First off, Yes. I work in property management. No I am not a Landlord. I am an Assistant Community Manager for a Section 8/LIHTC project apartment, which is part of a larger company that buys older properties to convert into projects.
I have a resident who has made it their goal to write a manifesto on all their rent checks. Please note that their monthly rent is currently $29. Unless they make over 100k a year, their rent is generally going to always be 30% of their gross monthly income.
There are some late fees on their account, but we are legitimately trying to get rid of them and make sure that they are caught up and doesn’t owe us anything but their monthly rent.
Now that I have given that infodump… What can I do?
If they keep sending these IRL Hexbear posts (some of them reference Luigi) eventually my manager or someone higher is going to see this and be able to use these little rants as ammo to evict them. They see me as an enemy. I’m one of the people sitting in the office in the A/C supposedly making more than the maintenance team slaving away repairing people’s stuff. Btw, I’m the lowest paid gal around here, and half the maintenance team is low-key liberal Transphobic.
So Hexbear, what can I do to save another comrade from losing their housing? Any idea how I could help them funnel that energy towards something productive for the cause? How can I make them see that us here in the community are not their rivals just because we have to sell our intellectual and emotional labor?
If you have the power to do so, you could call them specifically about the late fees and - while you’re in the process of helping them get them removed or explaining to them how they can get removed - mention that you & everyone else in the office are doing their best and aren’t personally trying to make their life hell.
As someone who has in the past (when I worked as a bank cashier) & currently does interact with a lot of people who have previously contacted us angrily in my current job, usually this is my tried-and-true method to getting people on my side and stopping them from seeing me & the people who are dealing with them in person as their enemy. You’ve gotta humanize yourself & your coworkers - which is just an absurd thing to even say but when it comes to people looking for support or who are just upset about something out of their hands, it matters. Saying something like “yeah, I personally think housing is a human right and in my ideal world my job wouldn’t necessarily exist but you know how it is in this country…late fees baked into every little thing” while you’re speaking to them about getting rid of said fees probably would work.
I saw this a lot the single year I worked as a cashier at a credit union & it killed me inside every time so I get where you’re coming from. Money in general gets people on edge and when someone’s crying frustrated tears at 9am because their check deposit has a 2 business day hold but they needed to pay rent yesterday; they’re liable to say a lot of shit they don’t mean but WILL get them in trouble and don’t want to hear someone go “hey, I get it but if you say ‘why shouldn’t i just burn this place down’ the boomer white lady sitting next to me is gonna press the panic button out of reflex”.