You know there are times when I really have to wonder if people are out to get my mother and me out of this unit. Again, I say unit and not home because the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calls all the homes in a public housing authority units. HUD fails to understand that they kinda make them feel like armed forces barracks, at least to me they do. To others, it might feel more like a prison cell. Either way, the feeling is not good, more so if you know what it's like being in either. What I mean is that the tenants are required to follow HUD rules and regulations even though HUD claims they have no power over the public housing authorities and how they are ran. What contradicts that is when HUD seems to have no problem shutting down a public housing authority for health and safety reasons. Maybe HUD needs to reevaluate how they work for the people since they seem to only work for themselves and not for the people or, in this case, the Tenants.
Now, let's move on to the exterminators and what's currently happening. My mother and I were told today that we failed to prepare for the exterminators to deal with the current Bed Bug Problem. There is a problem with that, though, which is when this all started we were told that “Everything had to go”. That turned into “Just put Clothing in Black trash bags and get rid of the beds”. That, however, brought another problem, which was that we could not just “get rid of the beds,” as they put it, due to not having the money to replace them or, at the very least, replace my mother's bed. That then turned into “Don't worry about the beds. We will just treat them all”. So, my mother and I started burning through the $34 we had by spending $20 at the local laundromat that had just opened. Now, did that get all the Clothing? Well, no, but it did at least about 4 to 6 trash bags if I remember right.
Does this mean my mother and I are done with washing Clothing? Well, no, not by a long shot. In fact, with the rest of the money, we had to buy food and some isopropyl alcohol as we are barely making it and were told to buy isopropyl alcohol to help deal with the Current Bed Bug Problem. However, we were told today that we did not follow anything the exterminators told us. That makes me question the motives of the exterminator's actions. To run to the Housing Authority Executive Director to tell him one thing while telling us something entirely different. Hell, when the exterminators showed up, they didn't even tell us anything was wrong. They just started taking the bedding off Mother's bed, which is something we were not told to do; otherwise, it would have been done before they showed up. They then started vacuuming the walls and beds. Before vacuuming the beds, they stood them up on their sides.
After that, they started to try to use some sort of machine that was to treat the beds, or at least that's what they told my mother and me that it was for. The machine kept tripping a breaker, so they could not keep it going. Now, during all of this, the maintenance man from the Housing Authority kept ducking in and out instead of staying with the exterminators, which is required per policy, or at least it was when I was working for the Housing Authority. We were told by the exterminators that my mother and I had to leave because they were about to spray for Bed Bugs and that we had to stay away until 7:30 that night. Now, they did tell my mother and me before they started anything that when we came back, if the beds were wet, we were to wash our hands in cold water so the pores in our hands would stay closed and that we were to stay off the beds until they dry. They also told us that if we came home and the beds were dry, we should wash our hands in cold water so the pores in our hands would stay closed, and the beds were okay to be sat on.
As it stands now, we are being told that we might be charged a $200 prep work fee for not following supposedly clear instructions despite doing what we were told by the exterminators themself. Even the administrative assistant is questioning the motives of the exterminator's actions. You may be asking yourself, “Why?” Well, the administrative assistant relayed the same information from the exterminators. In fact, both my mother and the administrative assistant confirmed today that they had gotten the same information from the exterminators. Something else we were not told was to have all the trash bags of Clothing we could not wash yet had to be out of the unit, which would cause another problem if true since we don't have anywhere to store stuff until we have more money. So, as you can see, we are being told one thing, and the Executive Director of the Housing Authority is being told something entirely different, and it's these inconsistencies that are causing health and safety risks that HUD just wants to pass onto the Public Housing Authority. I guess in the end, the Tenants are truly just a meal ticket until the Public Housing Authorities and HUD don't want to deal with them anymore.