Boston-based Landlord Threatens This Writer

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“I recently endured 72-hours straight of flashbacks from the gun violence I survived because of Winncompanies threats to my home.”

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For the first time in many many years, I do not feel safe in my own home. I live in an over-55 apartment building run by the Boston-based bully, Winncompanies. If they treat all their tenants like they do here, it is probable some of their other tenants’ lives are at being placed at risk.

They now threaten my ability to keep my home (after I’d filed a civil rights complaint against them with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office) and, full disclosure, for the first time in my life I want to sue and if I can locate a Massachusetts-based attorney who knows this legal territory and will work pro bono, I will. I recently endured 72-hours straight of flashbacks from the gun violence I survived because of Winncompanies threats to my home.

A snapshot of an example. In order to get a disability parking placard or license plate one of more of the following has been determined to be true about you, but doctors, medical professionals. Moreover, given everyone who lives in this building is a senior, the risk of falls for seniors is well documented, as detailed by the NIH’s National Institute for Aging. To get a disability plate or placard, one or more of the following apply to you.

You:

•   Cannot walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.

•   Cannot walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.

•   Are restricted by lung disease.

•   Use portable oxygen.

•   Have a Class III cardiac condition.

•   Have a Class IV cardiac condition. according to the standards set by the

•   Have Class III or Class IV functional arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology

•   Have Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology

•   Have been declared legally blind.

•   Have lost one or more limbs.

Winncompanies doesn’t care, as evidenced by the fact they demand all tenants, with or without disabilities, (many in their 70s, 80s and 90s) remove their cars from the parking lot and park out in the street illegally (there is no safe area) or else they will be towed!

I recently filed a civil rights complaint against Boston-based  Winncompanies with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, citing two current Winn polices that endanger the lives of their tenants and, under one of the policies, the lives of those living in or traveling through the community. Winncompanies does not deny their policies endanger lives).

Now, Winncompanies is threatening to terminate (their word) my tenancy. On what grounds? (I am never late with my rent.) They recently asked me for a great deal of information, some of which strikes me as intrusive, and so I asked them to please identify for me specifically what law or regulation allows them to get this information, and, no surprise, they won’t tell me. Now, because they haven’t received the information, the have threatened my ability to keep my home.

Landlord Endangers Ludlow Tenants Lives

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Winncompanies, a Boston-based property management company (and my landlord) does NOT deny two of its policies endanger the lives and violate the civil rights of the senior tenants, many with disabilities, who live in a 75-apartment building on State Street in Ludlow, Massachusetts.

The former mill-building opened for rentals in 2017. Having filed a complaint against them through the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, management has already threatening my ability to live here.

But first, the two Winn policies that endanger tenants’ lives. One of them, the first listed, also endangers the lives of Ludlow community members. First, there are some facts you have a right to know. Some you may already know. I didn’t.

Deadly Winn Policy #1

What is required in order for the State of Massachusetts to issue a disability license plate or placard, stands on solid ground.

“To obtain disability plates, a placard, or a disability veteran plate, you must be a Massachusetts resident. A Massachusetts registered and licensed physician, chiropractor, registered nurse, physician’s assistant, osteopath, optometrist (for legally blindness only) or podiatrist must certify that you meet one of the following conditions:

  • Cannot walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.
  • Cannot walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.
  • Are restricted by lung disease to such a degree that your forced (respiratory) expiratory volume (FEV) in 1 second, when measured by spirometry, is less than 1 liter.
  • Use portable oxygen.
  • Have a Class III cardiac condition according to the standards set by the American Heart Association
  • Have a Class IV cardiac condition according to the standards set by the American Heart Association. A customer in this condition must surrender their license.
  • Have Class III or Class IV functional arthritis according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology
  • Have Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology
  • Have been declared legally blind (please attach copy of certification). A customer in this classification must surrender their license.
  • Have lost one or more limbs or permanently lost the use of one or more limbs.”

Winncompanies essentially tells all its senior tenants, including those with disability plates and placards: When we need to replace the mulch in our garden beds, repaint the lines in the parking lot, remove snow, or anything else we want to do in the parking lot, you are to park your cars out in the public street and leave your cars there until we say we are done. If you don’t do this, your cars will be towed at your expense.

In other words, tenants have to park their cars in an active driving lane on State Street, a two-way street with no parking spaces on either side, and endangering the lives of passing motorist and members of the community as well.

Deadly Winn Policy #2

Two periods of time each year, at the beginning and then again of the heating season in Massachusetts, defined as September 15 to June 15. Massachusetts regulations say the highest an indoor temperature can go in apartment buildings like the one in question is 78 degrees. Winn’s management appears devoted to holding off as long as possible before turning the building’s A/C on, and the turning the A/C off as soon as it possibly can. Keep in mind, the A/C is expensive, and Winn has to the A/C cost in the common areas, halls, offices, elevators, stairwells, and so on. With the A/C off, the indoor temperatures go up into the high 80s and 90s, way above the 78 degree cut off. When tenants ask for the A/C to be turned on because of the high temperatures, one member of Winn Management sent me an email saying it would be a couple of more weeks before the A/C would be turned on.to be turned off, Winn’s management will wait weeks.

