FUCK YOU Chicago Board of Education!!

The BBQ Pit
1

(Warning, long, bitchy pathetic whining ahead)

We got some bad news yesterday. The city of Chicago is tearing down our block to build a freaking un-needed school. Neighborhood organizations have been fighting this for the last 5 years, and last year we were told we probably had a 5 year reprieve, because the city didn’t have the money to buy up all the properties on our block, and that the school had been put on a lower priority list, but yesterday we got a Termination of Lease form, and have to be out of this apartment by the 14th of July! We also found out that our landlord has known about this date since last December, and yet never said a word to us, even though we see him often (he lives in the building) and are on good terms. We’d even talked within the last month about replacing our stove because the oven quit working. I can’t bitch at him, because we’re going to need his reference.

What also gets me is that when we talked to a person from the neighborhood association, we’re told that the city STILL doesn’t have all the money to buy up all the properties on the block (they need $7 million and have $4 million), and that the school is STILL on their lower priority list! There’s no hurry here, but we have to go. So half of this block, which is across the street from an existing elementary school, will consist of abandoned buildings, a dream come true for kids with rocks, drug dealers and sexual predators.

I can’t even picture the school they say they want to build (a junior high). The full block is the kind of block where there are single-family homes, 2 and 3 flats facing one street, an alley behind, then apartment buildings facing another street. They claim they don’t want the buildings on the other side of the alley, but that makes no sense. That would be one long, narrow stupid-looking school!

I can’t even begin to tell you all how angry and depressed I am. I thought we’d live here for the rest of our lives. We love this apartment, we love the neighborhood, we love everything about this area. We have no money set aside for a sudden move, we have no friends or family to help us move, we’re just fucked all around. For those who think we should have seen this coming, well, yeah, but what should we have done? Put everything in boxes and lived out of boxes when we thought we had a few more years? The money situation just caught us at a hard time, when we just don’t have any extra on hand. We’ll have to borrow money. We may get some moving expenses, but that’s not guaranteed at this point.

Moving sucks, everybody hates to do it, but I swore after the last time that I’d never do it again. For several reasons physically and mentally, it nearly put me in the hospital. But there’s nothing we can do about it. We have to. We have tens of thousands of books, LPs, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, magazines…blah blah blah, to go on would be inane whining (it’s only stuff) but I didn’t want to have to move it all again. We don’t own a car either, so it’s going to be a nightmare all around. Whatever we can’t fit into the moving van we have to carry on the bus, including our 4 cats. Sorry to be boring. I’ve been railing and ranting and crying all day. We tried to cheer ourselves up by going to see Finding Nemo yesterday and I hated it. I think any other time I would have loved it. Tip: never go see a movie you want to love when you’re in a shitty mood.

So, anyway, we have to go find another apartment with everything we need price-wise and space-wise and lifestyle-wise. I’m NOT giving up my cats, and it has to be close to public transportation (freaking yuppies are buying up buildings close to all the “el” stops and turning them into condos for other yups, while driving out the working poor who REALLY need it…god I hate yuppies!!). Then we have to spend every waking hour just packing things. Thousands and thousands and thousands of things. As it is, we’ll probably leave thousands of items here, to be destroyed when the building is torn down (bright side, we don’t have to clean the apartment or make sure the trash is taken out!) If I’d had a year or even a few months, I probably could have sold a lot on ebay. If only our landlord had told us last December!

I fully realize this is all extremely pathetic-sounding. People have REAL problems that they’re coping with, and mine are not real problems. But it’s bothering me, and I had to get it off my chest.

FUCK YOU CITY OF CHICAGO BOARD OF EDUCATION!! There were other places in this neighborhood you could have used to build your stupid-looking assed school, and it wouldn’t have driven dozens and dozens of families out of their homes. Affordable housing is so scarce in Chicago, ESPECIALLY if you really have to be near public transportation.
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
:frowning: :mad: : ( :mad: :frowning: :mad:

2

How many units are in your building? If more than 6, slam him for not giving you the requisite 30-days notice. No kidding, back that fucker up against the wall.

3

Does the city of Chicago not have to pay for at least some of your moving expenses???

I don’t blame you at all for complaining about this. It’s rough to have to give up home – whether it’s an apartment or a house. And what a hassle!

4

You’re getting kicked out of your home. I feel safe calling that a real problem.

5

Well, let’s see here…

They were informed on June 15th that they have to leave on July 14th. Yep, all seems to be in order.

