Allan Konigsberg said that showing up is ninety percent of life. I call this the Konigsberg Theorem. Konigsberg has been cancelled, but he is a genius. If we excise the art because of the artist’s flaws, that will be a loss.
(Along with Frank Rolfe, Elon Musk, Kurt Gödel, John Nash, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinksy and David Foster Wallace, Konigsberg has a flaw. The later-enumerated geniuses’ flaw is madness. Konigsberg has been credibly accused of sexual predation. The heroes have feet of clay. Punish the sin but value what the sinners have produced.)
Mobile home park management is governed by a 95-5 rule. Ninety-five percent of mobile home park residents are simply people who need affordable housing. They take care of their property, educate their children, obey the social contract and make pleasant chit-chat at the end of the day. The other five percent conform to the stereotypes. The five percent suck up ninety-five percent of your time, money, energy and brain-space.
A corollary to the Konigsberg Theorem is that ten percent of the population shows up when they should and ninety percent does not, and that the ninety percent who do not show up take up more than ninety percent of your resources. That has implications for mobile home park management and beyond.
On Wednesday of last week, I went to court in the small town where my park in central New York is located. I brought cases against two residents. One of them showed up; the other did not. The judge showed up, but only enough to go through the motions.
The first case concerned a guy named Alexander J. Stinson and his WOG, Misty Lynn Shepard.[1] Alex’s date of birth is July 24, 1972. He has lived in and around that part of central New York since 1993. Misty’s date of birth is December 19, 1977. She has also gone by Misty L Falero, Misty M. Falero, Misty L. Marshall, and Misty Lynn Marshall. Since 2000, Misty has lived mostly around that area of central New York, although she also lived briefly on Long Island and in Texas and Georgia.
I hired Alex in October 2021 as a maintenance guy. Our deal was that he would plow, mow and take care of emergencies. In exchange, he would get to live in a $750-per-month park-owned-home for free. If he worked more than fifty hours during any month, he would be paid $15 per hour for the excess. Things went south quickly. He bought a pitbull with a neck as thick as my waist. He trashed the skid steer. He replaced hydraulic line fittings with water-line fittings. He plowed half the park and quit in the middle of a snow-storm. He built a fence out of duct tape and bubble gum. It was impossible for the manager and I to get in touch with him when we needed to do so – he changed phones, never had voice mail, did not respond to messages, texts or emails.
I fired Alex at the end of March. When I did that, he signed a contract that gave him thirty days to move out. He received $500 when he signed the contract to cover moving costs. If he moved out before May 1, he would get another $500. For someone who did a crappy job, that’s a good deal.
It is now early June. Alex Misty, Misty’s ten-year-old son, Misty’s sister, and Misty’s sister’s HOB are all still living there. He says that he is moving, but he won’t tell us when or where or how. When Dee Dee, the manager of that park, goes to his lot to talk with him, he scuttles away and hides in the home, like a hermit crab.
As they occupy the home, they trash it. Here are pictures of some of the crap on and around their lot. Pay special attention to the bag of water softener salt. It was stolen from the pole barn, used as ice melt, and left on the back porch since the end of winter:
Under Section 713 of the RPAPL, a terminated employee living in housing formerly provided as an incident to their employment is not a tenant and as such not entitled to some of the protections given to tenants. Inter alia, this type of respondent is not entitled to notice of a summary proceeding. In the middle of May, Alex and Misty were served with a petition and a notice of petition for a summary proceeding. They did not show up for their hearing. The judge agreed to a two-week warrant and his gavel came down. As soon as the paralegal and the court clerk get their shit together and send the warrant to the sheriff, the two-week clock will start ticking. Once that happens, those clowns will be gone and the new maintenance guy will have the opportunity to clean up the mess that Alexander J. Stinson, Misty Lynn Shepard, f.k.a. Misty Lynn Falero and Misty Lynn Marshall and their guests will leave.
The second case concerned a woman who I will call Tess and her HOB, Jay. I have written about them before. They have not been square since they moved in, in 2019. They used to pay in dribs and drabs, but they have paid nothing for more than a year. They are the Sugar Ray Robinsons of excuses. If you ask them why they are short, they will tell you that their SSI did not arrive, they got COVID, they will pay next week, they will pay next month, they will pay as soon as they get signing authority over their now-deceased mother’s bank account, the EMTs gave them Narcan and took them to the hospital because their potassium levels were out of whack. This is the third time we have taken them to court. We got a money judgment and we tried to get a contempt order during the eviction moratorium. Now, evictions – for those who do not make bogus ERAP claims – are back.
Tess and Jay did show up to court. The judge came close to issuing a sixty warrant, but he stumbled on the issue of their risk of loss if they are evicted and their home, which they own, stays on the lot. He was there in person, but he couldn’t make a decision – and that’s what we pay judges to do.
