Just got home from the Gopher baseball game (didn't know they lead the Big Ten). Mother threw me a couple stapled pages. My parents are being sued, again. And, once again, it is coming from tenants of the real estate properties they own. "I am tired," Mother said, and I can't blame her.
I consider myself to be fairly liberal in almost everything except law-and-order issues, and even then I am starting to see if other societal factors lead to crimes that I have thought should be swiftly punished. However I got to my liberalism -- it may have to do with the deep sense of unfairness I have felt, justified or not, as I grew up -- it has, as I have grown up, run up against something that could be classified as conservative or Republican: The fact that my parents were and are successful small business owners. With the help of loans, of course, they were able to operate three businesses, one of them all the way from start-up to sell-off, using the profits to send three kids through college and retire with a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I admire that in my parents.
It is through that lens that I see this lawsuit. One of their tenants sued a couple years ago, and they settled out of court. I don't know the details, but I have to trust my parents and that this was nothing but a bunch of greedy, law-exploiting parasites hitting up my folks for money because they could. And so I totally believe that the people with whom my parents settled out of court told other tenants that they have money and if they sue, they'll get money from them, too. Yeah, I think this is nothing but another goddamn shakedown of people who are doing the right thing by a bunch of motherfuckin' freeloaders who don't have the decency to take care of themselves. This really gets me angry, because my folks, regardless of the differences I have with them on most other things, earned all the money they made. It's been taken from them before, more might be taken now, and who knows when or even if it will stop.
This also furthers my pessimism on humanity. This shows that crooks aren't just rich -- they're everywhere, and they've decided to pick on my parents. I have always considered my folks to be a similarly misanthropic pair, and even though that serves them poorly at times, many times that's the appropriate defense mechanism. Which brings up how surprised I continue to be that they have invested in real estate properties. Shit like this, where tenants frivolously sue the owners just so they can squeeze money out of them, happens all the time, I have no doubt. So why would my parents get into the middle of this potentially constant litigation? To make money? From what I could tell, if they get sued like this more often, they'll start losing money.
My folks seemed like the kind not to take on this headache. I don't know when they got into this business; maybe it was when I was out in Los Angeles for college. Whenever it was, it threw out the window the notion that once they were done talking to people, they won't talk to anyone anymore. They'd just go to, like, Florida and stay cooped up in their condo until they die. I really didn't think they would want to talk to strangers, let alone tenants. But that's what they've been doing for the better part of two decades, and now the worst-case scenario has reared its ugly head for a second time.
I don't know what my folks will do. But I believe Mother when she says these lawsuits are taking a toll on her. If I were in their place I would totally be in despair over the news. But, I myself would know that beforehand and not wade into the bullshit that is rental ownership in the first fucking place.
So now what?
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