Haj

6

Where would be the fun in that?

Could the city be trying to get rid of the working class people. I know Guiliani was actively working towards getting rid of working and lower income people from Manhattan when he was Mayor. This might be Chicago’s special way of doing it en masse.

7

So you hate Yuppies (what ever that means) and the Chicago Board of Education. It sounds like your landlord is really the one who screwed you here.

8

Yeah. And those bastards wanted to buy out the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud orphanage, too!

9

First observation…why would the landlord let you know? You might move and he would miss out on rent. People, even ones you think are decent, will almost always choose money coming to them then the wellbeing of others (nonfamily)

Second, this is why you should support lower taxes. Government does less damage when it has less money to spend. In my neighborhood, the city kept wanting to put in a sidewalk. People who wouldn’t be affected were all for it. Those of us losing part of our yard and having this ugly thing put in (a full 15 feet from the street!?!) and having our yard torn up (which the city gleefully said would be left that way at our stress and cost to repair) were against it. It looked like it was going to go in when a miracle happened…a budget crisis! All of a sudden, they had other things to occupy their time.

I will never vote for higher taxes again for any cause because I believe government does less damage if they are struggling.

Now, your city doesn’t have all the money needed but if they had NONE then you wouldn’t be screwed.

Third, moving really shouldn’t stress you out so much, IMO. I know it’s easy for me to say since I can handle moving in stride. I’ve moved many times in my life. If it really affects you so badly, then it seems a bit unusual to me. Now, if you owned your own place I could see a big reaction but you are not owning but paying someone to live it what they own – an inherently temporary situation.

I hope you find a place soon! Meanwhile, I agree with the poster who says to nail your landlord for violation of 30 days. If he knew and should have told because he wanted to collect rent from his tenants for as long as possible then he should have some liability.

IANAL

10

I apologize for my burst of vulgarity in the previous post. I am dealing with a dishonest-by-omission landlord myself. That said, I stand by my advice (suggestion?) to nail him for improper notice.

He could get by if he had informed you on June 14th, but he gave you notice on the 15th - a 29 day notice. 5 ILCS 70/1.11 states the day of service is excluded from the count of days.

Was your lease signed before or after December? If after, he also failed to correctly inform you of the terms of your tenancy.

11

By my count, June 15th to July 14th IS 30 days.

12

Thank you everybody for your responses. We’ve been looking for places, and packing, and trying not to panic (that will come in a couple of weeks).

It was 30 days, exactly, so we have no beef there. In any case, it’s a 3-flat, though his mother has been living illegally in the basement.

He really could have told us in December. He knows us well enough, he knows how much stuff we have and how much we really really really love this place to know that we would have stayed here until the very last split second. I assume it was his lawyer who advised him not to say anything to us, but who knows.

I understand why somone would be puzzled at why moving stresses us out. All I can say is what I already said, we have tens of thousands of Books, LPs (about 1500 of those alone), cassettes, CDs, DVDs, videos, magazines (many we’ll be giving or throwing away, but some, like Premiere, and older ones like Crawdaddy, Trouser Press and others, we want to keep). I am trying to get rid of some of the stuff (I posted in MIPSIMS) but it’ll really just be a drop in the old bucket. It wouldn’t be so stressful if we’d had more time.

We like renting. Neither of us has the tolerance to mess around with home ownership. We understand that rentals are/can be temporary. We just would have liked a little bit more time.

cleosia, I think you’ve got it. Our alderwoman has wanted to gentrify this area (the Albany Park area of Chicago) for years. She seems deeply envious of places like Wicker Park and Ravenswood (interesting Chicago neighborhoods that got gentrified and became dull as dirt). We love this neighborhood because it’s so vibrant and ethnic (Middle Eastern, Asian, and Hispanic mainly). But the ethnic people are leaving, are being driven out by higher prices and things like this school, which is NOT needed! The wonderful flavors of the neighborhood are disappearing, and within 10 years it’ll be as bland as all the other gentrified Chicago neighborhoods. Once the real people are gone (and no, I’m not going to define that), the uniqueness of the neighborhood is gone.

Thanks again for reading and responding. I just had to blow off some steam.

(Back to the grind)

13

No, the clock does not start ticking until the day after the notice is served as stated in Illinois statute 5 ILCS 70/1.11, referenced above. Day One of the notice she received is June 16.

From Illinois Compiled Statutes

and from Illinois Pro Bono

This statute has been used effectively against landlords when they failed to give proper notice.

