A Tenant Who Paid Tragically (eviction drove her to the edge)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

# Mary Jesus was a troubled and difficult renter. Faced with eviction after a long legal battle, she made a final, painful statement.

By Lee Romney, Times Staff Writer

OAKLAND — After scattering hundreds of copies of her suicide note from the seventh-floor ledge of a downtown building, Mary Jesus held her nose and raised an arm in the air.

Then, like a swimmer taking a plunge, she leapt to her death.

"Goodbye cruel world and all that," said the note, which blamed her suicide on an eviction she had battled fiercely — and unsuccessfully. "Everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable isn't prevented, 'Why didn't anybody do anything?' "

In the six months since her death at 33, Mary Jesus has become a symbol. Tenant leaders have highlighted her death as one of eviction's darkest consequences in an era of rising rents and an urgent shortage of affordable housing.

Landlords say they are not to blame and draw a different lesson. They point to failings in a mental health system that, they say, should have rescued Mary Jesus long before she stepped onto that balcony in the Oakland Tribune tower.

Many Oakland tenants have been swept out of their apartments by an overheated housing market. Most go quietly. Mary Jesus — stubborn, articulate, unstable — orchestrated a final act of defiance.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mary10jun10,0,7560740.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=pacifictime

[ET Awful]

1. So sad.

And meanwhile we give tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and make it harder for people like Mary to get the help they need.

:cry:

[acmejack]

2. Wow, how tragic is that?

That's what I'm talking about! They could have simply put a pistol to her head. If the homeless are insane, it is going through all of these travails that makes them so. Another victim of a benign greed oriented society.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Affordable housing is another winning issue that the Dems are

ignoring.

It's bad almost everywhere. There's a company going around buying up apartments in Minneapolis and converting them to expensive condos without doing any substantive remodeling. Mortgage payments plus association fees plus property taxes add up to three or four hundred dollars more than the tenants are currently paying.

Four buildings in my neighborhood have already gone. I'm holding my breath about my building, because I couldn't afford to buy this apartment.

[michaelwb]

5. Tell me about it

I just moved into an apartment a couple of weeks ago, only to find the landlord is selling and it will be converted into condos. Time to look again and try to beg, borrow the first, last, security and moving I don't have because I just moved a couple of weeks ago and haven't recovered from that hit. My apartmentmate and the other two apartments are exactly in the same ugly pinch.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. And now that this article has been picked up elsewhere on the bowels

of the internet, I would simply point out:

NOWHERE did I mention Bush but I find it interesting that that's what some claim the article says.

So, to those that are mocking this woman elsewhere on the internet and think this tragic story underscores the failures of liberalism, I would counter that liberalism would at least keep a roof over the head of the mentally ill.

In the words of your idol, Dick Cheney...go fuck yourselves.

[preciousdove]

6. Apartment glut in Twin Cities

Vacancies make it a renter's market
Wed, Jun. 08, 2005
BY GITA SITARAMIAH
Pioneer Press

As thousands of tenants move to home ownership, landlords are in the mood to deal

The loss of an estimated 25,000 renters to homeownership in the past year means landlords like John Lockner are making deals...

...Meanwhile, the average rent of $850 has stayed fairly stable and is just $3 above last year's average rent, according to GVA, which tracks the apartment market....

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/11838898.htm

http://www.apartments.com/search/Minnesota
http://www.startribune.com/jobs/

[Quetzal]

7. I have been extremely lucky to have a socially progressive

landlord. She has no interest in selling the home/land on which I live and rents out the rooms in the house below market value.

sorry that Mary Jesus had to go through with what she did. It must have been difficult for her to carry on each day fighting against eviction.

[Mabel Dodge]

8. I'm so angry after reading this article.

Why don't the conservative bastards just get it over with and take a gun to anyone who is weaker or different?

They must really groove on slow torture, what fun to see people writhe in the pain!

I don't believe there is a hell, but I hope I'm wrong. I would love to see every fricken conservative in the darkest, hopeless, hottest hole getting everything back in spades.