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We poor folk here in Oklahoma have been reduced to a state of utter powerlessness and worse poverty than any time since the Dust Bowl days. I've never seen the level of despair among the poor as extreme as it has become these days.
It's getting so hard as economic stresses on poor folk continue to worsen and more people than ever find they are slipping from "muddle class" into the ranks of the poor. I see the misery suffered by increasing numbers of people, how helpless we feel to improve our lot, and it's maddening!
Property owners seem to be among the worst of the wealthy in how they respond to what should be their responsibilities. I call them slumlords because that's what they are -- those who own rundown rental properties.
I worked for a time as an assistant manager at one property, so I've seen the scale of the problem up close. My then-hubby was the manager and full-time, sole maintenance person for a dilapidated apartment complex owned by a rich Jamaican who wanted the place run just like his offshore properties. He got away with it, and the suffering and abuse all of us endured was hard to believe but true. Conditions like those described in this article ... just appalling!
I had to go on Disability at age 50 (eight years ago), and I finally ended up living on the outskirts of Tulsa in an RV park because it was the cheapest place in town and the only one I could afford. I had just bought a 1973 model motorhome with a $2000 "inheritance" from my dad, knowing I might have to live in it.
What appalls me even more than my own personal situation here is that this place has rental units -- older model travel trailers that are in abominable condition -- that only the desperate poor would live in. They, and we who own our units that are old and ugly, live on only one street in the park which I call "Poor Man's Alley." I even refer to it that way to the staff but they are unshamable.
We live in completely different conditions from those who have the huge, luxurious motorhomes and snazzy modern trailers with multiple "slides" (which make them much more spacious), who populate the rest of the park.
Yet the poor who can no longer afford ever-rising rent payments at even the worst apartments in town are glad to get into a rental unit here because their rent price covers electricity and propane, trash, water, and sewer, plus extended basic cable teevee. Sounds good, and it would be if the units were in decent condition.
In the five years since I parked my old motorhome here, the level of responsiveness to the maintenance and repair needs at the rentals has deteriorated markedly. The owner seems to have decided that the old units are not worth fixing anymore or something, I don't know. My neighbors have to live with roaches and spiders (one was bitten by a brown recluse in her bed and nearly died because she couldn't afford to see a doctor). Air conditioners are ancient and won't cool these tin cans sitting in the Oklahoma sun, water heaters catch fire, and ovens leak propane into the house. Once or twice a year a unit burns or literally falls apart and they haul it away.
The slumlord owner has begun replacing these with FEMA trailers he gets somehow, which, while somewhat newer, are the smallest, cheapest and flimsiest built, I think. People just have to live with whatever conditions develop in these awful, cramped dwellings, including formaldehyde poisoning. It makes me sick at heart to see how we all live out here. I've seen whole families living in trailers less than 30 feet long!
I can't afford to pay for repairs to my motorhome and currently live without running water (I fill up containers with the garden hose), no propane (leak in oven), and an inadequate electrical system, so I can't even run two space heaters at once in cold weather, or can't use the microwave without turning off the AC unit. The slumlord won't pay for additional power lines on this street, although the rest of the park has 220 and adequate power for their juice-hogs.
But I live with my unit's condition because I own it -- for the renters, their maintenance should be taken care of by the slumlord! He delays indefinitely when tenants ask for repairs or for extermination of vermin and bugs, and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. If people complain, the owner writes them up for nitpicky offenses, threatening them with eviction, so they shut up. The staff here treats us on this street like lepers, untouchables ... like we're beneath contempt and unworthy of their attention or concern. Nothing we can do about it. The harrassment of the poor here is routine and definitely "keeps us in our place."
Renters still struggle to make their rent payments or else they're on the street, and you know how rough THAT is!
And all the while, we see these luxurious modern units passing through -- the ones who use the REST of the park -- looking like palaces on wheels to us. They set up in more spacious lots with new privacy fences, in gleaming rows on winding streets with lots of trees, just a block away from us. (Poor Man's Alley is jam up against a major freeway so we get the noise and dust!) You can bet the slumlord and his staff jump through hoops to keep the wealthy people happy, though!
The juxtaposition of these two distinct classes of people in one RV park and the vastly different treatment we receive brings home the point so hard we poor folk cannot ignore it: We don't matter, others do, and there's no recourse for us when conditions are so bad they're unsafe and unsanitary.
What strikes me about this situation is how much it reminds me of what life was like ... in PRISON!
I spent a few months there 17 years ago when my then-hubby was busted for selling a little pot and they took me along with him. In the penitentiary, you have no rights, no privacy, and no recourse if the conditions you live in are deplorable, inhumane and abusive, which they routinely are. Inmates learn this quickly and give up on trying to improve their lot through any sanctioned means. They end up preying on each other in order to get something slightly better for themselves, and their keepers allow this -- it's the accepted culture of prison life. If you're the prey rather than the predator, you're SOL, as we used to say (shit out of luck).
It's just scary to note how the similarity of prison life to everyday "free" life for the poor is increasing! In prison, humans "break" under such constant, oppressive abuse in situations which render them helpless. I'm seeing the same thing now among the poor who are supposedly NOT in prison, yet their despair and hopelessness are near the level of inmates.
As you said, Bobbie -- "whadda country!"
COMMA!
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