Homeless - Part II

Due to ongoing litigation, I am unable to disclose certain details about my recent homelessness. Nonetheless, the story needs to be told, even if in a more nuanced and less linear way. There are some people and some situations that need to be called out.

Michael – My Renter’s Insurance Agent

Apologies to my boy, but they assigned me an absolute cretin to be my insurance agent.

First time I called this guy he told me not to file a damages claim under my renter’s insurance policy but directly and exclusively go after the people that caused all the water damage to my apartment. Homeboy managed to piss me off within 60 seconds of my first ever phone call to this organization.

“Michael, I'm pretty sure that's not how insurance works. I'm sure that's how YOU want it to work. But the idea of me paying my policy for 11 years and now, the first time I actually need it, you telling me to avoid using my coverage and to basically fuck off…. This isn't sitting well with me."

He gave me some song and dance. It made no sense. I ignored it entirely:

“Ok, I will get my documents together and file a claim”

Minutes later I filed my initial claim online.

A few days later…. No movement. I called Michael. He said the online portal doesn't work. He'd send me a bunch of text messages and I should respond via text or email the generic Assurant inbox.

None of this made any sense but I told him:

"Listen, brother, I will fax you. I'll send you physical mail, email, text….. I'll send a highly trained postal pigeon with a note tied to its leg if you want. But I'm gonna get my money and you're gonna get the message."

I got an independent mold report done that proved that we had mold. He asked me to email it. Then after several more days of silence he claimed he couldn’t find it.

A week later, still no movement. I call him.

"What happened, Michael?" 

"I never got your mold report." 

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Michael, stay on the line and I’ll email it again for the 3^rd time and text you the attachment and you’re gonna stay on the line until you confirm you have received it.”

"Oh uhmm, it's gonna take five to ten minutes for me to get it, why don’t I call you back"

 "You’re my priority, Michael, I'll stay on the phone with you."

 "Okay, I got it."

Couple days later.

"What's happening, Michael, I haven't heard anything." 

“I can’t find your mold report”

I sent that mold report seven times to prove there was mold in the apartment, and that they should pay me for the damages I'm incurring.

Critically, I must also point out that after our first two phone sessions, Michael stopped taking my calls. I started calling him from my work cell phone, borrowing people’s phones, at one point I even started doing VOIP (nobody under 40 knows wtf I am talking about) to disguise that it was me. He was always stunned to hear my voice. Like “Dang, he got me!”

My policy maximum, he told me, was only a grand. I found that to be kind of dubious. So I found a bunch of policy documents buried on their website. They were as long and dense as the Magna Carta. I don't have time to read this shit!  I'm a working father! Luckily, thanks to my AI-enabled version of Adobe Acrobat, I found a clause that said that if you prove it's a mold job, you can get up to $5,000 in damages and not $1000. Thus, the epic battle over the mold report.

So finally, after months of haranguing him through surreptitious methods, I was able to get approval and confirmation from Michael that I would get paid $5000. Huge win. We had bled out $400 a night for many weeks on Airbnbs that my landlord was supposed to cover but refused to. That's a separate story that, again, per earlier comments, will not be discussed further.

My next question:

"Okay, Michael, how are you going to send me the money?”

“We’ll do a direct deposit”

"Michael, you don't have my banking information."

"I'll send you a link where you can put in your bank information."

Surprise, surprise. No link, nothing. One day, two days, nothing. I call him (using the cell phone of the front-desk girl at my co-working space) and finally cornered him into sending me the link while I sat on the phone with him until it came through

You think I was done there? Nope.

I filled out the information. Four days passed, nothing.

In the meantime, I got a text from the insurance company saying: "Hey, are you happy with our service? How would you rate it? Now that you've received your money, the claim is closed. How would you rate us?"

Immediately called Michael:

"Michael, why am I getting this? I haven't received any money yet. Why are you asking for a customer survey? Why does it say my case was closed? Where's my money?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, actually, I wanted to wire it to you but my boss revoked it. He said to stop payment. He wants to do some further research."

"Okay, Michael, what is your boss researching?"

"Oh, well, he wants to get the number of the mold inspector and call him to make sure the report isn’t a forgery."

At this point, I might have had a tiny aneurysm. Stressed out, my kids struggling cause they’re bouncing around from Airbnb to Airbnb. Not sleeping. Nobody's sleeping. I'm moving in and out, my wife is also stressed and exhausted, hemorrhaging money, can't focus on work. Everything's fucked. Now I have to validate the provenance and integrity of the mold report.

The Insurance Companies

They obviously don't want to pay, and they make that extremely, extremely transparent in their actions. They want you to quit. They want to make your life so painful that you give up, “Whatever. I'm just gonna eat the cost”. And I'm sure, sadly, that most people do.

