Trespassing
Aug. 8th, 2004 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dream_labyrinthI have been busy this morning, somewhat.
I woke up with a headache. That's due to the fact that my room is on the level of the house, therefore quite warm, and I don't sleep well when it's warm. Also, at sunrise the sparrows fly around our house eating from the vine growing on the walls. And they are loud. Woke me up this morning and I couldn't really go back to sleep. It has been like that all week and I'm starting to feel the lack of sleep. Anyway, I gave up around nine and decided I might as well get up.
And after breakfast, I did something quite interesting: trespassing on somebody else's property. The house across the road from us has been empty for a while. The former tenants were not... er... civilized? Yeah, that might be the right term. We just met them on the road sometimes. And we saw what they did to the outside of this old farmhouse. It's a little older than our house, I guess something like 150 years or so. With at least some clay walls. It looked pretty nice actually, before these guys set up satelite dishes on several windows, broke new windows into the walls at places where they look absolutely ridiculous and pretty much letting decay the building. So now the thing has been sold to somebody who most likely never looked at it,and they had to be moved out. The town assigned some other apartments for them, they're unemployed and only live off the money they get from the government.
And as I'm a curious person, I used the fact that somebody broke open the door to the house and went to have a look.
Now these people living there supposedly were poor. I saw enough appliances and furniture for something like 4 kitchens, including pots and pans, even a Wok, plates, silverware, glasses; 3 washing machines, 2 large TVs, a ton of video tapes and CD-ROM, several sofas, chairs, tables, closets, and enough clothes to supply a small African country for a few years. Also skis, inline skates, roller skates and whatnot. And that's only the stuff they left behind.
I don't believe it, people like my family pay taxes so that these guys can live like that???
I'm not overly social, I know. I don't think anybody should starve or live on the street or not have the opportunity to go to school. But I don't see the need to supply a family like that with stuff they neither need nor value.
The house was in a terrible shape, too. In some rooms, they have apparently tried to lower the ceiling (the rooms are more than three meters high, originally, which is really nice IMO) by drilling hooks into the (clay) ceilings and attaching plywood to it. In some places they didn't finish, but it didn't seem to bother them overmuch. The bathrooms were plainly disgusting, and don't even let me get to the cardboard boxes they had used as cat toilets (despite the fact that they also had several expensive litter boxes).
The main thing that surprised me is that it looks as if the inhabitants moved out in half an hour and didn't have time to pack anything. It seems as if they just gathered the most important things (even though you'd think social security ID would be important, and they left it on the floor) and left in a hurry. Which they didn't. They had something like months to pack, and even if time wasn't long enough, they could come back now and get the rest. I just don't get it!
The new owner will most likely tear the whole thing down. Even though the roof seems to be in good shape, and that is the most important thing, it would take much more money to repair the house and do something with it than to tear it down and build some disgusting, small houses there. There's also a huge garden to the house which could be turned into a nice park - it must have been something like that, at least partly. But that's just my way of looking at it, not influenced by any kind of economical thoughts. Which probably means more new houses there. Makes me think it's not too bad that I'll probably move away from here soon. It would be sad to see the old house go for this form of housing.
I woke up with a headache. That's due to the fact that my room is on the level of the house, therefore quite warm, and I don't sleep well when it's warm. Also, at sunrise the sparrows fly around our house eating from the vine growing on the walls. And they are loud. Woke me up this morning and I couldn't really go back to sleep. It has been like that all week and I'm starting to feel the lack of sleep. Anyway, I gave up around nine and decided I might as well get up.
And after breakfast, I did something quite interesting: trespassing on somebody else's property. The house across the road from us has been empty for a while. The former tenants were not... er... civilized? Yeah, that might be the right term. We just met them on the road sometimes. And we saw what they did to the outside of this old farmhouse. It's a little older than our house, I guess something like 150 years or so. With at least some clay walls. It looked pretty nice actually, before these guys set up satelite dishes on several windows, broke new windows into the walls at places where they look absolutely ridiculous and pretty much letting decay the building. So now the thing has been sold to somebody who most likely never looked at it,and they had to be moved out. The town assigned some other apartments for them, they're unemployed and only live off the money they get from the government.
And as I'm a curious person, I used the fact that somebody broke open the door to the house and went to have a look.
Now these people living there supposedly were poor. I saw enough appliances and furniture for something like 4 kitchens, including pots and pans, even a Wok, plates, silverware, glasses; 3 washing machines, 2 large TVs, a ton of video tapes and CD-ROM, several sofas, chairs, tables, closets, and enough clothes to supply a small African country for a few years. Also skis, inline skates, roller skates and whatnot. And that's only the stuff they left behind.
I don't believe it, people like my family pay taxes so that these guys can live like that???
I'm not overly social, I know. I don't think anybody should starve or live on the street or not have the opportunity to go to school. But I don't see the need to supply a family like that with stuff they neither need nor value.
The house was in a terrible shape, too. In some rooms, they have apparently tried to lower the ceiling (the rooms are more than three meters high, originally, which is really nice IMO) by drilling hooks into the (clay) ceilings and attaching plywood to it. In some places they didn't finish, but it didn't seem to bother them overmuch. The bathrooms were plainly disgusting, and don't even let me get to the cardboard boxes they had used as cat toilets (despite the fact that they also had several expensive litter boxes).
The main thing that surprised me is that it looks as if the inhabitants moved out in half an hour and didn't have time to pack anything. It seems as if they just gathered the most important things (even though you'd think social security ID would be important, and they left it on the floor) and left in a hurry. Which they didn't. They had something like months to pack, and even if time wasn't long enough, they could come back now and get the rest. I just don't get it!
The new owner will most likely tear the whole thing down. Even though the roof seems to be in good shape, and that is the most important thing, it would take much more money to repair the house and do something with it than to tear it down and build some disgusting, small houses there. There's also a huge garden to the house which could be turned into a nice park - it must have been something like that, at least partly. But that's just my way of looking at it, not influenced by any kind of economical thoughts. Which probably means more new houses there. Makes me think it's not too bad that I'll probably move away from here soon. It would be sad to see the old house go for this form of housing.
