Compass Housing: Archaic Trogolodytes

 So we finally get a forward thinking manager for The Karlstrom. One would think that was awesome news, however for us who live here it's like nothing changed.

The reason is that Compass Housing Authority won't even listen to the people they hire, instead they choose to do the same bullshit. So here is a list of things they do wrong, and all of them could be so easily corrected if they'd just embrace new technologies.

1. No Communication

If you send anyone an email, and you are lucky enough to get a response, it's no less than 7 days before you get said response. It's as if none of them check their messaging systems but for the two hours they spend in the office.

There are several possibilities as to why, from really inexperienced tech department to plain old laziness. There is no department email address system either, it's all to individuals using predetermined email addresses which the staff have zero control over.

This is straight out of the handbook of "how to handle this new thing called the internet" from the 1980s. Given today's environment, checking email should be an hourly thing and the staff should have a mobile app available to check it on the go as well.

2. Bad Web Design

Their website is generic, bland, and something that could easily be thrown together from a Wix template in about five minutes. Ironic given that they claim to have an IT department.

So it makes you wonder if they are even receiving emails. A short time ago it was discovered that their email system was filtering out most of the emails that were being sent to them.

3. No Modern Payment Methods

This one makes them seem suspicious as well as inept, given that the most secure and accessible payment methods are with credit card systems. These are inexpensive and easy systems to setup, and yet they are insisting on using the archaic, insecure, and often very slow methods of payment for rent while pretty much every other organization which manages low income housing offers a credit card payment system.

The new manager has been trying to convince them to implement such a system, which can be setup overnight by any competent technology or financial professional. Yet nearly eight months later no such system has been employed.

4. No Accountability

Often companies they employ for any task are unheard of, almost not internet presence and sometimes their office location on Google points to a residential house. Then when the residents file a complaint about the services, CHA tells us to complain to that company, then that company tells us to either complain to CHA or fuck off.

We have a laundry facility that can't even wash sheets well, and then whenever new residents move in with bed bugs we end up with a massive infestation. These are new problems, relatively, that started when they sold off the expensive laundry machines that were installed in the building when it first opened.

The machines we had were not prefect, mind you, but they were functional and didn't require cash to operate. The company they replaced it with not only remains elusive and avoids all contact with residents, their machines are from the late 1980s and are designed for low and infrequent use.

When attempting to discuss this issue with them, the best we can hope for is occasional access to their better facilities used for cleaning the laundry from the shelters. If the company they contracted cannot provide machines which could work for shelters, what makes them think it would work for an apartment building?

5. Retaliatory Practices

A few of their staff will watch the social media of the residents, thankfully they don't know how to do this well because they do response to any criticism with anger. Given they are also constantly looking for things to hang over the heads of the residents as threats for eviction, this is really bad practice and looks suspiciously like they are attempting to silence any criticism.

Several residents have mentioned as much, many too paranoid to even complain to the authorities which are supposed to hold CHA accountable for their actions. When a resident mentions anything to them, CHA will hold onto that and blow it out of proportion, even making up complaints from "some neighbors" even when no neighbor has made any official complaint.

Now it is possible the neighbors are just too afraid to talk to each other, but this would be in response to the fact that CHA has created such an environment by ignoring legitimate complaints, delaying repairs, and blaming some residents for the damage caused by other residents who have routinely flooded the building. When pressed on any issue, the staff complain about their insurance rates increasing while defending the very people who caused it and moving more such people into the building.

As I write this, the residents in the apartments above mine are smoking marijuana, which they have done almost daily since the COVID lockdown. These are the residents responsible for so much damage to the building, and the property of those of us who have caused no damage to the building.

Instead of even considering compensating us who have lost property, then making things right by fixing out broken services, they defend and protect the ones who actually caused the damage. To make matters worse, they blame those of us who have been harmed by these incidents for the results of the damage.

My newest neighbor has brought with him bed bugs, which would not have been a problem if we had functioning laundry facilities which were easily accessed. As it is, there is no way to launder the linen so I have to spray poisons almost every day to keep up with the invasion.

There is also a resident selling drugs out of their apartment here, and though I don't know who it is nor how valid that accusation is, it would not be surprising if that was true.

Compass Housing Alliance is one of the most dysfunctional and archaic organizations in the system, a far cry from the original Compass Center that maintained the building to high standards, kept very strong relations with the residents, and took responsibility for their role when things did go south.

You can't complain about insurance rates increasing when you remove amenities that helped maintain the building and protect those who are flooding units regularly.

Why Agencies Are Bad For Non-Profit Organizations

A non-profit's income should be very near zero, of course this is after administrative costs. For housing this is a very challenging point to get, maintenance alone can bring an apartment complex into the red and devastating failures caused by lacking maintenance can drop that even more, not to mention actual damages done by the residents.

There are many issues residents will face that will cause damage to units, often without intent from the resident but by the very nature of the medical problem. Let's take the example of surgery, a very common occurrence for vulnerable members of society.

The wounds caused by surgery will take time healing, during this time blood will be likely to come from the wound. This blood will get onto lots of surfaces, which inevitably cause stains which cannot be cleaned up.

