First off, Yes. I work in property management. No I am not a Landlord. I am an Assistant Community Manager for a Section 8/LIHTC project apartment, which is part of a larger company that buys older properties to convert into projects.
I have a resident who has made it their goal to write a manifesto on all their rent checks. Please note that their monthly rent is currently $29. Unless they make over 100k a year, their rent is generally going to always be 30% of their gross monthly income.
There are some late fees on their account, but we are legitimately trying to get rid of them and make sure that they are caught up and doesn’t owe us anything but their monthly rent.
Now that I have given that infodump… What can I do?
If they keep sending these IRL Hexbear posts (some of them reference Luigi) eventually my manager or someone higher is going to see this and be able to use these little rants as ammo to evict them. They see me as an enemy. I’m one of the people sitting in the office in the A/C supposedly making more than the maintenance team slaving away repairing people’s stuff. Btw, I’m the lowest paid gal around here, and half the maintenance team is low-key liberal Transphobic.
So Hexbear, what can I do to save another comrade from losing their housing? Any idea how I could help them funnel that energy towards something productive for the cause? How can I make them see that us here in the community are not their rivals just because we have to sell our intellectual and emotional labor?
This is the type of struggle someone gets into after labor got bombed and disintegrated into the ground. Imagine if you could just invite them to a Sunday service where they can get all the info of Marxism they’d ever want.
But from my perspective, there’s no negotiation with someone who doesn’t trust you. Your intentions could be pure, shit, your actions could be pure, but if they don’t like you then a lot of good it would do you. As a rule of thumb, if ever I don’t feel listened to, I believe I basically need to become an empathetic listener on the scale of a therapist to get someone to ever hear out your case. Basically praying they let slip what their problem is and what they need out of a solution because they love talking about themselves so much to the exclusion of listening to how you fit into the picture.
In essence, they need to feel listened to not only by you, but by themselves before they’ll ever hear you say “look, I need you to lock the frick in because I’m dedicating my career to making life better for you and you’re trying to torpedo the whole frickin thing. If you want to talk about communism, great, me too. Just don’t do it where the capitalists can hear us”
“look, I need you to lock the frick in because I’m dedicating my career to making life better for you and you’re trying to torpedo the whole frickin thing. If you want to talk about communism, great, me too. Just don’t do it where the capitalists can hear us”
Thank you for giving me exactly what I would like to tell them, distilled so perfectly.
Hopefully I can get that passed on somehow.
maybe send a letter? You could also add a “ps: I make x $/h, maitenance makes more. Stop doing what the Capitalists want you to, stop being angry at your fellow worker”
Also bonus. Me while being shown this letter:
Have you had the chance to talk face to face? You could tell them some version of what you told us. Look up “motivational interviewing” or just how to have an organizing conversation, they’re kinda the same thing. If you listen for long enough and build some rapport you might be able to offer to share some resources.
See my other post response. I’m actually hoping to find someone who could reach out to them. I think they have too many prejudice on who I am, due to my job, to be able to effectively reach out to them.
You might be surprised, going hat in hand to the door can lower a lot of barriers. Ppl can sense when your genuine. With that said, gonna echo what others shared and pls don’t put yourself in a dangerous situation if you think they’re gonna out you as a communist to your employer. Or some other retaliation someone hurting might do
Idk exactly what you can do to solve everything, but if they are making references to Luigi, I sure hope they don’t think of you as Brian Thompson. That would make me a bit nervous. Maybe tell them exactly how much you make an hour? Sometimes people have wild assumptions on how much people make. Maybe ask them if they would like to observe what you do all day so it can provide some perspective on what labor you do perform? Can you get to know them a bit more and have a heart to heart? Might break down the adversarial relationship a bit if they know that you agree with them on a lot issues.
It would be really hard to get to know them. They have a breakdown everytime H.U.D demands my office to get a signature from them. I haven’t had a single conversation with them where some part of the conversation doesn’t make them flip their lid. Every single interaction ends with them storming off upset before I can get a word in.
I don’t think I can just stop them and a “Hiya, I’m also a leftist who has IWW connections and once moderated a leftist social platform!” would suffice. I also don’t want them writing in future notes about how a “so called leftist” could do what I do, the next time they submit rent a day late and now there is a $5 late fee tacked on in the system that I can’t do anything about being just a community worker.
That’s unfortunate. I don’t think you even have to announce you’re a leftist, just invite them to have a behind the scenes tour or something. But if they can’t even hold a conversation for even a few moments I doubt they would be ready to do even a quick tour. Sounds like they might need some help that I am not sure you’re in a position to give.
I’d continue to be kind and hopefully they chill out on the notes.
You step back, breathe, realize if you don’t care for yourself, you didn’t won’t be able to care for anyone. Needs of the many, etc.
Thank you UwU.
Its my natural tendency to want to help others first, to the detriment of myself.
Yeah, I get it. Please don’t wait four decades to learn about and begin implementing healthy boundaries, like I did. You can’t get back the time, energy, and health it costs you. This is the one life you have, right now. ❤️
Eta, you’re welcome.
Unfortunately I’m 3 and a half decades in. Lol.
Great news! If you start right now, you’ve saved yourself five years! 💃
If you have the power to do so, you could call them specifically about the late fees and - while you’re in the process of helping them get them removed or explaining to them how they can get removed - mention that you & everyone else in the office are doing their best and aren’t personally trying to make their life hell.
As someone who has in the past (when I worked as a bank cashier) & currently does interact with a lot of people who have previously contacted us angrily in my current job, usually this is my tried-and-true method to getting people on my side and stopping them from seeing me & the people who are dealing with them in person as their enemy. You’ve gotta humanize yourself & your coworkers - which is just an absurd thing to even say but when it comes to people looking for support or who are just upset about something out of their hands, it matters. Saying something like “yeah, I personally think housing is a human right and in my ideal world my job wouldn’t necessarily exist but you know how it is in this country…late fees baked into every little thing” while you’re speaking to them about getting rid of said fees probably would work.
I saw this a lot the single year I worked as a cashier at a credit union & it killed me inside every time so I get where you’re coming from. Money in general gets people on edge and when someone’s crying frustrated tears at 9am because their check deposit has a 2 business day hold but they needed to pay rent yesterday; they’re liable to say a lot of shit they don’t mean but WILL get them in trouble and don’t want to hear someone go “hey, I get it but if you say ‘why shouldn’t i just burn this place down’ the boomer white lady sitting next to me is gonna press the panic button out of reflex”.
I’m not sure if this is meant for me to be more self perceptive of myself, or of how the resident sees me. Or if it’s meant to be both. Still a pretty good post.
You get to choose. But I’ll say this. You matter. You take care of you, first.
Maybe tell them that the bank won’t accept cheques with writing on it anymore…?
In my experience there are people who are on the borderline of being able to follow the rules to stay in the system, and eventually they will cross a line and end up evicted. You can’t do anything about their mental health or their ability to regulate their emotional reactions.
You CAN and imo should try to guide them towards less self sabotaging behavior, but I doubt you’ll be able to convince them you are on their side. I bet that nobody with any kind of authority has ever proven to be trustworthy to them, and it’s probably too late to change that :(
You can’t help some people. Getting further involved will drag you down with them and probably lose you your job.
This is real life, report the threat and move on. You can help more people by donating money to the food bank than being unemployed and homeless together with this person.
report the threat and move on
Be sure to congratulate yourself for that tone.
What threat?
