Talk To The Door

Photo by John Hoff

There is a kind of lunacy about the "official paper" which gets slapped on some of these North Side houses. Take 3016 6th Street North on my western perimeter, for example...

That house has never showed a single sign of occupancy. Nor, for that matter, has anybody appeared to trespass on the property, except that the garage is open to trespass. A few days ago, an eviction notice appeared with May 16 as the deadline to evacuate.

Yeah, evacuate. THERE IS NOBODY THERE. The "official paper" is talking to itself like a loon.

I've watched the property since the end of March, 2008, and nobody has been there this whole time, not even looters or squatters. And yet the paper appears, babbling in an officious way like a mentally ill person with delusions of grandeur, power, authority to demand evacuation.

What we could actually use is some official paper requesting REPLACEMENT OF THE DOOR by any responsible party willing to take it on themselves.

I have never seen such a piece of crap door used as an EXTERIOR door in all my life. I'm guessing the house once had a really nice front door, and somebody decided to make off with that particular item...but being relatively decent people (on a complex moral continuum with many shades of gray) they at least REPLACED the door instead of leaving the house open to trespass.

Yes, they replaced it all right...with a door I wouldn't even use on a closet. It's that cheap.

As Jeff Skrenes put it so well in a recent email:
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The front door has a screen door that won't shut and the front door itself is this really cheap wood that's like paneling. Seriously, I could lean my body weight on it for 5 seconds and it would pop open. Or if I wanted to be quick, a swift kick would do it, too. It doesn't look like this one has been broken open, and maybe people just weren't home.

But this seriously looks abandoned and easily broken into. I've called it in to 311 and PPU.
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Thanks, Jeff! Good ol' Jeff has bureaucratic buttons to push I do not possess. I merely call 311. But Jeff has his mysterious ways with the Problem Properties Unit.