Life As Performance Art 110

Some days, Gentle Reader, I have to wrack my poor old brain in order to come up with something interesting and novel enough to write for the blog post de jour. Other days, it gets dropped right onto my lap. Like yesterday afternoon. I had just come into the foyer of my apartment building after work where I was greeted by our new manager. He wanted to know if I had read his email to me today. I had not. He said something about cabinets and workers needing to get into my unit. I found out, after further questioning, that he was referring to a worker in the building who knocked on my door last Wednesday afternoon. He said he wanted to take measurements in my apartment. I had not received from the building manager an intent to enter form about this, and I communicated this to the worker, who responded by suggesting that maybe he should leave. I thought he seemed okay, and I told him to come in anyway. It turns out he is from El Salvador, and we had what I thought to be a pleasant conversation in Spanish while he took measurements in my kitchen and bathroom. After he he was gone I left a voice message with my building manager, saying simply that this worker wanted to take measurements in my unit, but I had been given no intent to enter notice nor any verbal advisory that he would be here. So, I asked what would be the correct protocol, and mentioned that I did let this worker in anyway, even if at my own risk, partly because he had appeared at my door and as a professing Christian, despite this current wave of distrust and hostility that seems to threaten to engulf us, I happen to believe strongly in practicing hospitality. Yesterday in the building foyer, I mentioned to the manager that I would have appreciated receiving proper notice, since no one had said anything at all to me about the cabinets being fixed in my unit, nor that they even needed to be fixed. (There is still nothing wrong with my memory, by the way, Gentle Reader, so we cannot blame this one on creeping dementia). Later, in his email, I read that he had been told by the contractors that I had refused to let the worker into my unit, and so I was given a written scolding about not being a very compliant tenant. This bothered me on several levels. To begin with, I had just been perjured. My building manager chose to believe a patent lie about me, one of the longest, and probably most reliable and responsible tenants here in this building, then to chew me out about it in an email, like I was a naughty child or a lazy schoolboy who was shirking on his homework (I am at least twice his age, by the way!) without doing anything to check in and hear from me about it, about my perspective and experience of what had happened. A bit of an insult, methinks. And no, he has not apologized. Neither has my building manager apologized about neglecting to give me proper and appropriate notice about this worker coming into my unit. And of course, the contractors also owe me an apology for telling this lie to the manager about me and potentially endangering my housing, since as a low income worker my housing options in this expensive city of Vancouver are between zero and nil, and having experienced homelessness, this is a trauma that never entirely goes away. So, the manager and I have exchanged emails. He accepts my explanation, but still falls short of an actual apology. Important, this, an apology, because if nothing else it shows that you have enough respect for the person who has been affected by your oversight, or negligence, but here it is also helpful to consider the power dynamics when one is a tenant in a social housing building. There is going to be an underlying insecurity and experience of vulnerability. This is inevitable. We are touching here upon a huge power imbalance. The tenants in my building are particularly vulnerable. Some are living with mental illness. Some are physically disabled, or simply just very old. A number of us, I among them, are actually very high functioning, work, have lives, friends, partners, recreational interests, faith communities, and a social network that has no relation to the organization that operates our building. There is not always the assurance that we are going to be respected by our housing providers as equals, rather as consumers of services, supports and charity. For this reason, the relationship can get a bit tense, nervous and sometimes downright neurotic. It takes a lot of work for people from very opposite life experiences to coexist equally and with a potential for friendship, or at least respect. For housing providers such as the employees and staff of the organization that runs my building, it is essential that they work on this. I am not convinced that they are trying very hard. I have lived in this building for seventeen years, almost to the day, and we have been through a lot of management staff, some good, some a little bit on the mistaken side, so I think it could be safely assumed that I know what I'm writing about.