When Landlords Attack.

I live in a low rent housing area, to help out someone close to me who was in deep shit and the rent is really cheap. That’s a story I won’t be sharing here. But the place isn’t as bad as it sounds. My apartment is really clean, the place is bug free and the neighbours aren’t the kind you’d expect to see from movies and so forth. It’s all pretty cool really. A certain sense of community you don’t get downtown. A few wheelchair-bound people down on their luck, everyone helps them out. There are a lot of different ethnic groups here, but those who don’t like it, just keep to themselves. Don’t rock the boat and everything.

Now there are troublemakers. Mostly kids with nothing to do. Despite the fact that there’s a HUGE basketball court in the housing park which is locked down and left to abandon. But the trouble isn’t rampant and epidemic either. Just kids being complete idiots, it’s what they do when they are poor and bored. I don’t like it, they piss me off to.

But now Headway, the landlord corporation, after some isolated incidents of delinquency in some mini-launderettes decided to close them all down and make one single launderette near the front office. Let me explain.

Each building has 6 apartments with a mini-launderette on the first floor. Other larger buildings have launderettes on each floor. Now because of the damage done to a few mini-launderettes, such as oil poured into the washing machine’s soap distributor, some graffiti and so forth they are shutting down the mini-launderettes. No fun for the victims and I know I would have screamed bloody hell if I would have been that victim. So I won’t be belittling them at all. I would have ripped the door of its hinges.

What Headway is doing is completely insane troll logic. It’s another draconian case of settling an issue with Machiavellian rule over people with no power. Let’s just look at what I have to do to get my laundry done. Just a start with me first because I can explain what I go through.

I have a bad back, as in I fractured 3 vertebrae and had 8 surgeries to fix it and I also have a bad knee following a bad rollerblading accident where my knee got bent in the wrong direction and my knee cap ended up next to my calf. Dave has some pain issues to deal with on a daily basis. I don’t want pity, but I just want to give you a sense of perspective.

As you can see from the picture (Click it to see a larger size), my starting point is on the left and the launderette is on the right. Google Maps tells me the line I drew is 1197 feet to walk. 1197 feet to walk with my laundry and soap bottle. 1197 feet to walk in badly managed walkways. 1197 feet to walk in snow storms, on ice, water puddles from hell. You get the picture.

But despite all this I’m not all. One of my neighbours is 85 years old and she lives even further from the new launderette than I do. She lives on the first floor and just had to walk out her door, 2 feet to the mini-launderette. Now she has to walk over 1200 feet to do her laundry. She’s 85. that’s very nice for her no?

Another one of my neighbours has been out of work for over 5 years because of an accident that has left him with severe back pain. He’s so doped up he spends most of days sleeping. He walks with a cane. Now he has to walk 1197 feet to do his laundry.

Yet another neighbour has a degenerative disease is wheelchair bound. His body is so deformed and mangled I still can’t tell where his legs are tucked. Sure he has help everyday. But now his help has to go do his laundry 1197 feet away.

Right across from him, another neighbour is wheelchair bound. Her legs are completely atrophied. She has 2 young daughters to take care of also. I can hardly see her doing a mad dash down the walkway to do her laundry while talking care of her daughters at the same time.

Speaking of children. This new launderette has opening hours, unlike the mini-launderette which we had keys to and could access at any time. When is the working single-mother (and there are plenty here – it’s low rent housing remember) supposed to do her laundry with her kids to take care of? And when she does she’s going to have to dress them up and drag them along to the laundrette with her.

The housing park has 286 units. The launderette has 10 washers and 10 dryers. This will of course NOT bottle neck, ever. Of course not. No one, like the single mother with children (which means she’s got a lot of clothes to clean), for example will not try to take 2 or 3 washers at the same time to cut down on wash time. Can you see the fights happening? I know I can.

There is someone that will benefit from this. Acropolis, the Greek pizzeria in same building as the new launderette. People waiting on their dryers won’t wait in the launderette, they will go next door and get some grub. I wonder how much that had to do in the decision to move the launderette.

Headway, just another greedy, self-serving, careless and lazy corporation that solves problems, not by ingenuity, but by broad punitive sweeps.