I totally and absolutely disagree with Kimstu. Jodi just wants to rent her apartment, not take on large risks and responsibilities. If Jodi were my friend I would advise her against doing it.
If that person has special needs he cannot expect for someone to take care of them for nothing. Jodi does not want to assume those needs without compensation nd she is very right.
If that person has special needs he should find a place where they can be taken care of by people who feel they are in a position to do so. His mother cannot get a similar house where the son can have an independent unit? No relatives who can do this? No government or nonprofit programs to help? Only Jodi can solve this man’s problem?
Jodi, you have no legal or moral obligation. Do not feel bad. He is not your son. Please do not have bad feelings over this.
Why not rent your room to Lana, and have her rent her place to her son?
I did not intend the race question as an analogy, merely to demonstrate my ignorance of the legal issues involved - public accommodation, suspect classification, etc. - which of course, were not your primary concern, but I thought were focussed on by wring.
Thanks for giving me another reason to be glad I long ago decided never to be a landlord.
sailor, I think you misread Kimstu’s post, as it sounds like you agree with her on most points! (Read her second to last paragraph.)
Jodi, I agree with the posters who say you made the right decision. My older sister is schizophrenic, and I would not recommend to anyone that they rent her a room inside their house. Schizophrenics who are off their medication can become incredibly disruptive, to say the least.
so you should have turned him out, but you shouldn’t have turned him out because you would probably be in danger, but you should have been in danger in order to have been a good person. huh?
It is anecdotal, but my first wife was a bipolar schizo-affective. Cut up everything in the house one night with a butcher knife, chased me around for a while. Ended up in the looney hatch, got engaged to someone else while we were still marriied…and on and on. I don’t think that being a danger to yourself and others confers any special rights on one. Personally, I don’t have enough time on this earth to get tangled up with such folks.
Well, now that I re-read Kimstu’s post I see it is contradictory. On the one hand most of it is in favor of the prospective tenant and just that one phrase which I overlooked saying Jodi did the right thing. But also says she should feel guilty about it, dos that make any sense? My response was based on the majority of the post.
Having said that, I’ll just state that I interpreted her comment about “feeling guilty” as telling Jodi she was a Good Person for having that “liberal guilt.”
Well, I was the one who said that, because I assumed that was their motivation.
You misread my post. I based my decision on his diagnosis on schizophenia, my admittedly limited but I think generally accurate understanding of the disease, and the revalation that he is so totally disabled by it that he cannot even hold any job. I think it would be accurate to characterize my decision as based on distrust of the potential situation, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say it was based on fear, because it wasn’t.
Surely you realize that you know this based upon your long and close association with your relative, but that a total a stranger, who can only pick up obvious cues such as odd behavior, could not possibly know this.
I don’t think that would have helped, in the sense that it would not have changed the nature of his disability or the evident severity of it (totally disable, cannot hold a job). You are arguing that I could have made an informed decision on whether or not I should take a chance on the guy, but the fact is that once the decision was made that I was not comfortable taking a chance on him, the particulars of his situation because largely irrelevant. In any case, I would never presume to invade the man’s privacy to that extent unless I was seriously considering him as a tenant which I was not. Again, my response might be different under different circumstances, but nothing his psychiatrist might say would change the fact that he is a totally disabled schizophrenic man and I am a single woman living alone.
I hope your realize that this is an unsupportable assumption. Simply because I could not help this particular person in this particular way does not invite the conclusion that I have refused to help him in any way.
Thanks for the link to the NAMI, though; I promise to look it over.
DINSDALE – Why not rent your room to Lana, and have her rent her place to her son?
Well, because the problem isn’t whose name is on the lease, but who’s living in the apartment. The problem is one of perceived personal safety (and, yes, apprehension of future problems, like non-payment of rent), not one of caring who is technically the tenant.
And I should clarify – this is not just a room in my house, it’s a two-bedroom autonomous apartment with a separate entrance. It’s a nice little place, actually.
