Homelessness & Housing Insecurity

The first thing I want you all to overstand, innerstand and understand about homeless and housing insecurity is that it can happen to anyone, at anytime and anywhere. Just one late check can be costly which happened to me before. That one late check change a lot for me. You know how they say most Americans are one paycheck away from poverty it’s true! That one late check caused my electricity to be cut off; intern I had to go to DSS (the government) for help ironically it's where the check was coming from due to being a landlord. I now owe them a little to over $1000 which I still have to pay back if I ever want help from them again smfh! So I could have paid my electric bill but due to a slip up of the mail I’m even more further in debt, this game is designed to keep us loosing. When you’re homeless you get treated like shit that’s the part that’s the worst! Your own friends and even family shit on you because when you can’t produce society treats you as if you don’t matter and that’s so fucked up! It can be quite disparaging, debilitating, it basically takes a toll on you. Homelessness and housing Insecurity can break you! But only if you let it! You have to be resilient, immovable most of all you must have faith. Keep fighting! All my life I had to fight well goddamnit I’m tired, I’m exhausted as fuck as in #MillennialProblems. Malcolm X says that “the most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America with three K’s AmeriKKKa is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” I now believe this to be the case worldwide. I’m tired of always having to fight. I’m tired of always having to have my foot on Dey necks. Sometimes I want someone to fight for me, for us, for once. One thing that needs to be known about homelessness and housing insecurity is that in the Hudson Valley there are two different Ulster Counties. There is the Uber rich and famous, old money I’m talking to 17 colonies old money usually white but a teeny tiny bit diverse then there’s the struggle side having issues finding not only gainful employment but also affordable housing. When you are white in Ulster County, you can damn near get away with murder some have #4Kings But if you’re black you are most likely to get criminalize for non-violent even trivial matters like fucking mattresses a fucking mattress! But Stone Soup gets to dump compost illegally (you can have compost in the city of Kingston, however, it needs to be in closed container not like how Stone Soup has it right out in the open) behind my house for years causing environmental issues, and giving me and the other neighbors rats. The back of that restaurant is the real K-town dump. The scent it emits is so pungent, so putrid that you can taste it in the back of your throat. My child along with other children have to play amongst this filth there’s even a daycare next door. My tenants and I couldn’t even fully enjoy our backyard which caused quite a problem because that meant a lot of hanging out on the front porch, which, I didn’t like because it made the house too hot but who would want to live like that anyway! This has been going on for years! I’m so fucking pissed and this comes back to being tired of fighting but I can’t stop! We’ve lived there for almost 8 yrs but for the past four it has been hell due to many other issues but mainly the rodent issue. It feels like one curse of a blessing this is what homelessness and housing insecurity feels like. Hopelessness. Even writing this is extremely painful and triggering. Imagine not being able to sleep due to rats running around, which in turn scares your child so she can’t sleep very well either. This all started one fall, I didn’t think much about it at first I just thought it was seasonal changes issues but setting rat traps for a year and a half and not having any luck getting rid of them, I eventually attributed their presence to the dump behind my home. We were in Jamaica for six weeks last summer upon returning which was literally the trip from hell trying to get back. So can you imagine after all that you return home to relax and rest only to find your entire bedroom covered in rat feces including my entire fucking bed. I literally don’t know how I didn’t just fucking loose it right then and there. I don’t know how I’m even still standing. It’s only the grace of God. Shits so annoying every corner I’ve cleaned damn near had rat shit in it. Even down to my child’s toys, so disrespectful! The summer before last was the worst of this ordeal I once cleaned out a closet only to end up with a dust pan full of rat feces. I couldn’t leave my stove uncovered or when I wake up in the morning it will be covered in rat shit. I figured out how they were getting to the stove top and had to tape that off and in addition ended up having to cover the stove with two big clear shower curtains at nights in order to wake up to a clean stove top. This part here nearly broke me again! But I kept on fighting. We were in the Bronx for all of last August, 4 weeks later we return and again another room and another bed covered in rat shit. I’ve thrown out that bed & will be throwing out the other bed as well. I can’t wait! From last September until now I’ve seen 4-6 rats but I know there's more. I mean like I’m in my living room chilling and happened to look out the window and see two different rats on two different occasions running across the porch roof trying to find a way to get into the home. I just saw one two mornings ago after once