Taxes, want to get mad?

For out store we rent 3 storage units at a indoor facility. The first of may I happened to be there when a huge moving truck with about 6 guys were moving stuff off the truck and into different units. I kidded the mgr about renting out all that space and she quietly told me it was a black pastor who had been evicted from his house and was moving everything into units and I mean lots of stuff.

So today I am over there and the mgr, general mgr and another mgr were upstairs when I went up and they asked if I could smell the odor. I couldn't but agreed to try to help them locate where it was coming from. Since it started the day after that big move in, they felt it was coming from one of his 4 units. So as soon as we get in front of one of them, I smelled it immediately. So the guy goes up a ladder to peek over the top of the unit to see if there is a refrig, or cooler or something that might have bad food in. He starts coughing and gagging immediately and says that is the place but can't see anything other than bags, boxes and mattresses.

So in talking I find out he had been evicted by Fannie Mae, and what made me mad and also the 3 mgrs, was Fannie paid $9000 to move all his stuff to this facility and paid the first months rent on the 4 units, that was $500. I guess I had this look on my face and they said yes, $9000 plus the $500 after evicting him. That is our tax dollars doing this and yes I was pissed, still am.

The pastor was told to get there by tomorrow at noon or they are cutting the lock and charging him to clean up whatever mess is in there. I told them good luck because he hasn't paid this months rent yet.

Sounds like the moving company had to be paid, rightly so. The fact that Fannie Mae had to pay them $9K isn't the gov't fault. I don't know if that is unreasonable or not, but 6 guys, a truck and a "word of mouth receipt" could be anything. If the Pastor defaulted on his loan and the home foreclosed then the contents needed to be removed. Somebody had to pay for that and they had to go somewhere and stored for some period of time according to the law (ask a lawyer for that time frame). The storage company didn't donate the storage units, why should the moving company donate their moving service? $500 a month for 4 units sounds reasonable. Perhaps the $9K is reasonable as well depending on what was required to move. I means if it was a foreclosure, odds are everything had to be taken down, packed or wrapped, inventoried, loaded into a truck (including truck rental), unloaded and re inventoried. 6 guys, 2 days, 10hr/day, figure $50/hr per man is $6K in labor plus a truck, taxes etc.... I could see it being a justifiable expense as I'm sure they weren't walking into a home that was "mover ready"

Without knowing the financials on the pastor, I can't really comment on whether or not the gov't should have guaranteed his loan thru Fannie Mae. The fact he was black or that the stuff smelled means nothing.