I eventually got my money cause I pressured this idiot non-stop, I was relentless. Like Manny Pacquiao in his prime, I threw a million punches at this guy from different angles. Different phone numbers, different mechanisms of communication, calling other insurance agents, leaving messages. He must have felt like he was boxing an octopus. He wanted to wear me down with bullshit and delay tactics but instead, after 3 months, it was Assurant Renter’s insurance that threw in the towel and wired me my motherfucking five grand.

That is how hard you have to fight for what is yours after paying for a policy for 10 years. The one time I needed them, man, did they throw every fucking obstacle in my road to getting my money back.

Insurance…. Such scum. I remember during Covid when my trip to Africa got cancelled (flights, safari, hotels, the works). For whatever reason I had actually opted IN to what I had always suspected was a scam (“secure your trip with Traveler’s insurance for an exorbitant fee”). Then when I called them to exercise my policy they told me “it was an act of god” and they weren’t gonna pay me a dime.

“Maybe I’ll sue you” – I meekly threatened

“I’m sorry you feel that way” .. Click… They DGAF. They know at best you’ll be thrown into some class action lawsuit that they end up losing and costs them 0.002% of what they actually owe people. Meanwhile you get $20 bucks back 6 years later after having spent 30k on lawyers.

ADUs - California's Housing "Solution"

What the fuck is an ADU? Did you know this term? I didn't know what the hell it was. Had to look it up. An “Accessory Dwelling Unit”

In response to its affordable housing crisis, California (the world’s premier factory for failed experiments) enacted legislation that offers incentives for homeowners to build additional housing in their yards.

Let that sink in for a second…………….

People receive incentives to build makeshift lodging in their yard and rent those “homes” out to others. I have observed these bastardizations before, but not for a second did it strike me as remotely possible that they were considered separate homes. I guess my mind isn’t evil enough to think in this way – I always assumed someone had built a baller utility shed for some reason. But they’re there, all over the city, you'll see a house with another house right behind it, painfully close to each other. That's the ADU. There's house number 4120 Lynbrook Avenue. And then there's 4120  ½  Lynbrook Avenue.

First of all, these ADU situations – the whole property absolutely reeks because everyone has their own set of trash, recycling and compost cans camped out. The entire alley, or the area in front of the house, there's at least half a dozen trash cans at any given time. Often times this number is in the double digits (more on that later).

Second: There's no parking whatsoever, because what used to be one home has 8 adult residents now, and they all have cars.

Third: You don’t know if you’re about to get robbed or if it’s your ADU person coming home. You have a weird little situation where some guy walks right by your kitchen window on the way to his house, which happens to be in your backyard. We first experienced this at Airbnb number two that we were forced to live at because the apartment fix was taking forever and our landlord was out to lunch. Every night multiple freaks shuffle by your window in the dark at an odd hour.

Fourth: No Privacy: The third night at said AirBnB / house with an ADU I walked by the side of the ADU (on the way to trash can alley) and some dude was fully naked cooking pasta – curtains wide open. Goddamn it. Goddamn it! I just wanted to throw the garbage out and ended up seeing this fucking chump’s disgusting brajole.

Fifth: The prices are not cheap. The ADUs are priced almost like regular housing, except that you're basically camping out in someone's yard like a freaking child; like a child who wants to “go camping” and sets up a crappy tent in their parents' backyard. That's you, except you're 40 with your own children and you pay four grand a month to live in someone's yard. Perhaps if you hit hard times, you can rent the unfinished basement for $3 grand a month? Perhaps a Harry Potter situation under the staircase for $1500?

It doesn't just stop there, though. There are folks that went all out on this ADU credit, this ADU incentive. There are places that have MULTIPLE ADUs. What was once a 1970s built, humble but nice, middle-class house with a giant, beautiful yard now has three or four ADUs in the back, where somehow people were convinced to live.

My wife went to check out a property listed for rent. Turns out the landlord is notorious, because there's literally a house with 12 ADUs in the back. Before she even got out of the car, irate neighbors bum-rushed her and warned her about the slum she was about to tour. Can you imagine living next to this? You used to live next to another single-family home with a nice yard. Then the owner died and the idiot, deadbeat son inherited the home and decided to never work again and built eleven fucking properties in the yard so he can play video games and masturbate all day.

It's absolutely disgraceful. And I am not a hoity toity guy. I have high standards for my liquor. Other than that, I'm a peasant at heart. Nonetheless, there's no fucking way that I'm living in some other dude's backyard with my two kids at the age of 40. It is just not happening. It's a travesty, that’s what it is.

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Speaking of California travesties…. Did anyone see their January power bill? WTF happened!? I swear that there are bitcoin farms and data centers that had a lower January bill than I did. What part-time job do I have to get to pay for this disaster?

Then again.

If you think about it

This new spot I’m at has a decent sized backyard……………..