14

[QUOTE]
We have tens of thousands of books, LPs, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, magazines…blah blah blah, to go on would be inane whining (it’s only stuff) but I didn’t want to have to move it all again.

Maybe you should concentrate on purchasing important things like a car or house and saving some money instead of buying crap like this :smack:

15

Thank you very very much Peri, we’re going to look into it.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Hairy *
**

We don’t WANT a house and a car. They come with headaches and big bills. That stuff is not “crap” to us. We’re big readers, music lovers and movie lovers. That’s important to us. Without all that “crap” but with a house, we’d sit there and…what? Admire our house, our mortgage payments, insurance payments, and all the other bills that come with owning a house? Without all that “crap” but with a car, we’d drive around and…uh, drive around…then go home and sit around and admire our car payments, insurance bills, receipts for tags, licenses, city stickers, gas bills, and repair bills? Bills may turn you on, but they don’t do it for us. The only monthly bills we have are rent, utilities and Internet. (oh, and DirecTV, for the movie channels).

OUR priorities and belongings are suitable for our lifestyle and the things we love to do. When we saw this apartment, and the neighborhood, we fell in love immediately. We would have been happy to stay here for the rest of our lives. Maybe somewhere down the line we might have been at a point where we could/would want to, buy the building and rent out the other two apartments. Who knows? We just knew that it was the perfect place for us. This place is HUGE. Most HOUSES don’t have as much square footage as this place. It’s perfect in every way. 3 large bedrooms! A massive amount of kitchen cabinets and drawers. Closets galore, including several walk-in closets. Even a huge closet in the bathroom! It’s in an interesting neighborhood, and it’s 2 1/2 blocks from an el stop and 1 block from a 24-hr bus. The neighborhood has dozens of ethnic restaurants, from Persian to Thai to Korean to Mexican to Swedish. There are over a dozen ethnic markets within a few block area. We can shop at a Japanese grocery store just a half a block away. I could go on and on. We’re paying $800.00 a month. My only satisfaction is that this huge, beautiful apartment is going to get knocked down flat while the Yuppies on the other side of the alley are living in teeeny little crackerbox condos (oooooh, but they’re refurbished!), and they’re paying almost double the price for the privelege. Chuckle.

You can have your house and car. I may be bitching, but I’m debt-free and very happy about it.

16

Oh, and, my husband’s mother died and we had to travel to another state for the funeral, and then he helped pay for a lot of the expenses, so THAT’S why we’re short at this time.

17

Another thing, owning a house doesn’t mean jack shit. There are several single-family homes on this block, but the city claimed eminent domain (sorry, my spelling sucks) and bought them for less than what they were worth. The family next door had lived in this neighborhood for 27 years, and on this block for 15 years. They’re pushed out and have to move to a completely different part of the city.

(Did I mention this place was huge? The kitchen, with dozens of cabinets and drawers, is still big enough for a large side-by-side fridge-freezer, a microwave hut, and a 4-seater kitchen table. The dining room is so big that we have custom-built floor-to ceiling shelves on 4 walls (7 shelving units there), a piano along a 5th wall, and along a 6th wall is a bank of windows, under which my husband built two rows of shelves for our 1000+ LPs, AND there’s enough room for a 6-seater dining room table. Why should I not bitch about having to give this place up, especially with so little notice? Sorry, but you call my belongings “crap” and I get a little testy.)

18

Again,

Never vote for more taxes again. If the city doesn’t have money, they can’t take people’s houses.

:slight_smile:

19

First, it sucks big time that you have to move (even more so when you don’t want to).

As far as the headaches of homeownership, there really aren’t that many. Sure, you have to pay a mortgage and insurance but you don’t have to pay rent and you get a tax break. Also, you should have insurance anyway - renter’s insurance. But that is neither here nor there. It’s your choice but if you had owned, you would have gotten a bit more notice than 30 days.

Now as for this…

Damage like building schools, repairing roads, helping out those who can’t take care of themselves, etc. Man, don’t want the government doing this damage.

And more of the “damage” like a sidewalk which would allow pedestrians to stay off the street and be in less risk of getting hit by a car. And stress/cost of repairing a yard. A rake, some grass seed, and a few hours. Oh, the agony of it all.

:wally

20

All this from a guy who’s profile says he lives in the “seat of gov’ment inaction.” Ah if only Alanis had put THAT in her song.

:wally