A New Way To Shop

Since my legal problems I have had to lower my standard and live at at level that I had never had to encounter in the past. I have been living in apartments.

I owned my home for twenty nine years. I have not lived in apartments since I was a student at the University of Texas at Austin in the sixties. The universe has changed. The new way to shop now is from your neighbor’s home. I was talking to some seniors this weekend who told me that someone moved into an apartment across from them awhile back. He left for a short time. When he returned, he did not have anything. The neighbors in the complex had stolen all his possessions. This happened to me in moving from one place to another. I lost everything I held dear. Everything was stolen. I was robbed at the place I was leaving and at the new place. The response of the managers was different. The Black manager told my attorney at the time ( I could hear her on the speaker phone) that I did not have any possessions and nothing was taken. She alleged that I had some type of mental problem to accuse people of stealing.  The white manager of the new complex where I moved and everything got stolen also denied that any theft had ever occurred. She ordered me not to tell others about the burglaries. The threat is that I will be evicted or my lease will not be renewed if I let others know about the burglaries. Managers know people are being robbed and are lying about safety and criminal behavior in the area to get you to sign a lease. When you complain they portray you as mentally ill to keep up the scam they are perpetrating on tenants. Houston is not a safe place to live if you live in the “Ghetto “. Crime is at an all time high. Add to this the new carry law and Texas will become the “Wild Wild West.”

I moved from Michigan. I had always lived in the suburbs. Michigan  was the murder capitol at that time. I felt safe and people did not rob you of clothing, dishes, food, silverware, sheets, towels, dishes, cleaning products, basic needs as they do in Texas. They are even stealing water, toilet tissue and paper towels in Texas. They do not want to buy anything when they can shop from your home to meet their needs. Your neighbors treat you like you are their “Walmart”.  This is a new kind of criminal behavior for me. My friends down here tell me I have led a sheltered life. They report having people walk around in their clothing. “You can see yourself coming and going in the “ghetto” one friend tells me. This is the norm. People just see what you have and steal it when you turn your back. This is their way of life. This may be the norm for some people but I will never accept it as a norm. When I grew up, you did not take anything that did not belong to you. You did not steal. Your neighbors did not steal from you. In Houston, there is a code of silence. Your neighbors will see you being robbed and will not report it.  They will join the robber to see what they can steal. I have recently had a number of people tell me about the trend of seeing people in the unit where they live steal from others.  They did not make a call to the police or agree to testify against the thieves. They did not want to be involved. When I told my new friend what had happened to me, she told me that my neighbors were furnishing their home from my possessions. In the process, they took my social security card, tax records for the last thirteen years, medicare documents, legal files, personal files, records and documents from lawsuits that I could have obtained money to improve my situation, my certificate of supervision as a family therapist by my supervisor and trainer at the family therapy institute, my letters of reference and other important papers and documents and my medical records. They also took three boxes of my most expensive suits and dresses, designer handbags, cutting boards, all of my silverware, all of my shoes, iron, hair dryer, face creams, shampoo, pots and pans, several sets of dishes, boxes of can goods and spices, balance of my law books and all of my library books that were borrowed and now must be purchased if I wish to continue borrowing from the law libraries.  To the managers of the apartments, I have not lost anything. One wonders what losing “something” would look like to them. This was just losses in the move from one apartment to another. Life in Houston is like living in a war zone. I do not know how people can live like this and maintain sanity. Perhaps they do not and this is why they like to live in an altered state on drugs. For me, I will never feel that it is okay to go shopping in your neighbors home or apartment instead of working and earning a living. My parents had a rule. You could never bring anything into their home if you did not buy it or if it was not given to you by the owner. You could not buy stolen property. My father considered this the same as stealing. More parents need to be like my parents. People would stop shopping in their neighbor’s home.