DEAR
CITY OF LA. BUILDING AND SAFETY- You have cited my
rented cottage for front yard orchard overgrowth. I guess you don't like
my forest of apples, grapefruit, mulberries, peaches, walnuts and pomegranates
and arugula but I'm 70, live on 620$ a month total income, can barely walk,
need open heart surgery and I thought fruit, nuts and salad would aid me
in staying alive. But you seem to be bent on seeing me dead. Not only taking
away my food trees, you now want me to get up on a ladder and PRUNE and
you tell me that if I don't you'll send city workers do the job for a mere
$2,000??????
After your first notice with these bargain gardening rates, I begged you to send that city inspector and tell me what was not good enough for you. A Mr. Mike arrived and told me that ALL TREES must be 3 !/2 feet from another tree (trunk to trunk) to confirm to code. Well, we measured and THEY WERE twice or three times that space so it really was a gratuitous BUST! There was not a single tree closer to a neighbor than the 3 1/2 foot rule. It's just that there are quite a few trees as it is a front yard orchard! But still, eager to accomodate, we cut trees way back, then called you back and you sent Angel who likewise said the place was fine. Up to code!
A few days later, the desk jockies on North Figueroa sent a notice 'ignore that,' and put us back into CODE violation territory with a new COMPLAINT. Confess it, guys, you really are sniffing after that big Two thousand dollar pinata money, aren't you? well, I don't have it. I don't own this shack. A 90 year old landlord in Van Nuys does. And he's freaking out and ready to evict me for all the trees that I planted here hoping I one day could escape 2$ an lb for apples, 5$ an lb for nuts. (You probably didn't know Seniors on. Social Security aren't allowed to get food stamps. Wait til it's your mother's turn in the barrel! You'll find out quick enough!)
What bugs this particular, starving senior is that no sooner does one of your junior field agents clear us than the boss downtown (who never came and eyeballed anything,) sends another "ORDER TO COMPLY" and PRUNE your BUTT off or PAY OFF notices to me and my landlord ... perhaps hoping that he will get up on a ladder and prune, fall, die so that you can collect this very property! See, that's how the smartest man who ever lived, George Bernard Shaw, died at age 96. Pruning on a ladder. Remembering him, neither of us is much inclined to get on a stairway to heaven. even though you have sent us a half dozen notices threatening us if we don't. We've pruned from the ground level, two seniors, arms upraised, clipping away, sweating bullets, and after each week or so of pruning, we ask for an inspector and a junior agent comes and gives us the high sign, okays the entire thing, then we get another ORDER TO COMPLY from the MAIN MAN at your BLDG AND SAFETY OFFICE with a new deadline and even more huge FINES mentioned.
What can we do? I have no car, couldn't drive to HOME DEPOT and find a Mexican with a chain saw and pruning shears on my life! My landlord is NINETY and walks around in pajama bottoms when he's not driving his creaky, ancient car and not hiring Latinos is his religion!
Do you guys have an office pool on which one of us croaks first? Or is this a VILLARAIGOSA scheme to get moola out of turnips? Cuz I hear the rumor that your CITY is broke. It's the COUNTY of LOS ANGELES which has the deep pocket jingle from all those house taxes and that sure isn't you. So are you doing what so many cities (Bell, Irwindale) do these days? Rooking the turkeys? Senior can't pay the GAS or HEAT, falls into arrears and then the CITY GARNISHES THE HOME and sells it? Is this one of those SENIOR SWINDLES? It is, isn't it. You don't clear enough with those CheckPoint Charlies where you impound our cars for expired reg, driver's license, tags or no insurance so now you want to take our homes for PRUNING VIOLATIONS! City of Bell and Irwindale don't stand alone in stealing everything that isn't firmly glued down, huh? Tell you what --- How would you fellows on North Figueroa like a big fat tort case with triple Indemnity for psychic damages to SENIORS which you're trying to accomplish with AN ILLEGAL ENTERPRISE for PROFIT meaning you guys qualify for and are now looking at a FEDERAL RICO RACKETEERING AMENDMENT VIOLATION. GO back to your BUILDING INSPECTORS taking BRIBES! It was a much better way to fund your slimy butts.
