I spend most of my time sitting at my desk, which is positioned beside a window that faces the parking lot of District on Oakwood. Multiple times a day, I see a tow truck from Nye’s pull in. They patrol this lot like vultures circling for wounded and vulnerable prey. Despite the lot never being anywhere close to full, MiddleTown Property Group refuses to label any of the parking spots as visitor parking, which means the residents who live here cannot have a visitor at any time of day or night without running the risk of their cars being stealthily towed away.
It is a de facto “NO VISITORS” policy. I can’t even have someone over for dinner or to watch a football game, unless they’re willing to park elsewhere and walk here.
I suspect there is a technically-legal arrangement between parasitic towing companies and avarice-driven property managers; one in which the towing companies are granted permission to essentially steal vehicles from privately-owned parking lots in exchange for a percentage of the money extorted from their owners to retrieve their personal property. In the minds of any reasonable person, that bears a striking resemblance to an extortion racket run by an organized crime syndicate.
No landlord should have the power to force people to completely alter their lifestyles to accommodate an arbitrary policy that exists solely to generate passive revenue at the expense of their own tenants.
The other day I watched a Nye’s truck drive by with a neighbor’s truck in tow. I knew it belonged to a neighbor because, the fact is: I hate that truck. It’s ‘90s Dodge Dakota and something under the hood absolutely screams every time they start it up. It’s loud enough to wake the dead and I cuss them out in my head every time they park anywhere near my window. The person who owns that truck moved in this past August and it has painfully shrieked its way in & out of this parking lot hundreds of times since. I hate that truck.
I happened to think today that I haven’t seen or heard it since it was towed away. I wondered what panic must have struck its owner the moment they walked out of their own apartment building, expecting to get into their decades-old pick-up truck, only to find it… gone. Then I began to think about the chaos that may have come next; how one small event may ultimately have been the tipping point that sent that person’s life careening out of control.
It’s safe to assume anyone driving a decades old pick-up truck probably doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. It’s hardly a stretch to presume they’re among the millions & millions of Americans who are less than one missed paycheck or one unexpected expense away from the bottom completely falling out from under their lives. It’s been years since I had to retrieve a car that had been towed, but even then it cost me almost $300. And I had to pay it in cash. What catastrophic chain of events might MiddleTown Property Group’s naked greed have set off in the owner of that vintage Dodge Dakota’s life?
How many lives has MiddleTown Property Group upended in a destructive quest to satisfy their insatiable avarice?
Let’s say you’re a 20-something college student working full time and going to school full time. One afternoon you walk out to jump in your 30-year-old truck that barely runs, only to find it missing. It’s been towed away. In a panic, you text every friend you have to see if someone can take you to work, but they’re all just like you and they’re all at work or in class, so you have no choice but to call in to work.
It’s Monday afternoon… you need $300 to get your truck back and you lost $120 calling off work today. In one fell swoop and through no fault of your own, you’re suddenly $420 in the hole. And you have less than $100 in the bank, because you just paid your rent a few days ago. Every day your car sits in the impound lot, it’ll cost you an additional $50.
It’s Tuesday… you now need $350 to get your truck back and you have no way to get to work again, so there goes another $120. In less than 48 hours, you’re $590 in the hole.
It’s Wednesday… you need $400 to get your truck back now. Your boss said if you don’t show up today, don’t bother showing up at all. There goes another $120 and your job. After just three days, you’re $760 in the hole and now you’re unemployed.
By the Thursday, $930… Friday, $1100… just one week after your truck – which was parked in the parking lot of your very own apartment building – was towed away, you now have no job, you’re $1500+ in the hole, the hole has filled up with water, and you’re drowning.
This cycle of desperation will continue as the days pass and after just a couple weeks, the reality of your inevitable homelessness really begins to set in. The hole keeps getting deeper and you’re helplessly tumbling toward the bottom of it. The one thing you did wrong – the only thing you did wrong – was sign a lease with MiddleTown Property Group.
MiddleTown Property Group, the most unscrupulous and avarice-driven property management company in the state of Indiana, enters into every lease with the intent to force every tenant to run for our lives on a profit-generating hamster wheel in a feckless race to satisfy their greed. They had that resident’s truck towed… for what? They may have permanently knocked a fellow human being off the life path they were on, for a mere $10 or $20 kickback on the tow charge. Being willing to destroy lives for any amount of money is despicable enough, but being willing to do it for a paltry $20… that’s indicative of absolute moral bankruptcy. Evil exists in this world. And it has nothing to do with deity-based religion. Evil’s foundational doctrine is pure, unadulterated greed.
No landlord should have the power to completely derail someone’s life.
MiddleTown Property Group has no concern whatsoever for the misery and harm they cause. The company is run by vicious, malicious souls who gleefully run afoul of the law over & over & over again, preying on innocent and vulnerable people for sport and profit. When their behavior becomes so egregious the state of Indiana fines them tens of thousands of dollars, they simply raise rents & fees to offset the revenue loss. On paper, it’s like those fines never even happened and the very people they’re fined for victimizing end up paying those fines.
Will I ever see that truck again? Is that neighbor sitting in an apartment somewhere in this building right now, robbed of the future they were working toward, knowing this is the last month they’ll have a roof over their heads? I have no idea. The only thing I know for sure is that I’ve thought about and care more about what happened to that person than the Brothers Wilson & MiddleTown Property Group. When money is all people care about and they’re willing to do anything to acquire it, to the detriment of fellow human beings, the harm they cause is considered collateral damage and the cost of doing business. The problem is, they’re not the ones absorbing those costs. To them, tenants are nothing but faceless cogs in their wheel of greed and when one breaks, it’s simply replaced with another unsuspecting victim. We are nothing but lambs to be sacrificed on the altar of their unbridled greed.
I believe the forces responsible for balancing the scale are already at work. I believe, when karma finally puts her thumb on that scale, those who are ruled by avarice and compelled by the naked, unholy ambition to hoard wealth will be crushed beneath its weight. And I believe the arc of the moral universe still bends toward justice.
Leave a Reply