As for the high temperatures, Winn management says it is not their problem because the heat is not heat produced by the building’s heating system. They do nothing to ease the conditions for tenants.

Now, they threaten my home.

I recently filed a civil rights complaint against Winncompanies et al, with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. Now, Winncompanies’ management is threatening to terminate (their word) my tenancy because, when they recently asked me for extensive information about my life (far more than the housing authority that oversees my Section 8 rental voucher, and far more than Social Security asks for) I asked them to show me what part(s) of what law or regulation allows them to ask for this information. They won’t tell me.

For the record, I pay my rent on time every month and have done so since I moved here in the fall of 2017.

My Sister Rebecca’s Birthday

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Today is my sister Rebecca’s 65th birthday. She died at home in 2021. That she is not alive to celebrate and experience her birthday is a merciless, unjust, soul-splitting reality. It’s an agony.

The condition and conditions my sister was found in when she died were heartbreaking. She is not the first I’ve seen murdered by addiction; it tried to kill me with alcohol. It took me time to learn (fully digest) that the sentence, “You’re not responsible for your addiction, you’re responsible for your recovery,” is a sentence built out of fact.

I still can’t write about Rebecca at length. I start to sob. Mine is a heartbreak that’s accompanied by anger. Not at Rebecca. Not even a little. The anger (fury) results from those adult family members who were living with my sister, saw the condition she was in, and did nothing.

I will write more about my sister, Rebecca Jill Kahrmann. I love her still, my whole wide world.

Mature Don’t Mean Wisdom

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If there was anything left in me that believes when we grow older, our maturity and ability to manage life in healthy ways grows as well, I’m damned if can find it.

There are some well-entrenched behavior patterns in this human family of ours and those resulting from some history’s wounds make healthy intimacy impossible. Dishonesty is rampant. Without honesty, there is no trust. The absence of trust eliminates any chance of healthy intimacy.

No doubt people have had to develop methods of managing life on the fly that, while perhaps needed to survive at one time in your life – your childhood, for example – they now endanger and damage you, rather than protect you. Protecting the life you are living, not just the life that means, you’re alive.

Tragically, and I do not use this word lightly, many lives are still controlled by wounded self-images, robbing them of a healthy understanding of self, and others for that matter.

A brilliant human being and a former therapist of mine once said, “Therapy is basically a matter of getting free of your history.” Free if those “voices” is in your history that, often unknowingly, have you the message you were one messed-up being.

I am not dancing on the rest of high hopes that I will have a healthy intimate relationship with a woman. As I said, honesty is in short supply, and some women I’ve met have had experiences that the distance-making patterns they have, while making a relationship impossible, made all the sense in the world given the reality of their life experience.

I also had an encounter with one so saturated in narcissism, she made Narcissus himself look like the poster boy for humility.

Make Them Look At Human Gun Carnage

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Make the NRA and their GOP sycophants look at the torn and shredded remains of those American children and adults slaughtered by firearms. Number one reason children die in this country? Someone shoots them.

I survived an act of gun violence in 1984 when I was held up and shot in the head at point blank range. The bullet remains lodged in the brain. Members of our American family – including our children – are being shot down every day. It is time to make those preventing a safer country to get a close up look at reality.

The author, weeks after the shooting, September, 1984.

Make these accessories to murder look at the pictures, up close. Film, photograph, and record their reactions to seeing these pictures.   

Put them in a crime scene and say look at this torn up child. Still don’t like background checks? Keep looking. Still don’t want to ban assault weapons? Say that out loud, for the camera that’s trained on you while you’re looking at this horror.  

Then, with the pictures of human carnage present, have them publically explain why this carnage is the price members of our American family must pay for our freedom. 

The greed-driven thugs who oppose universal background checks, red flag laws, and a ban on assault weapons, are directly or indirectly, accessories to murder and attempted murder. 

James Brady and author, circa 1990
James Brady and author, circa 1990

If anyone thinks, even for a moment, that labelling these folks accessories to murder is a stretch, it’s not. Not even a little. 

The Cornell Law School’s online Legal Information Institute says an accessory before-the-fact (the crime), 

 ”is a person who aids, abets, or encourages another to commit a crime but who is not present at the scene. An accessory before the fact, like an accomplice may be held criminally liable to the same extent as the principal. Many jurisdictions refer to an accessory before the fact as an accomplice.

See  Evans v. State, 145 So. 3d 674 (Miss. 2014); accessory”

Now, the NRA leadership and its GOP sycophants know  – they know – children and adults in our American family will get shot and killed because of them. They know thousands upon thousands will get shot and survive. Peoples lives blown to pieces because these are greed-driven thugs who want money. Profit before people. Let the people die.

Nothing that I propose here should happen without the permission of the survivors of gun violence, their families, and the families of those who did not survive the act of gun violence.