On Monday of last week, which was July 24, 2017, I received a phone call and an email from the Cambridge Inclusionary Housing Program. I was told that the first apartment building where the program had sent my application had approved me for an apartment. I was asked to schedule an appointment for the next day to visit the apartment, after which I would have 24 hours to decide whether or not to accept the tenancy offer.
I have written before about how the program works, but I'll write about it again because the conglomerate spends most of its time accusing me of wanting to sleep with people whom I loathe and of wanting to be videotaped while defecating, rather than reading what I write for its content.
The Inclusionary Housing Program takes applications from low-income people and approves or denies those people for the program's applicant pool. If someone is approved for the applicant pool, then the program sends his or her profile to up to four landlords. The applicants have no say about which landlords are approached. An applicant only knows that a landlord was approached and has approved or rejected him or her as a tenant when he or she receives an offer of an apartment or a rejection letter.
The units that are offered to applicants are not in low-income housing projects. They are units in market-rate buildings that are legally designated to be affordable housing units. A percentage of those buildings have to be affordable; the landlords are not renting them to low-income tenants out of the kindness of their hearts, and most of them would probably rather not have to rent to poor people at all. That's not only because of the stigma that poor people have; it is also because the apartments have to be rented for prices that are contracted by the government. The market-rate price for a studio apartment at the last apartment building where I lived was $2400; the unit that I lived in was a mandatory affordable apartment, and the contracted rent for it was less than $1000. My housing voucher paid for most of that contracted price; the portion of the rent that I paid was $175. I also paid for all of the utilities.
There is no question that I was mistreated at both of the apartment buildings where I have lived since the conglomerate began to persecute me in 2010 not only because the conglomerate persecutes me but also because I am poor. No matter what the conglomerate said about me, or what the rumors were, no landlord would dare to install hidden, illegal cameras in the apartment of a rich person. The police and the legal system protect rich people and couldn't care less about poor people; every poor person knows that. I wouldn't say that every rich person knows it; many rich people are oblivious about how much power their money bestows upon them.
The reason that I didn't talk to the property management of the last apartment building about voyeurism before I moved there, to say "Please don't install cameras in the apartment," was that I was afraid that the property management would say that I was crazy and rescind the offer of the apartment. I was homeless for 2 years before I had the first apartment where I was victimized by voyeurism from 2013 to 2014, and I was homeless for another 2 years after being evicted from that apartment for my "false" accusations, before I was offered the apartment that I had from 2016-2017. It is really awful to be homeless, and it is life-threatening, particularly in the winter.
I lived in the second apartment for 8 months, from March 2016 to November 2016, before I tried to try to get the hidden, illegal cameras out of the apartment because I knew that THE PEOPLE WHO DID IT WOULD LIE AND THAT NOBODY WHOM I ASKED FOR HELP WOULD BELIEVE ME. I knew that the people who worked at the building and who had installed the cameras would lie and say that I was crazy for saying that the cameras were there. I knew that I'd be taken to court. I knew that I'd be homeless again. When I finally confronted the property management about the cameras in November 2016, I was called a crazy liar and taken to court. Nobody in the nonvirtual world whom I asked for help could help me, because THEY DIDN'T BELIEVE ME, and nobody who knew that I was telling the truth corroborated what I said. I'm homeless again. I helplessly watched the entire scenario happen exactly as I knew that it would.
The only thing that surprised me the second time was that nobody who knew that I was telling the truth corroborated what I said, even though many of the people who watched me in that apartment from the illegal cameras already had seen me being evicted from the previous apartment for "false" accusations of voyeurism that they knew were true. When I was victimized at the first apartment, I didn't ask anyone who knew that I was telling the truth for help. When I was victimized at the second apartment, all I asked was that someone who knew that I was telling the truth call or email or fax even one person in my nonvirtual life to corroborate that the voyeurism was really happening, and nobody did. Every day for months, everyone who knew that I was telling the truth did nothing to prevent my being treated as if I were a crazy liar and did nothing to prevent my having to be homeless again.
