And if you didn’t hear about Feathertale’s latest illustration contest, you can still read the awesome poem about Elvis and Jesus on which it was based here.
Appropriately enough for the week “Suburban Summer” runs on Feathertale: if you haven’t made a few phone calls about housing discrimination, please read more here and pick up the phone.
When the individual who owns a small cottage for rent in a nice neighborhood convenient to school and work called me back to cancel our appointment for her to show me the property, I didn’t think much of it. Her current tenant was having out of town company and needed to reschedule. How considerate, I thought.
When she went on to ask me why I wanted to know about stairs in the property, I wasn’t alarmed. It’s a reasonable question. My mother is disabled, I responded.
“Is she handicapped?” the landlord wanted to know. It is illegal for landlords to ask this, but they do anyway.
Yes, I responded.
“What’s wrong with her?” It is also illegal for them to ask this, but I don’t mind. It’s just a little difficult to answer, because some health problems are complex, rare, and vary immensely and unpredictably from week to week and person to person. Lupus, my mom’s autoimmune disorder, is one of them.
“Lupus! Is that that nerve ending thing?”
She was probably thinking of MS. Fair enough. We’re all in the same boat, us autoimmune people, us sick people, us looking-for-housing-in-a-college-town-with-inflated-prices-and-stairs-everywhere people. It was an opportunity to educate somebody about a surprisingly common, chronic, costly, and crippling health problem few people know much about.
But Ginny never did reschedule. I called her intermittently for several weeks checking in, finally recording this conversation in which she informs me the cottage is not for rent. The email below (name withheld for privacy) evidences that the cottage is in fact for rent — it is just not for rent to me, not available for a handicapped person or her family.
Housing discrimination is common. You might not believe it if it hasn’t happened to you. It’s usually not this blatant and easy to prove, and even now, there is no Good Witch of Bellair who can swoop in and make this right. No one can take away the landlord’s real estate license, because she does not have or need one — she is not a real estate agent. So what if HUD fines her? She’s wealthy enough to own a cottage in Bellair, so what does she care?
No, the two reasonable things that will conceivably hurt the Wicked Witch of Bellair are (1) if she does not get what she wants — a nice, white-bread medical, law, or business student in her nice, white-bread cottage; and (2) if her community responds to tell her that what she is doing is wrong.
You can call the UVA offices that are helping her advertise her property to their affiliates: the medical school’s Housestaff Office (Graduate Medical Education, 434-924-2047), the law school (Office of Student Affairs, 434-924-3737), and the business school (Office of the Dean, 924-7481). Housing discrimination stops when you make it.
——– Original Message ——–
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:11:13 -0400
From: Virginia McFadden vamcfadden@earthlink.net
To: [whitey.mcrichenbuns@fancyschmancy.edu]
[Whitey McRichenbuns].
Yes, the cottage is still available- call us at 434-293-2848 so we may
make an apppt. with the present tenant.Ginny McFadden
Is there anything better? This Saturday (04/04/09) is the submissions deadline for the University of British Columbia’s Terry Writing Challenge, wherein you might just win (your choice of!) free books.
Gorp, gorp, it’s good for the spine — the more you eat, the more you feel fine!
That’s only one of the many encouraging rhymes that might make introducing this new food to your babies easy and fun for the whole family. Read more about it today on McSweeney’s Reviews of New Food. Please contact me if you come up with a rhyme for acetabulum.
(And you had better. If you don’t convince your babies they love gorp, how will they ever grow up to be brain surgeons?)