By the way, Prospective Tenant #2 wants to move in with fiancee, BIG dog, cat, two iguanas and four rabbits. That’s a big “no,” too, which I suppose makes me an animal-hater as well . . . .
xenophon41, I interpret kimstu’s post very differently
the post seems quite contradictory to me but never mind. I am not trying to interpret Kimstu’s posts, just express my own opinion.
Jodi, I think the idea was that you rent the basement to the mother and have the son stay in her home.
And now you have a couple who own a zoo? My, my!
I own a large house near the university here and I used to rent rooms to students for some time but I got tired of having people who could not pick up after themselves. Forget about mental conditions and pets, I won’t rent to someone who I do not like and trust 100%.
If I were renting my property out I would only want to rent to people I felt comfortable with. If they dressed in an odd manner, behaved in an odd way, or just didn’t feel right then I wouldn’t rent to them. That would be discriminatory behavior on my part. And frankly I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Wow, I obviously need to clarify a few of my points here (since I can’t expect xenophon to do everything—thanks xeno! :)).
For starters: as those who read my post carefully realized, I agree with Jodi that she was wise not to rent her room to this guy.sailor, you in particular totally misunderstood the beginning of my post: when I said “You would be quite safe having him as your tenant,” I was referring to my own mentally ill relative, not to Lana’s son.
Now about the “guilty” bit. Jodi, I’m sorry if I came across as harsh or contemptuous: I don’t feel that way about you or your reaction to the situation. But I was responding specifically to your remark, “But having Lana scream at me that I’m an discriminating bigot has unsettled me. I mean, I can’t argue with “discriminating,” since, justified or not, I obviously did, but I’m really upset by “bigot.” What think you?” You said you were feeling distressed and guilty and wanted our opinions of the situation, and I was just suggesting some things in your own response and actions that might have contributed to your feeling that way.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you don’t care about the disabled or would refuse to help them in any way. I was merely saying that it was the consciousness that these particular people needed help and that you were choosing not to help them that made you feel bad, even though what you did was the right decision in this case. As xeno astutely noted, my point was that it’s the so-called “liberal guilt”, those feelings of distress and self-questioning, that testify to the activity of your conscience and the depth of your empathy. I believe that the best use we can make of these feelings is not to ignore them or take a Zantac :rolleyes: to suppress them, and not to let them pressure us into doing stupid and quixotic things like sharing our houses with people we don’t feel secure with, but to use them to motivate us to take some constructive action that isn’t stupid or quixotic. That’s the reason I recommended visiting the NAMI site, and I’m glad you’re going to check it out!
I believe you did the right thing, Jodi. The mother had NO RIGHT to make you feel guilty. Regardless of mental illness, if someone makes you feel uncomfortable or nervous in your own home, you should not feel obligated to that person. Obviously she’s getting frustrated, but she’s barking up the wrong tree if she expects a person renting part of their home is going to live with her son, having no idea what he may do.
In short, you have no idea what he’s capable of or incapable of. Violent? Maybe not. Homicidal? Maybe not. Firebug? Maybe not. That’s a lot of maybes.
Quick schizophrenia story: When I was working in retail pharmacy we had a schizophrenic man come in to get his meds. The short of it is, he freaked out- screaming at us and threatening us. He threatened me in particular for telling him to calm down and sit down. We had to call 911 and I had to run PAST this man to go get help. (He was climbing over the counter to get at the pharmacist). It was the scariest experience I’d had in a long time. When he was arrested, he kicked out the back window of the patrol car. Turned out he hadn’t taken his meds in 2 weeks or so since he’d been released from the Mental Hospital. Very, very scary.
Oh, and a friend of mine was stabbed nearly to death by a schizophrenic who thought the devil was telling him to kill. He walked right into his bedroom as he slept and stabbed him in the chest. Then he sat on the floor and waited for the cops to come. (The victims brother was there, too)
I think in the case of renting part of your living space, it’s OK to have a NIMBY attitude.