I DID EVERYTHING THAT I COULD TO STOP THE VOYEURISM, WHILE EVERYONE WHO KNEW THAT I WAS TELLING THE TRUTH SAT THERE VICTIM-BLAMING ME, CALLING ME A SLUT, AND LAUGHING!
I talked to the representative from the Cambridge Inclusionary Housing Program on Tuesday morning, July 25, 2017. I said "When we visit the apartment today, I have to tell the property management please to tell the maintenance staff not to install cameras in the apartment. If the property management refuses to rent to me after we have had that conversation, then that's what happens. I can't live in another situation like what has already happened to me in 2 apartments in a row."
The program representative said "They're not going to say that you can't have the apartment, because they have already offered it to you."
SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE THAT THE VOYEURISM HAPPENED TO ME! I HAVE BEEN VICTIMIZED BY VOYEURISM FOR YEARS BECAUSE NOBODY WHO KNOWS THAT I'M TELLING THE TRUTH HAS CORROBORATED THAT IT'S THE TRUTH!
We visited the apartment on Tuesday afternoon. We were given a tour of the building by someone who works for the property management. We were shown an empty unit and told that was the unit where I'd live if I accepted the offer of tenancy. While we were in the empty unit, after having toured the building, I said to the person who works for the property management, "I am sorry to have to have this conversation with you. I am someone who is repeatedly targeted for voyeurism. I've been victimized by it in 2 apartments in a row. Please tell your maintenance staff that they can't treat a tenant that way, that they cannot install cameras in a tenant's apartment."
He seemed concerned and said that he would talk to his manager about it.
On Wednesday, July 26, 2017, I went to the office of the Cambridge Inclusionary Housing Program and did the paperwork to accept the unit through the program and for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership to do an inspection of the apartment. I was given a letter of congratulations which specified the unit in which I would live.
The letter specifies a unit. It is therefore very improbable that the person from Bozzuto Management who called me the next day, on July 27, 2017, and who told me that there'd been "a transmittal error" when Bozzuto had first told the Cambridge Inclusionary Housing Program that I was being offered an apartment was being honest.
I hadn't been all that happy to be about to live in that apartment. It is much smaller than my last apartment, which was already much smaller than the apartment I'd had before that. It is in a high rise, and I have never wanted to live in a high rise. It is not in the area of Cambridge where I want to live.
Worst of all, the building is almost right next to Bunker Hill Community College. Bunker Hill Community College didn't only suspend me from the school with its vicious and self-serving lies about what a terrible person I am; it banned me from the campus. The nearest train station to the apartment building is contiguous with school property. Although the train station is MBTA property, I couldn't have used the station without the school's administration immediately hearing about it and possibly accusing me of stalking the school. I also couldn't have used the train station without being around students of the school, any of whom could have harassed me at the train station or on the train and then filed a report to the school's administration or the police that I was the perpetrator instead of the target. I don't need to add a restraining order issued against me on behalf of someone who harassed me to my problems.
The nearest supermarket is on the other side of the school. I would have had to walk past the school to buy groceries, and I also couldn't have gone to the rest of the city on that side of the school without walking past the school.
If I had lived in that apartment, my entire life would have had to revolve around strategizing to avoid the school and to avoid being stalked and harassed by students of the school who saw that I had moved to that neighborhood.
Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of affordable housing, and the weather starts to be colder in the first week of September. By October, the shelters have waiting lists for beds every night.
Being homeless is also dangerous, whether the weather is cold or not.
I don't choose the addresses of videos that are published at YouTube.
The housing voucher's expiration date is August 27, 2017. If I don't have housing by then, I'll have to ask for an extension. If that or subsequent requests for extensions are refused, I won't be the first person to lose a housing voucher; people often lose their housing vouchers because nobody will rent to them.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, August 3, 2017 @ 2:08 p.m.