again setting traps this time thinking I’ve gotten rid of them but I have seen and cleaned up droppings as well so it got slightly better yet still a problem! But foremost I want to say that before this problem ever got exasperated I reached out to the owner of Stone Soup to ask her to clean up behind her restaurant because I’m Jamaican Jamaican and back home if you have a problem with your neighbor you don’t call In the authorities no you must first go to them and you speak to them human to human and try to rectify the problems; she thought she should throw her white privilege around and tell me that what she’s doing is perfectly legal and I could call the health department if I wanted to but they’re gonna tell me the same thing. I reached out to the Health Department nothing gets done. They are actually the ones that enabled the situation to get worse. I reached out to environmental protection they couldn’t help, I reached out to sanitation they couldn’t help either. I eventually got pointed in the direction of the Building Department which is whom got them to put a stop to what they were doing. However, they did not physically remove the filth from the back of the restaurant I have pictures and videos of not only dead rats and rat feces but material on them simply spreading out the filth, which, every single square inch of it was covered with flies that is how disgusting and vile the problem had gotten. Observing this I reached out to the mayor to see if something can be done because he’s the one that heads the department. He tells me even after telling him all that I just told you all including the issue with my stove; that they seem to have taken care of the problem. No the fuck they did not! He didn’t even give me a follow up call after our meeting to tell me what action he had taken on the matter only for two months later at the worst possible time after losing someone that was a dear friend #LongLiveKingDrip #ForeverBeloved #JusticeForDJ. He was like a brother to me so after finding him fighting for his life after being shot, yet I couldn’t do anything to save him I'm dealing with trauma from the experience of witnessing all of that; I’m now I been summoned to come in to court over goddamn mattresses unfuckingbelievable! My court date was December 17, 2019. What’s The point in being a law abiding Citizen, doing good in society and the community if at the end of the day you’re still going to be criminalized. I might as well had become a gangbanger for all of this nonsense. As I grow older I get it more and more how Britney Spears could cut all of her hair off and beat the shit out of a car window with an umbrella. I begin to understand the jokers of the world a little bit more. Because what I really want to do is go over there to that restaurant punch that bitch in her face and burn it to the ground but I’m not gonna do that because then I would be playing right into their hands. I will keep on fighting! I have even began practicing yoga, Tai Chi & meditating again in order just keep my nerves calm and to remain on the right side of history. But how much more can a bitch take?! What dey really want from a nigga!? I see the summons in the mail I call spectrum news and I will be emailing them picture and video evidence that I have and see what can be done. I’ll be setting up another meeting with Mayor Noble. I also want to note that a friend of mine ended up in the hospital for three days after getting food poisoning from there, so y’all gotta be careful in these streets be careful when eating from Stone Soup. Homelessness and housing insecurity is wanting to move, needing to move but me not having the means to do so at the moment because if I had the money to leave I would be out of here in a fucking second no lies! Dey got the right nigga today because at this point I can take the city and stone soup to court because the city did not uphold their fiduciary duties to its citizens nor did the health department, especially for the fact that it was noted in their notes that what stone soup was doing was legal and that is why their hands were tied so to speak. When the building department came to my property to check out the mattresses I heard about five people with clipboards show up trying to make it look like it was a bigger deal than it actually was. Which, I’m going to move it anyways due to it being a fire hazard. It’s just that I had a lot of expenses in November most expensive of all was getting a security system because this was the last known address pretty much where my friend lived and after his passing weird people started popping up doing weird things so I wanted to make sure we were protected. Getting ADT Security, paying bills and putting a little something on funeral funds took a lot out of me. They also never gave me my fair notice to begin with because the notice went out when we were gone for four weeks. So I did not even know that I had a citation until we returned in September and they would not give me my fair 30 days. They never dealt with me fairly from the beginning and I think a huge part of it has to do with property envy and absolutely racism because how can two property owners that basically share the same lot of property supposedly be endangering the community (and for all we know that filth could’ve gotten into my drinking water by now anyways) but they are not treated equally is it because I’m black? I would answer absofuckinglutely. Once the first snow fall began to melt remanence of the scent has return and I’m shook!