I Feel Powerless and Am Losing Faith in Humanity
Decent titles usually come to me when I’m getting ready to write because you have to make sure you have something people can click on, but I’m so mentally exhausted that I just said, “Fuck it.” I’m so mentally exhausted, and it’d been a struggle keeping it together for weeks now. For the second time in the last month, I had to apologize to my son for the second time in a month that we can’t hang out because of everything we’re dealing with. But one thing I know is that writing is therapeutic, and I’m not just doing this for me, but I’m writing this for others who may be able to relate to this powerlessness.
I’ve bounced between a few different ways of writing this because there’s just so much to say. One angle that really kept sticking out to me was going to be titled “We’ve Misdiaagnosed America’s Main Problem.” For weeks now, I’ve just been completely flabbergasted at how little we all care about one another. This is something that I’ve known for a long time, and maybe it’s the reason I read so many social psychology books about how we’re designed to rely on one another and how we thrive together. But each time I read these books, I’m hoping they sell me on the idea because it’s a great evolutionary theory, but it’s rare we see it in practice.
A lot of people brush it off or don’t believe me, but one of the primary reasons I drank and used so many drugs was because I couldn’t stop thinking about how unreliable people are.
So, what the hell am I even talking about? Well, I’ll do my best to keep this short and sweet, but I plan on doing something more in-depth. What we’re going through is completely insane, and what’s worse is that nobody bringing attention to some of what we’re dealing with. The reality is that if we’re going through this, there has to be thousands or even millions of Americans going through the same thing.
This all started over a month ago on November 6th when we found a rat in our apartment. Since then, the problem got really bad. I’m talking so bad that there have been days when our apartment complex had to come remove 2-3 dead or trapped rats on a daily basis. And for any of you who or interested and can handle it, here’s a video I took of five or six rats running around our pantry, but be warned, some are stuck to glue traps.
From the moment this all started, our apartment complex couldn’t care less. We’ve lived there for over three years and have been ideal tenants. We keep to ourselves, we do our best to not have to bother the front office with nonsense, and most importantly, we’ve always paid our rent on time. But since we first brought this rat infestation to their attention, they just haven’t cared and have done less than the bare minimum.
Eventually, I had to escalate the issue and contact the regional manager. She’s been a little better, but you can tell that they know they hold all of the power in the situation. The manager on site has had the balls to have the regional manager copied on emails where she’s blowing us off and not being helpful in the slightest.
They know we had to cancel Thanksgiving. They know we had to put my mom in a hotel when she came to visit. They know Christmas is coming up, but they just haven’t cared. They’ll blame it on nature and justify the fact that maintenance and pest control doesn’t spend more than 10 minutes in our apartment to try and solve this problem.
You can really tell how much they just don’t care because on multiple occasions they’ve suggested we just move to a new apartment complex. We’ve lost so much time and money from this, and my girlfriend is in the middle of finals in grad school for social work. Now, one of their best solutions is that we spend more time and money packing, renting a moving truck, and moving to a new apartment complex.
After weeks of negotiating, which led to kicking and screaming, they finally offered to put us in a hotel while they try to take care of the rat issue. But, they told us we can no longer live in our apartment and either need to move to another apartment in the complex or find a new place to live.
I’m now done talking about our current apartment complex. There are far more details to this story, but I’m not going to go through them now even though I can just feel the victim-blaming comments coming.
Now, we’re in this hotel room for 10 days, and during this time we get to decide if we want to stay at our current residence or find a new place to live. After what we’ve been through for the last month, it’s really difficult to want to continue to give this complex our money with how they’ve treated us and not cared about our situation at all. But, as you’re about to see, this story gets so much worse.
There are some things that you should know going into this next section so you can really understand how screwed up everything is and how people really just don’t care.
I was laid off in September
Sadly, I lost my grandfather, but fortunately, he left an inheritance
I’ve been terrible with money my whole life, so when I received the inheritance, I read about 20 books on investing, so now it’s all tied up in safe stocks, but mostly they’re in S&P 500 index funds
You don’t need to know how much it was, but trust me when I tell you that we’d have no problem paying rent for at least two years if I had to sell it all tomorrow in this terrible market
My girlfriend is a full-time student, and she has plenty of money as well due to student loans, financial aid, and scholarships
It’s also probably worth noting that we live in Las Vegas, and in 2021 alone, rent has jumped up an average of 27%. Even though we can afford higher rent, that doesn’t seem to matter because nobody cares enough to help us.
