I wrote this email on May 20th. It's to the police officer to whom the police station assigned my case in January 2017, who did not find the cameras in my apartment, because he didn't really look for them and couldn't care less. He hasn't responded to this email, which doesn't surprise me.
The movers are scheduled. I will be homeless after this weekend.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Officer (name
redacted),
Thank you for your
voicemail.
Today, I left some
information for you at the front desk of the police station.
There are only 2
possibilities. Either:
1. There are
hidden, illegal cameras in the apartment which you and the detective did not
find.
2. Mental
confusion caused me to think that there are cameras in the apartment when there
aren't.
If you had found the
cameras, it wouldn't have been difficult for me to obtain legal representation
to stop the eviction.
If I am so mentally
confused that I was willing to throw away this very nice apartment when all I
had to do was stop saying that there were cameras in it and the property
management would have renewed my lease instead of telling me to leave, then I
shouldn't have had to negotiate the entire situation without legal counsel
anyway.
Since all of this
began, I have asked for help from 3 separate agencies that are supposed to help
poor people. The Harvard Tenant Advocacy Project told me that they have
too many people who need help for them to be able to take my case. The
Community Legal Services and Counseling Center (CLSACC) told me that helping
with the problems at my apartment are "not the service that we
provide." Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services (CASLS) also did
not work out.
I have played phone
tag for a month with the intake coordinator at the Boston Area Rape Crisis
Center. I called their hotline several weeks ago, just to talk about the
horrible stress of being the victim not only of voyeurism in my apartment but
of a retaliatory eviction for saying that the cameras are in the apartment.
I didn't know whom else to call for emotional support, and I was surprised
when the counselor to whom I spoke asked me if I wanted her to give my name to
the intake coordinator to start the process of my being able to talk to their
legal services. After never being able to have a phone conversation for
weeks, the intake coordinator finally left me a voicemail on Wednesday of this
past week, saying "I will be at my desk at this very specific time; if you
call me then, I will pick up the phone." We did talk on Thursday,
and on Friday I got a voicemail from someone at their legal services
department. Then I got your voicemail, which I appreciated.
I know that you're at
court every Friday. The most helpful thing that you could do would be to
say to the judge that you really think that there are cameras in the apartment,
and to ask the judge either to vacate the agreement that I had to sign on April
3, 2017 for lack of tangible evidence at that time that the cameras are in the
apartment, or to ask the judge for an emergency stay so that you and the
detective can conduct a more thorough investigation of the apartment. The
only issue that caused my being told that my lease would not be renewed was the
voyeurism issue; I have paid my rent and utilities every month, kept the
apartment clean, and not started trouble with anyone.
The information that I
left for you at the police station starts with a receipt for the hidden camera
detector that I finally purchased online on April 1, 2017 and which did not
arrive in the mail until April 11, 2017. According to the directions for
that detector, which I followed, there are definitely hidden cameras in the
apartment; the detector picked up the signals from them, although I was not
able to precisely locate or see the cameras.
The agreement that I
had to sign on April 3, 2017 says that I can't have an appeal and that no stay
can be requested for the agreement, so I think that the only thing that you
could ask the judge for would be to vacate the entire agreement or issue an
emergency stay, if the emergency stay is legally possible.
There is nowhere for
me to move to at the end of May 2017, which I knew there wouldn't be. I
fought this situation during the entire semester; it negatively affected
everything that I tried to do. Even so, I tried to maintain my grades; I
included copies of a biology test, a computer quiz and a computer lab that are
all from this semester, in the information that I left for you at the front
desk at the police station today.
Although I know that
it's nice to have a voucher, and although the first thing that I did when all
of this began was to do everything that I could not to lose the voucher, it is
very degrading to feel that I have to think of myself as a homeless person for
the rest of my life, someone who should just be grateful to have a voucher,
someone whom anyone can abuse and then toss into the street, someone for whom
it doesn't matter that my entire life is being disrupted and I've been treated
as if I did something wrong when I am the victim of a crime. You're not
the only person who has not known how to deal with the situation and who has
initially treated me as if I'm delusional. Having to deal with all of the
support people who also don't know how to deal with voyeurism, and for whom the
majority of clients are people whom they are, rightly or wrongly, used to not
believing about all sorts of things, has not contributed to my feeling
empowered or really supported.
MBHP has continued to
pay the voucher portion of the rent from month to month, and will also do that
if the agreement is vacated or an emergency stay is issued.
I hope that you can
help me. I really like this apartment, and I know that the actual property
manager (name redacted) is entirely innocent of installing the cameras in my
apartment or of knowing that the voyeurism isn't a false accusation. I
don't want to have to move; even if there were another apartment available,
which there definitely isn't, I would not want to have to move, and I shouldn't
have to move.
I have already been
working with the Cambridge Multi-Service Center for help paying to move my
things to storage, in the event that my tenancy at this apartment can't be
saved. (I'll pay for the storage; they'll pay for the movers). If
you do ask the judge for help on my behalf this Friday, and the request is
denied, I'll be moving into homelessness again on Monday or Tuesday of the
following week. I'm sure that you also know that it is much more
difficult to persuade landlords to accept applications for tenancy from
homeless people than from people who already have apartments.
Lena Kochman
Copyright L. Kochman, May 24, 2017 @ 7:54 a.m.
