People are BASICALLY good... but not so much when it comes to property rights and gaming the system.
I live half the year and I rent a house in South Florida (I sold my home here in 2005... remember the housing crash? Missed me!). Pay my rent on time, and am generally about as good a tenant as you can get - family man, live well within my means, live quietly...
The people I rent from? Not so much... the owner at the house I lived at previously (this is all public information) owes me $4040... that was the determination of a the Palm Beach County Civil Court after a lengthy hearing and trial process - one that the owner fought, lied under oath, and dragged out for months. It has been 7 months or so since the Court's decision, and despite my best efforts to remind this sad excuse for a human being that she had her day in Court, no check has been forth coming. As it turns out after further investigation, this has been the standard operating procedure for this POS for quite some time.
So.... I find a beautiful house steps from the beach in Boca Raton, which happens to be a couple blocks from my elderly mother's condo, so I sign a lease and hand the owner nearly $10,000 for first, last and security deposit. Unfortunately, last week we were served with Court papers that the bank was foreclosing on the Owner - seems the owner has not paid the mortgage since November 2008! Got that? The owner was collecting rent checks, and taking in security deposits, but had not paid the mortgage in 2 years. BTW... the property taxes? Hasn't paid them in 3 years... Nice work if you can get it, I guess...
So I contact the Court and the City property tax assessor... The Court says "No Problem, you have a lease and you are paid through till January 1. We can't guarantee what the bank will do, but as a practical matter there is little to no shot of you being evicted by January 1". That did not make me feel much better, as I wanted to stay until March 1 as my lease states... so I went over to City Hall where I got the unofficial "everybody is doing this, but don't say I told you". I also got the unofficial report that half of the expensive homes over by the beach had not paid their property taxes in 3 years.
While this is hardly scientific, it certainly is NOT a great data point regarding housing prices... and it really doesn't say much about "community" when property owners are only too willing to steal from people and from banks. It seems that people WILL game the system, and disgustingly so, and many are quite willing to steal from their neighbors.
The moral of the story? Desperate people do desperate things... best to stay clear of them, and stay clear of the things and temptations that can bring one into desperation themselves... I was looking forward to my full time move to the farm this spring... but perhaps this might come down a little sooner.
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From the "This has nothing to do with anything" department:
Last week a Rutgers University football player was paralyzed from the neck down. A few years ago, a Penn State player was paralyzed from the neck down... this type of injury happens several times each decade at the college level, maybe once or twice at the pro level, and every year at the high school level.
I read these stories without detachment... because there but for the fates go I. When I was young I played football for a high school in a rough-and-tumble, gritty, blue collar town about 10 miles north of New York City's Borough of the Bronx. I was recruited to play major college football as a Defensive End, and received an athletic scholarship from one of the nation's premier college football programs. By my junior year, I had developed a chronic injury in my neck - every time I made a tackle or a hit, my right arm would go completely numb or burn with radiating nerve pain. The trainers and doctors described it as a "sprained neck", whatever that is (I didn't know you could "sprain" your neck). I could move my fingers, but I could not lift my arm... and I was in excruciating pain most of the time. The team trainers were of the mind that this was football - you have to accept injuries as part of the game. I looked around me - in a 4 year college football career the odds of severe knee (or other injury) damage seemed to me to be near 50% for defensive linemen, leaving most disabled later in life. The coaches were all former pro and college players.... and they looked terrible. Fat, crippled, and just a weeeeeee bit loose in the head (at least they seemed so to me). This was before we knew that playing football had serious neurological consequences.
In pre-season practice of my junior year I was involved in a 3 way collision that knocked me nearly unconscious and unable to lift or move my arm. The next day I went into practice, got taped up, sat out by my locker, and couldn't put on my shoulder pads and jersey no matter how I tried. I had a blindingly painful headache (in looking back there is no doubt I had had a bad concussion) so I picked up my gear, headed over to the equipment trainer, gave him my stuff and told him I was done. I walked back to my dorm room still in my practice pants complete with girdle, thigh, and knee pads. Other players were still straggling in late and were wondering where the hell I was going... It was the most difficult decision I had ever made in my young life... but I felt I was one hit from being a quadriplegic, and I wasn't willing to take the risk for even one more day.
Several years later Marc Buonticonti, the son of Miami Dolphin legend Nick Buonticonti, was paralyzed from the neck down in a college football game. Buonticonti was playing with a "sprained neck", too. That was in 1985. Marc was quoted as having "waged war on paralysis". While saddened for Marc's circumstances... I celebrated my own decision, and my own good health. I often wondered how Nick Buonticonti felt about the game of football - no doubt the primary source of his wealth, connections, and fame - after his son's life changing injury. I hear he still cracks a champagne cork after the last unbeaten NFL team loses each year. Life does and should go on, I guess... All the money raised has done wonders for the professionals researching Spinal Chord Injury ("SCI"). They get great salaries, people call them doctor, their kids go to exclusive private schools... and it is now 2010, and despite millions of dollars raised to fund research and treatment, Marc Buonticonti is still driving a wheel chair with his tongue (not that Marc and his organization have not done great things... they just haven't done great things for Marc's paralysis. Marc Buonticonti is an outrageously courageous individual).
Some years later, my first son was born. There were NO pictures of my playing days in my house. The television sat unused on saturdays and sundays during the fall. With rare exceptions, I never watched football again. My son played soccer, baseball, and wrestled. Somehow, without any knowledge of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ("CTE"), I came to the conclusion that football was not a risk worth taking for the mental and physical health of my son.
Life changing spinal chord injuries happen - car accidents, horse back riding, surfing, falls - but needless to say they are to be avoided at all costs. I read with sadness AND anger the words of the Rutgers' Coach when discussing the spinal chord injury his player sustained last week. The same words are trotted out every time a player is paralyzed... "he's a fighter", "he'll walk again", "he'll never give up"... platitudes do nothing, and spinal chord injury takes everything - and leaves you with a "head in a bed". Now we are finding that the game of football simply cannot be played WITHOUT neurological damage occurring somewhat up the nerve stem in the player's brains... their brains are damaged with every hit; they suffer from pugilistic dementia, depression, rage, suicidal tendencies...
In life we make and live with our own decisions, and a good measure of luck (good and bad).... but is this no way to spend a life. If you have a kid interested or already playing football, you really must consider the risks of spinal chord injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
I thank my lucky stars everyday that I am healthy, happy, and in love with my life and family... for every time I carry my little girl to the beach and watch her play in the sand. Spinal Chord Injury has forever changed the lives of many people... There but for the grace of G-d go I.