Confess!

Who is today's candidate for the National Guilty Party? The nomination goes to...The Landlord. I actually have two friends right now who are being evicted or under threat of imminent eviction. Both have jobs, serve the community generously, take care of others without thought of recompense, don't shoot drugs and are generally the kind of women you'd like to have as friends. One of them is raising two teenage girls single-handedly: Neither of whom is pregnant, or a dope pusher, or a destructive rebel. These are the people The Landlord chooses to evict right before Christmas.

One friend is forced to move because a neighboring renter claims too many non-resident teens trespass on apartment property to "visit" her daughters (who are not the only girls in the building) -- The other is under threat because she has gotten two months behind on rent -- and after sending in a double payment, she gets eviction paper, which The Landlord claims are "just an error" (the threat has been in the air for a few weeks.) Both have lived in their apartments a long time, which means that rents on the apartments have not risen as fast as The Landlord might have liked. By evicting the tenants, The Landlord creates an opportunity to get more money for the rental unit. In general, both friends have been good tenants. The one being evicted for having teenagers has never paid her rent late, not once.

She said that when she first moved in, she heard a single mother with an infant was evicted from the building that Christmas Eve. No room at the inn.

Winter hardens the hearts of the wealthy.