Sign
me GERIATRIC perhaps --but Mad as Hell and Planning on DOING SOMETHING
ABOUT IT soon as I get a postage stamp!. Anita S. in the County of Los
Angeles
SECOND LETTER TO PACK OF HYENA CITY OFFICIALS
DEAR H.E.A.P, You are an agency, federally funded, one supposedly deputized to give the crippled, poor, jobless or aged a heap of help. H.E.A.P are your initials, right? This supposedly means help GETTING HEAT, or help paying for natural gas to cook with, hot water to bathe with. You got a huge FEDERAL GRANT which pays your salaries and it's supposedly so that you can HELP seniors A WHOLE HEAP, right? But DO YOU REALLY? No. Instead, you HEAP MISERY ON THEM! I AM ready to WIKI-LEAK the truth to the local newspapers as I'm a basketcase from your WORKERS who continually reject my paperwork! You have denied me assistance with my HUGE utility bills, denied me a halving of that 400$ a month Department Water and Power bill. (My entire social security and Disability combined is 620$ and no surprise, I must pay rent and food. No food stamps are given to either social security or disabled recipients.) So I qualify for a heap of help from HEAP yet every time I send in my forms, you turn me down, demanding that I send in papers which I don't have. Another time you'll demand that I go and hire a notary and swear that I am senior and jobless. I sent you my only copy of my SOCIAL SECURITY records, you return nothing. Then disqualify me as I no longer have it! You demand I go to post offices two miles off, notaries, five miles away, xerox machines ten miles away. I live in LA a sprawling city. There is no notary near me and if I had ten dollars or whatever these 'functionaries' charge, I'd use it for food, -- not a notary. Do you consider when you demand that a seventy year old senior find a xerox, post office, notary that we have no cars? I qualified for DISABLED VAN ACCESS only to learn that if I want a RIDE it costs 5$ a trip however may I point out that if I had a fiver I'd just buy food!
Last, You demand that I scout down hardcopy bills for utilities in a
new paperless internet universe of utility bills that exist only on monitor
SCREENS! I print them out from THE GAS COMPANY WEBSITE and you do not believe
me! You demand paper bills I no longer get! You demand an annual W2 which
I sent you and you enver returned, one that proves my meager $7,400 annual
income is FOR REAL.... suspecting that at age seventy I hide some dynamic
fountain of income which might lurk on a W2. You don't understand that
I sent that single W2 for $7400 annual income to my daughter the
tax preparer who lives 3000 miles away in the Bronx to get me my refund.
She never sent it back. She couldn't imagine her ole Ma would ever need
it. Besides, what could the IRS ever want with her ole Mom that would require
records be filed or saved? Yet you demand that to get not a HEAP OF HELP
but ONE utility bill paid annually... I wander all over
tarnation on foot then send you a TON of PROOF. You demand
what I could not POSSIBLY have, hard copy gas bills when I went PAPERLESS
--not at the utility company's request but because POSTAGE STAMPS were
too dear and the walk to the POST OFFICE 2 miles too far for my ancient
legs! (Seniors don't have registration fees or cars. )
My quite legit SCREEN PRINT OUT of ONE SOLID YEAR of gas tariffs/ bills
proving all amounts paid -- was not good enough for you! Say,
guys, do you really even want to HELP or are you here to torture us into
madness so that we end up like the
MUMMY in the MERCURY MARQUIS. (A homeless SENIOR gal living in
a borrowed car, who died there, body found yesterday in Costa Mesa.). Is
this Eskimo squaws out on to the ice time? Are you making us jump thru
HOOPS because you hate your own mother or are you the LOCAL ABU GRAHIB
that gets off torturing INFIDEL Seniors who can't find gas bills, find
W2s, walk to the Post office or afford stamps when we went paperless and
now have no copies of bills to send you! And you consider your office to
be HELPING US? What planet are you from? I failed this Apache Gauntlet
of requests so now I facing a 400$ DWP bill thanks to your HELP??
I supplied you with the last SOCIAL SECURITY notice of ANNUAL payment stating
clearly that this senior gets 620$ a month, period! (340 Social Security
280 Totally disabled). WHAT PART OF 620$ A MONTH INCOME DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
Signed, Anita S. in Reseda, in the County of Los Angeles.
COPIES
SENT TO PRES. OBAMA. the FBI. & JUSTICE DEPT. MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA. and
BOARD OF BUILDING AND SAFETY ROBERT "BUD" OVROM GENERAL MANAGER, RAYMOND
CHAN EXECUTIVE OFFICER. In my dreams! Cuz who has postage?