Saturday, July 25, 2009

Moving Right Along!


Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks.

July 16, 2009 Meeting

ACORN, Ottawa Housing and a large number (for us) of tenants showed up. Both 2100 and 2080 were represented. ACORN sent Jessica and Matt, two very active ACORN members and Sue from Ledbury came. Ottawa Housing was represented by the C.E.O., Jo-Anne Poirier, Director of South District, David Loveridge and Marion Dunning, Building Manager.

The Opening was not planned - it started off with Sirens, thanks to our resident Dunce - the dude who thinks that pulling the fire alarm is fun. If he had any thought that pulling the alarm was going to end our meeting, he was sadly mistaken. I am sure he did not intend to help any of us but the alarm going off at 4:00 p.m. on the nose, actually did help us. Jo-Anne, David and Marion saw and heard first hand what we have been experiencing for months. Fooled him though. They were not to be here until 4:15 p.m. so they just got the tail end of it.

Initially the plan was to take Jo-Anne, David and Marion on a little tour of the first floor. Show them the poorly lit parking lot at door 4 and the car that was vandalized there. Bring them in past the huge hole still in the wall between the doors, along the filthy carpets marked up by dirty footprints, stains put there by people dropping drinks, people letting their dogs pee and indeed, people peeing on the carpets themselves. We would have pointed out the holes put there by the Hole Puncher Dunce and the holes put there by people with carts who do not care if they run into the walls or not. We'd have brought them past the mail room with it's deliberately broken mail boxes and the vandalized coke machine. They would have seen first hand what a handful of non-screened tenants and their visitors have done to this once lovely building. But that never happened, thanks to the fire alarm.

My plan to chair the meeting was vetoed by ACORN. Their meetings are usually informal but members are respectful of each other so it works. Appears respect stayed away from our meeting though. The plan for Sue to tell us about how Ledbury was changed from the hell hole it was to the very pleasant project it is today was loudly put down by a handful of nay-sayers. A couple or three of them took over the meeting and filled it with their own personal problems. A sort of fillibuster, if you will. In spite of them, a few others did manage to get themselves heard.
If you were one of that few, you were heard!

It ended very uncivilly with a few using the F word as often as they could - not exactly a sign of high intelligence. And yelling. Again, not too swift! Those that did that did not garner any respect, just disgust. Unfortunately, the ones who are reading this blog probably do not need to be told this, but you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. I know the yellers and cursers did manage to convince a few people that some people living here probably do belong on the street and living under a bridge so that little demonstration was counter productive, wasn't it?

ACORN have been very successful with their Work Order campaigns. They tried to get that off the ground here too. Only a handful of people filled them in however. A shame really! That was a way for you to be heard but most passed that opportunity up. And with the W.O. you could have put your personal gripes about Maintenance etc. W.O.s that were filled out were passed along to Housing.

For anyone who wanted to listen but who couldn't hear, Jo-Anne did say, if you have a problem with security and/or Maintenance, call them. They do not know what the problems are if you do not tell them in the first place. If you have to call them several times, call them several times. Their voice mail works all night.

For those few who think that Housing should run around behind you cleaning up after you, here's a news flash from me to you. They are your Landlord, not your Mother and if you are old enough to sign a lease, then you are old enough to behave like adults. Adults clean up after themselves.

Oh yeah! Let me be the first to tell you that we have a genius in the building. Sometime after Thursday afternoon this genius stole all our ashtrays and broke the seat of our swing in the garden.

Oops! I am wrong. A genius is supposed to have an IQ that is higher than the total of fingers and toes on his body. If I read this IQ chart correctly, he is really just a slug.

I'll be back with the second meeting notes, so stay tuned :o)

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