The cause of action for the eviction proceeding was non-payment of lot rent. Tess and Jay are now into the park for more than three grand. When we first stood up, Tess said that DSS had told her that a check for the entire amount of their back-rent had been mailed the day before. I said, “Your Honor, I don’t think that that check is in the mail. I have worked with DSS on behalf of other residents. The people at DSS are helpful and responsive. I have not heard from them about any check for these residents. And Tess and Jay do not have a good track record with telling the truth.”
The judge looked at Tess and said,
-I have to assume that you are telling the truth because you are making these statements in open court.
Tess nodded. I kept my mouth shut, but if I had a leather strap with me, I would have chewed through it.
We agreed that, if Tess and Jay were gone in a month, I would forgive their debt. We agreed that, if they were not gone by the end of a month, the judge would issue a thirty-day warrant and I would retain the right to a money suit. Then Tess said that she did not know whether she would be able to scrape together eight grand for a home transporter in that time, and things went pear-shaped. The judge looked troubled by that and I said, “You can ignore the statement about transaction costs, Your Honor. She doesn’t have to move the home. She can sell it to a third party and use the money to buy another place.” The judge looked at me and said,
-Didn’t we have this issue before?
-That was different, Your Honor. That was a –
-I don’t need to know the facts of the former case.
The judge was thinking of a case of mine that he had heard four years ago concerning Joe Gurry’s daughter, who had moved into a handyman special that I had given to her in exchange for her promise to fix it up.. She had not finished the work that we had agreed she would do, bought two pitbulls, took up with a guy who tried to remove the roof panels in the middle of the night, and stopped paying lot rent. The judge had been bothered that she would lose the cost of materials she claimed to have dumped into the project when she was evicted from that home. The judge continued,
-Can you guarantee that they can sell it in sixty days?
I said,
-That’s a risk they need to take.
In a better world, I would have continued – It is a hot market now, Your Honor. Chances are the home will sell quickly. And anyhow, when you own property, you take risks. I own land. I take the risk that some deadbeat will camp out on that land and not pay me a penny for a year and I will not have any legal remedy. Lot rent is $424 a month. That is as cheap as housing costs get. I never owned that home. I didn’t sell it to them. They bought it from someone else, and when they bought it they knew that they assumed the risks of ownership. They do not pay a penny in lot rent for over a year and have the chutzpah to say, ‘take pity on me!’?
Bothered by the thought that Tess and Jay might lose some of their investment, the judge granted them a two-week adjournment, to give the time for the ghost check from DSS to arrive. We will reconvene on the fifteenth to discuss the merits in more detail. Readers who live in that part of the state are encouraged to vote for a judge who knows how to distinguish cases, follow the law, and make decisions.
In the park after court, I stopped by Elena Howe’s place. She is a forty-five year old Black woman who is married to a redneck guy who drives a truck with a Confederate flag. They got behind a year or so ago, but they have been up to date ever since she got on SSI because she developed MS. I wanted to ask how her health was. When I rang the bell, she said, “Hi, John! Let me get the door!” I said, “Don’t get up.” Then, “How is your health?” She was sitting in an armchair across from the door. She seemed to be able to sit up and move her hands OK, but you never know. She said,
-I’m fine, only sometimes I have an attack.
-uh-oh.
-I still walk around the whole park! Even in the snow!
-Be careful.
-Yesterday, I fell when I was out in the yard.
-Were you OK?
-Ben asked me what these bruises were.
She showed me her arm and forearm, which were discolored under the skin. I wanted to say, MS is no joke. An old student of mine and a friend’s mother both had it, but stopped myself when I realized that the past tense of that sentence would imply that my friends had died of the disease. Elena asked me,
-Hey- are any trailers in the park for sale or rent?
-No, the park is full. Why do you ask?
-My brother is retiring from the military. He wants to buy a place for his daughter, who will be going to school at the College.
-I wish I could help you.
And then, a penny dropped. I remembered Tess and Jay. Forty-five minutes before, in court, they had claimed that they wanted to sell their home. I said,
-But I do know someone who might be looking to sell. Can I give you their number?
-Sure!
I don’t know whether Elena will call them. If she does call them, Tess and Jay won’t budge. They will have an excuse for not selling, same as they have an excuse for everything else. They will milk their ability to live for free until a warrant is issued. But it’s worth a try. If Elena’s brother stayed in the military long enough to retire, he would make a better resident than Tess and Jay. He would increase the diversity quotient of the park by doubling the Black population. And I am sure that he knows enough to show up when showing up is called for.
[1] I usually use pseudonyms on this blog, but the personal information regarding Alex and Misty is true. I have chosen to use their real names and dates of birth to warn readers who live or own businesses in central New York about them, and because truth is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation.