Evil, and the people who take it

I went on a home intake today in the Baychester area of the Bronx. The client was a 30-year-old woman in a wheelchair who lived with her son (approx. 10 years old) in the bottom of a two-family brick rowhouse. The landlord of her building lived upstairs until February, at which time a fire burned out his apartment. He turned off the gas and water in the building and moved out. My client's apartment was undamaged, and because a decent, affordable, wheelchair-accessible apartment is hard to find, she stayed in her apartment. But she hasn't had any water or gas (and thus heat) in the apartment for two months. But only now did she call for legal assistance.

No gas, no water for two months. And she's in a wheelchair. And living with a young kid. I kept repeating questions to her during the intake, as if I couldn't believe what was going on.

So you had no heat during the end of February and throughout the cold days of March? How have you been cleaning yourself? (Bottled water). How have you been cooking? (On a hotplate).

Unasked: what the hell finally angered you enough to want to do something about it?

I find that many of my clients suffer from what an old coworker of mine referred to as "battered tenant syndrome." They are poor, and are so used to being poor and the substandard quality of everything that you get when living in poverty that they don't expect to live in an apartment that meets the minimal requirements of the City's housing code. They accept fourth-rate living as a fact of life. So they'll live, without much complaint, with broken windows, peeling plaster, ceiling leaks, rat or cockroach infestations...but then there'll be that one thing that they just can't take anymore, that pushes them over the edge, like a ceiling collapse, and they'll finally seek help. This severely-disabled woman lived two months without gas or water.

And get this -- her scumbag landlord...he shows up a couple of times a month to get his mail out of his mailbox. My client never sees him, but she knows from her Social Services worker that he is still dutifully cashing his rent checks every month.

We're filing an emergency application in court tomorrow morning, seeking an order compelling him to get the gas and water back on.