M)C9_Jan11_Tell-me-a-story

threadjungle, Jan 11, 2021

Description:: Deadlines. How to get a hoarder to meet deadlines. He was our tenant for 28 years and now we were selling the house . Six months notice seemed fair. I would occasionally ask how it was going. He always seemed so positive about his progress. But I never saw much stuff coming down the stairs or filling up the trash cans. Yes I was worried, but he was an adult and I wasn’t his parent. We shared our 1914 brick, three story house with him. He lived on the third floor in a spacious 2 bedroom apartment. He’d always been such a good tenant. He was a student in art school when he moved in. He - and his friends- were quiet and friendly. Our first indication that there was a problem was his car. Not the one he drove but the old yellow Corvair that just sat in our driveway. For years. We reached our limit of seeing it every time we went to the garage or sat on the patio. So this was our first deadline experience. This was a bit of a dilemma. Do we tell him he has just one parking spot and take the chance that he will park his working car on the street and leave the eyesore Corvair in the driveway? Or tell him he can no longer store an undrivable car in the driveway. Pieces of the car were falling off while it was just sitting there. He’d pick them up and toss them inside the car. He had to move the Corvair. We talked to him and explained and gave him a deadline. That came and went. He had all kinds of excuses. He had a garage lined up and that fell through. He had to find a friend to help him and their schedules didn’t work out. Yes, he finally did move the Corvair. It was wonderful for a time. Then maybe a year later he said there was some conflict with where the car was staying and could he move it back while that was fixed. Being the kind people we are we said sure. Yes, I know now that I should have said OK, but just for 2 weeks. The Corvair was back in residence for good. All this is to say we should have known it would be a struggle getting him to move out.

We needed him out because we were selling the house. His apartment needed to be completely repainted and he had to be out of there to get that done. It was going on the market April 1. so Jan 1 seemed to be a reasonable date for him to be out and give me time to clean and paint. Six months notice, out by Jan 1. Maybe it should have been 2 weeks. It didn’t make much difference. Jan 1st. - I think I’’m going to need a little more time. How much? 2 weeks. OK. Jan 13th -I’m not going to be done, could we make it Jan 25th? OK , but I’m not sure you can get this all done by yourself. I think you need to get people to help you. He got 2 friends to help and I finally saw things start to move. We even provided a dumpster for him. But by Feb 1 we had to tell him that eviction was the next step. He had to move out. He rented a storage unit, then another and finally a third storage unit and got the big things out. He did finally leave on Feb 12th. But there was still a lot of mess for us to clean up. Sadly, he didn’t find another apartment but moved back to Michigan to live with his mother. Months later I did see him walking in the neighborhood. I really hope he found another place and is doing OK. With the help of my daughter we cleaned up the apartment. I painted the bedrooms, and hallways and it was looking good. The house went on the market and sold the first day. No more tenants for us.

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Jan 11, 2021

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