Spiteful Thinking: A Toxic Homeownership Story

After 22 years, the tenant has finally moved out.

I attended the exit walkthrough, which was brief and anticlimactic. I was actually surprised he had managed to get all his things out. The space had been occupied by a stranger for longer than I have collectively spent in this country, and walking through it felt strange, like trespassing in my own family’s house.

I didn’t bother getting to know the tenant. What I knew of him came in passing and through the questionable stories told by La Llorona: he was a widower, he had sons, he commuted to a job at the butt ass crack of dawn, he was a DJ, whether as a hobby or side gig, I never learned. My mother’s lawyer later told me he was a responsible tenant who paid on time. So when I saw the state of the house, I looked at my mother’s lawyer, and I knew there was more to it.

This section of the house is the principal building – dating to the 1959 founding of the Colonia. It is also the part that had been lived in most continuously. There were some upgrades: newer floors, tiling in the bathroom, a kitchen with actual cabinets, which is more than I can say for the empty shell where I currently live.

As I looked around and considered its condition, there were signs that told a different story. Electrical connections that looked jerry-rigged, and one wire-jiggle away from a fire. There were cracked window panes. The windows needed new glazing. Walls that had what appeared to be either black mold, mildew, or moisture damage (the one room affected was painted an alarming dark blue color, probably to hide the damage, but the black was blooming and turning to ash on the surface. I think it’s called efflorescence or something). All not good things. 22 years of maintenance clearly hadn’t happened.

How did it get this bad?

When I try to talk about it with my mother, she gets super defensive and shuts down. She is not prepared to have that conversation, and at this point, how seems like a moot point. I suspect that this was intentional neglect. The sort of neglect that is borne from a private war waged between landlord and tenant. I’ll say it, even if no one else will: My mother is a terrible custodian powered by spite.

My mother isn’t the only one at fault in the deterioration of the house. I recently learned that “spite house” is an actual term, a building made or ruined on purpose to get back at someone. Most people have to pour concrete to do it. My mother only had to wait. As a landlord and homeowner, she should have maintained the property no matter who lived in it. But the tenant lived here for two decades. He could have taken more care of the place that was his home instead of letting it crumble around him.

I’ve been on both sides of this situation, as a property owner and a tenant. So I know both sides of this very well. There are no good excuses.

Now the place is empty, and the job of maintaining the place, even if I am not in a position to fund it, falls to me. Something I hope to correct sooner rather than later.

What bothers me now is that ever since the tenant moved out, my mother has been heavily invested in the improvement of the property. For now, she is leaving me in charge, although I wonder how long that will last. Yet another way she can live out her life vicariously through me is what I figure.

The one upside of the last three tedious months of forced, unnecessary repairs, courtesy of the organized criminal group in the colonia, is that I now know workmen and craftsmen I’d never have met otherwise. I am going to need them.