments they have declined to send me. The Contract also called for them to pay me the amount of property taxes and insurance on the house. They have not. So we can add around 1,500 dollars in property taxes for 2018 (which they never reimbursed me), 2019, and 2020. Insurance runs approximately 200 every three months, so around 1,600 for two years.

Then there are the utilities. I happen to know that they have been playing fast and loose with the local utility company, often pushing balances of up to 2,000 dollars in fees without paying before the company would cut them off until they paid up. They have been doing this for years. This spring, they had pushed the balance up to 2,000 dollars again, and then the governor’s Stay At Home order came into effect. It ended all evictions, like the one I had just gotten approved, and ordered all utilities to provide utilities for people regardless of whether or not they chose to pay. Even those who had already been a problem. So while squatting in my house, they racked up another 2,000 dollars in utilities. Which debt goes to the property, and to me.

Rough math shows that they cost me well in excess of 10,000 dollars in the last two years, through a combination of them not paying me what they were legally contracted to pay me, or by simply racking up utility bills they never intended to pay. Aided and abetted by the Governor of my State who said I could not evict them after going through ALL of the legal steps to get them evicted.

I love to laugh and make jokes about these matters, that does not reduce the cost of living in the modern crazy.

Imagine that you are the kind of person who would buy a house and then stop paying on it.

Imagine that you might promise all kinds of ways to pay the debt, but never deliver.

Imagine that when ordered to leave for not paying, you don’t really want to.

Imagine that you buy new trucks, boats, and guns to enjoy your vacations, but ignore all legal orders to pay up or move out.

Imagine that you show up to court in a hunting jacket and cap, and are told to leave within 10 days or the Sheriff will see you out.

Imagine that the governor puts a stay on all evictions before that 10 days is up.

Imagine that you have months more time to enjoy the free housing, and of course you take advantage of that opportunity.

Imagine that the governor finally allows evictions completed before the current emergency to go through again, and suddenly you are ordered out with one day’s notice.

Imagine that you leave beds, couches, trash, pet feces, and dead pets behind in the rush to get out.

Imagine that you leave behind floors and ceilings so sodden with water that they are spongy and drooping.

Imagine that you have spent the better part of two years doing everything in your power to cheat and steal from the man who owns the house you are freeloading in.

I suppose you would imagine that you are fairly important in that man’s life, wouldn’t you?

Imagine a man walking into your store a few days after you leave to buy a garbage can and some garbage bags.

Imagine that man telling you, offhand, that he just got possession of his house back, and is buying these garbage bags so he can take out the trash the other guy left him.

Imagine the realization that the man you’ve been stealing from for two years doesn’t even consider you important enough to recognize in conversation.

Yeah. I am the homeowner. I did that and walked away.

*Slips on shades with a smile*