Condominium Conundrum

For the past eight years, I lived in a century-old house in Spokane, Washington, along with five other renters who happily shared the best views and, most likely, the cheapest rent, in town. The landlord was a peach: if you called with a problem, it was fixed immediately. The grounds were kept up, the fire alarm system was checked regularly and the building was maintained reasonably well. Then the landlord decided to sell the property. Some rich investors came along and bought the property for more than the asking price. Suddenly, we renters faced the prospect of finding new digs at, more than likely, twice the rent. The new investors sent out notices that we had twenty days to vacate the property because they were going to start construction on the old house immediately and turn it into four condominiums selling for close to a million dollars per condo, complete with an elevator, a spa, top-of-the-line accoutrements, and the magnificent view we had enjoyed.

At the time, I was surviving on a shoe-string provided by welfare while waiting for my Social Security Disability to be approved. Friends and family had been helping me (to the detriment of their own well-being) to maintain my rent and some of my bills. Needless to say, the money for a move did not exist but there was no choice in the matter. I figured I'd be homeless and lose everything I had managed to gain over the past decade in a go-for-broke yard sale. I figured I'd be pushing a shopping cart down the street with what few possessions remained to me. I figured life as I knew it was finished.

Fate intervened in the form of an old friend who was having trouble in her relationships with neighbors and we managed to scrape up enough money to get another apartment in which we, more or less, share expenses and for which she works extra hours to make up the monies that I am not currently able to supply as regards the household expenses.

In some respects, the move was all to the good. Things have worked out and we are happy with the arrangement for the time being.

What continues to haunt me are those twenty days between being summarily evicted so that the rich could occupy my home and my friend signing the lease on the new apartment. I was saved by something like Divine Intervention, or Karma, or maybe Jesus. Who knows? But, saved, I was. The fear, however, lingers. As an old woman with no "life-partner", no means of support due to physical limitations, and no base of support beyond what little friends and family can provide, I know that I was as close to homeless as it is possible to be without actually pushing that ol' shopping cart down the street. There's still enough arrogance left over from a somewhat privileged childhood for me to feel that "I just don't come from that sort of people". Homelessness, in my soul, is just not an option.

In reality, homeless is now an option which remains too close for any real sense of comfort in my life and my remaining days on this Earth. What really disturbs me is that I was forced into this horrifying situation just so the rich could get richer. The purchasers of the property were nice as they could be and did everything they could to make the situation easy. However, there was no doubt that come the end of the twenty day notice to vacate, our possessions would be put on the street and we would be left without shelter, without protection, without recourse no matter what our personal situations might be.

Nobody should have this fear. There oughta be a law.

But there isn't.