I feel as though in every social situation where there is something gotten there needs to be something given. If you constantly give give give and never receive eventually you will not want to give any more and may do something to justify all that you have given. As a landlord I try very hard to ensure that I give back to my tenants, AKA not a slumlord. I'm constantly fixing and updating items that not only increase the worth of my houses but also please my tenants greatly. One example recently was cleaning out a storage room in the basement for a tenant of mine so she could move some AC units and a bike down there. This was something that I needed to do eventually, but not right away. I also had to replace a cracked window from a built in china cabinet. The cabinets had been there for a while and people had painted over the hardware a number of times (which I hate). So what did I do, I replaced the glass, repainted both of the doors and the cabinet itself, replaced all the hardware, and scraped all the paint off of the glass from people doing a half ass job many times before. This took me all of 2 hours, the hard wear cost about $5.00 and the paint was already there. She is now much happier and my cabinets look about 10 times better a win-win in my book. However the bigger win for me is having rent on time every month and not having to beg or baby sit people for it. I gave movie tickets a little while back to everyone because they all paid on time. This month, having my birthday on Halloween and my love for jack-o-lanterns, I purchased 5 pumpkins and handed them out to tenants. Pumpkins were $5 each (Shaw’s supermarket) and I’m going to keep 2 so it only cost me $15 for the pumpkins and made some people very happy.
One other thing I would like to mention is that I recently sent out an e-mail regarding fire’s in apartment building in providence. This is a serious issue during the winter with space heaters so I sent out an e-mail regard space heaters and safety. There was also a list of local centers that assist people if they have trouble affording heat.

If you are not living under a rock, than most likely you are aware of the foreclosure crisis that is happening all around us. One issue with foreclosures is that houses are left abandoned and in most cases unmonitored. Where house #2 is, is a very real picture of what the foreclosure crisis is doing to the housing market. The house that is directly next to my house has been abandoned for quit some time. Apparently many other people have noticed it has been abandoned as well and have been squatting there. Well it’s New England and the nights are getting cold so they are going in there to get warm. But not only do they have a roof over their head but they also have power and gas, because they were never turned off. At night there are people walking all over the 3 floors and are even cooking in the house. They gained access by a fire escape in back where there is a window they just kicked right in. I have called the police a number of times complaining of a break in but nothing has been done. Today I received an e-mail for one of the tenants voicing her concern of her safety and the safety of my house. I told her I would look into it and find who was responsible, this took much longer then I expected. I started with the town tax assessor’s office, which was little help but was able to give me the name of the lender they had on file. This sent me down a long dead end road of calling banks and mortgage companies that had sold this mortgage 10 fold. So after about 3 hours I was still no closer to finding the owner of this property. I ended up going do to the town records office and spoke with this very nice, very beautiful girl (I got her number J. She was able to help me by giving me more info and a few other lender names they had on file for the owner. One of the lenders was able to tell me that they were holding the dead and the property had been foreclosed on. After I told them about the squatters they informed me they would send out an assessor to look over the property and determine what needed to be done. She said they would most likely board up the windows and turn off all the utilities. If there is no sign of any assessor in the next 2 weeks I will be forced to take matters into my own hands and board up the windows on my own. The last thing I want is a gas explosion because some drunks snuck in and decided to light their crack pipe with the gas stove.