WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR MAY 2020

Our crackhead neighbors who were renting the little house between us and the road moved out. Talked to the owners, offering to buy the place, and they can't sell as it's apparently the collateral for a family member's nursing home bill. There's something so horribly wrong about having to put up property as surety for someone else's nursing care bills. Nonetheless, they can't sell it.

So we decided we will go ahead and put up the privacy fence that we've been thinking about ever since we bought the place. The recently departed neighbors would spin out on the part of our lawn that was close to their house, their pit bull would come over and defecate on it, they dumped piles of building materials on it, like bricks (which they left behind) and there were many more transgressions that were terribly petty, but annoying. I'll be calling a local fencing company - Corey and I just don't have the time to do it, and some things are worth paying for.

The reason, by the way, that they keep getting crackheads as renters is because they don't charge a security deposit, and only charge $400 a month for a house that is essentially falling down, with mounds of trash everywhere on the property, most of it half-burned. They tell the renters that they will do no maintenance or repairs on it. Totally illegal? Sure. Am also sure the owners are not declaring the rent money as income, but I know they need the rent money to pay their own bills, so not willing to rat them out to the taxman. Anyway, the only people who would even want to rent it are the desperate, damaged and broken people that don't have enough cash even for a security deposit.

We knew the hazards to moving into a small town with no codes and no laws against well, pretty much anything, as we prefer to not have to ask permission to make changes to our own property. The crackhead neighbors are the price we pay. But with a fence up, at least we won't have to look at that desperately nasty little house and the next set of sketchy characters who choose to take up residence text.

Please note - I grew up extremely poor, but we were clean and the yard and house were always well kept because my mother made sure of it. There is a difference between poor people and trashy people. It is just vaguely possible we'll get some lovely neighbors who are not crackheads, just poor. The chances are slim.