For the first time in my life, even after 9.5 years sober, this year is the first time I’ve ever been financially secure. The craziest part is that I’m financially secure even though I lost my job of two years in September unexpectedly. But even though I have money in savings and finally learned how to invest, the people with the power do not care.
We have driven around and stopped by various apartment complexes and have called some as well. All of them have turned us down.
I don’t even know how to write this next part because it makes no sense whatsoever. So, what I think I’ll do is give a list of some criteria they want and how terrible this is for people in the current economy.
Valid Source of Income
They want a valid source of income, which makes sense. When you sign a lease, you pay every month and they want to know you have guaranteed money coming in.
My girlfriend is a full-time student and has guaranteed money coming in as well as enough in her bank account right now to pay for months of rent even if I didn’t exist. As for me, they say the money coming in isn’t valid because it’s not from an employer, and to prove it, I’d need a tax return.
This alone makes it impossible for anyone who gets let go of a job, and I’ll explain why.
If you were laid off in 2021 and went on unemployment or started your own business, it wouldn’t matter. They want a 2021 tax return showing your income, but you can’t file taxes until 2022. Do you have any idea how many people in this country have been laid off since 2020? We’re put in an impossible situation.
Bank Statements
Something else these apartments can work with is 2.5x rent in your checking or savings account that could cover 12 months. So, let’s say rent is $1,500/month. You would need $45,000 in your bank account.
So, if you’re unemployed, you would need that much money in your bank account to rent an apartment. Think about how impossible that is. Most Americans can’t even come up with $400 in the case of an emergency, so how would anyone have this much money on hand? The average person doesn’t have this kind of money just sitting around.
Well, fortunately, for the places we’ve been looking at, we actually have the access to that kind of money between checking, saving, and investment accounts. But there are two problems.
The first problem is that they don’t count assets like stocks. Even though it’s 2021, and you can sell all of your stocks with the click of a button and have the cash within 24 hours, they won’t accept it. Why? Well, one apartment told us, “The stock market could crash tomorrow.” True, but this is terrible logic.
Let’s say I hit the jackpot here in Las Vegas and won $100,000 cash. They’d accept that (kind of), but I could sign a lease and go gamble it all the very next day. Or, if I had a job, I could get fired the day after signing a lease. The risk is the same no matter which way you slice it. What should have some weight is the person’s credit and rental history because it proves that the person pays on time.
But even if we did win $100,000 from a jackpot, that wouldn’t matter unless we won it three months ago. That’s right. They want you to be able to show that you’ve had 2.5x rent for 12 months in your bank account for at least three months. This is something else that’s completely baffling.
I’m going to give you the best financial advice you’ll ever receive: If you let that much money sit in your bank account for three months, you lack financial literacy.
According to Nerdwallet.com, some of the best savings accounts have an APY of .5%. So, if you kept $100,000 in the best savings account for a year, you’d get back a measly $500. Now, let’s say you took that $100,000 and invested it all in something safe like an S&P 500 index fund. Well, year-to-date, the S&P 500 has risen 27.33%, so if you bought it on January 1st, your $100,000 would now be worth $127, 330. Or maybe you have a higher risk tolerance so you bought Tesla stock on January 1st, your $100,000 would now be worth almost $140,000.
So, what sounds like a smarter financial decision to you? The person who decided to keep their money in a savings account or the one who has the money in investments?
Personally, if I owned an apartment complex, I’d be questioning the financial decisions of someone who doesn’t have that type of money invested.
But this isn’t what’s been bothering so much. The policy’s aren’t why I had to sit down and write about this. The reason I’m writing about this is because no one cares.
From the rat-infested apartment to trying to find a new place to live, none of these people care. None of them take a look at this situation and realize how messed up it is. And as I’ve said on Twitter, my girlfriend and I are the lucky ones. What’s bothering me is that there are so many people who are in a much worse situation than we are, so I can only imagine what they’re going through. But when you talk to these people, they just don’t care.
When I’ve tried talking to these people to try and understand the logic behind the policy’s, they refuse to help. When I ask if they could talk to their management and explain our situation to see if we can work something out, they refuse to do so. At no point do they look at us as human beings trying to find a place to live and have an ounce of compassion.
What’s even worse is that when you ask them if they can try and help to work something out, they default to saying they can’t because of the Fair Housing Act. The reason they refer to the Fair Housing Act is that you have to treat all people equally when they’re trying to rent. So, rather than adjusting their policies to have flexibility for everyone, they’re leaning on something meant to help people and using it as an excuse not to help.
Today, I was talking with one of the apartment managers at a place we’re trying to get and asking questions to understand. Even though I have every right to just snap and go off on people at this point, I have been as calm and professional as possible. But within just a couple minutes of me asking questions to understand the policies and logic behind them, she got extremely rude with me saying she’s “not going to argue with me.” There’s just 0 empathy, and I wish I could say this is just one or two people, but we’ve been dealing with people like this for over a month now.
I just don’t get how so many people can simply not care about anyone else. The reason I almost went with the original title about how we’ve misdiagnosed the problem in America is that it’s hard to see political polarization as our issue when people don’t even care about one another. To encounter so many people who have a job that puts people in a home who just don’t care is just heartbreaking. They get annoyed with you for trying to find a roof to put over the head of your family. Or they get frustrated that you’re emailing and calling daily about the rats infesting your apartment.
I’m not going to lie that this has been one of the most difficult times since getting sober because I’ve felt so powerless over our situation. My girlfriend is in grad school for social work because she wants to help people. She knows it doesn’t pay well, but she wants to help people. As for me, I’ve done everything possible to become a good, responsible father since getting sober, and none of it seems to matter.
The other night was one of only three times since getting sober that I really wanted a drink. Fortunately, I live in Las Vegas and we have meetings 24/7, so I was able to get to one. But even with everything I’ve learned from therapy and 12-step programs, it kills me to know how many people are so selfish and uncaring, and this is the world I have to prepare my son for.
The good news is that I have a great support system, and one great thing about being a content creator is I have an audience who cares. A lot of authors, audience members, and many others have reached out to check in or offer advice, and I truly appreciate it.
Like I said, part of the reason I’m writing this is because this is a massive issue that nobody is talking about. Since I have a platform, albeit small, I feel like I have to bring attention to this, and that brings up a whole different problem I’ve been wrestling with.
As some of you know I do some freelance writing, and I also know a lot of journalists and editors for big publications. This is a major issue that nobody is talking about, and I don’t even want to reach out to them because I don’t want to get even more upset. The majority of people don’t do something unless there’s a big benefit for them, and I can’t tell you how many editors and journalists I’ve seen shut down articles about topics that need attention because they don’t think it’ll get the clicks.
If I reached out to people I know, and they blew me off about covering this story, I’d be extremely disappointed in them, so I just haven’t done it. And this is just another issue with our capitalist society. Publications would rather run the 100th story about the same polarizing issue to get the rage clicks, but they won’t cover something like this unless they think it’ll make them money.
My girlfriend and I have some theories about why it’s so difficult to rent a place right now, and one is that it’s due to the aftermath of the COVID eviction moretoreum. So, maybe if I can convince some journalists that this is a breaking story about something that’s already performed well in the news, maybe one of them will give a damn.
I hate ending any piece of content with a problem and no solution or glimmer of hope.
So, again, I appreciate everyone who has reached out or tried to help. Through all this, we have had some people in our lives go above and beyond. And at the end of the day, what keeps me going is knowing that this is going to pass and we’re going to be fine. My girlfriend and I are some of the most resilient people we know, and that’s why I love her. We’ve been through much worse and far more uncertainty and lived to tell the tale. This situation will be no different.
I’m currently writing a book about how we’re manipulated by the news, social media, technology, advertisers, and each other. It dives into the psychological history of manipulation, our biases, tribalism, and more.
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