Often surgeries will add even more challenges, and more sources of refuse which will inevitably cause damage. Now a good organization will have a manager on site for the majority of the week, and said manager would know what was going on at all times even when not on site.

All residents would know who said manager is as well as have multiple ways in which to contact this manager. Transparency would be nearly complete, communication lines would never be blocked or severed without notice, and whenever an issue arose it would be well documented and taken care of without anyone getting put out or harmed.

A management agency is a for profit business, they want their employees to move their company into the green as much as possible, and there is no obligation for them to take a profit loss even if they are hired by a non-profit organization. So they make promises to reduce costs, and you hire them for that.

Well now the costs include their administration, the business owners, share holders, CEO, etc. As well as their employees, all of them.

So how do they "cut costs"? They reduce the number of hours the manager is on site, and it's reduced to an insane amount.

Given a typical business, you will want a management staff or team on duty for at least 2 more hours per day than the business is in operation. An apartment is, essentially, a business that is open for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

That's 168 hours per week, which is the same as saying 168 hours work that needs to be done. Apartments are a laid back business, often the manager is only necessary for about half that amount of actual work, however to accomplish that they must be on call and ready to show up at the property every hour of every day.

Agencies do not accommodate that cheaply, for the typical landlord they can increase rent a bit to help pay for better services and most renters are more than happy to accommodate that increase. But for public housing, non-profit, such a method is not viable nor supported by the state.

So the management agency will reduce the number of hours a manager is on site to level which forces these managers to accomplish at least 80 hours work in about 2 hours. This saves the agency plenty of money, they are in the green because of the contract, but the organization which has hired them is suddenly dealing with major damage caused by neglect, tenants being unable to contact a manager when necessary, and a manager who often sells off the organization's property to cut even more corners.

The agency will stay in the green, earning a profit as that is what they are suppose to be doing, while the non-profit organization is in the red so much that they face having to declare bankruptcy. Regular maintenance is so vital to an apartment building, even if something as simple as pipe inspections are neglected can result in massive flooding damage which cascades into neighboring units all the way to the ground floor.

A simple pipe leak, which would be detected and repaired with simple inspections, can explode into millions of USD in expensive repairs. Without a reliable manager on site capable of ensuring such inspections occur unhindered, the massive damage becomes inevitable.

Ultimately not only are the residents made to suffer what is essentially a slum, the organization begins to collapse under all that debt, and the end result is more people back on the streets with nowhere to live. This is what we are seeing happen in real time at Compass Housing Alliance, and the management agency is pushing the blame onto the residents to add insult to injury.

Seattle Housing Authority is unwilling to step in to correct this, the city turns a blind eye to this volatile situation, and Compass is trying to pretend they still have everything under control when they clearly do not. If we want to fix homelessness, this is one of those practices that needs to end as it does not help anyone involved.

The Long Tale of Corruption

How has Compass Housing Alliance changed for the worse? A question that is not asked often enough, it seems.

As Compass Center they were the pinnacle of social services, one of the best that all others could look up to, where those in need found someone who actually cared. This resulted in them getting the bulk of donations from local businesses, enough to fund reconstruction of their offices and a new apartment building fully furnished and ready for occupancy.

But now they struggle, trying to make ends meet and getting no donations to replace the amenities they sell off to pay for office parties and new chapels. That statement should make their mistakes very clear, but the repercussions are long standing and cut much deeper than you'd expect.

Local businesses were already reluctant to assist most social services due to the corruption and the fact that almost everyone they supposedly helped was still unable to meet even basic sanitary standards. But Compass Center residents were clean and presentable to a point that we always blended in with the other customers.

So when the earthquake hit in 2002, the organization had to get money for extensive reconstruction. To get the support of local businesses they offered to turn half of the building into apartments which would be run less like a shelter for the more stable clients using their services.

The result was the Karlstrom, which had all amenities and personal living spaces and very few restrictions on the residents. We were treated like people, and it was managed by a no nonsense manager who took regular maintenance so seriously that she would schedule maintenance inspections monthly to come in and ensure everything was working.

It was great, a wonderful apartment and the residents left good impressions on those who had donated to this project. Seattle had known of no low income apartment building with a better track record for keeping pretty much everyone happy and cooperative.

The Karlstrom was supposed to be a flagship building, a new standard to which all others could be compared to so that when the bulk of staff left Compass Center for retirement, schooling, or new careers those who took over would have the standard already set. Sadly their dream of helping people was destroyed by those hired to take their place.

For the first few years it was just a small amount of chaos as we awaited a new manager to be assigned, so we could get everything back on track. What we got was the beginning of a nightmare, Peter Madril was first appointed, and with him came several new residents which we can only surmise he hand picked from his other program.

Fine, we got some new neighbors, but these were not the same class of neighbor the rest of us had become accustomed to. One on my floor was abusive toward several residents to the point that we had to file complaints of assault on him, he died a few weeks ago and is not missed, but that's a story for later.

Then they sold off the laundry facilities that one of the businesses had donated specifically to this building. Suddenly they were struggling for money to the point of having to cut corners everywhere, including essential maintenance in the building, delaying repairs caused by flooding for years at a time, and having almost no staff present at any given time.

There were no emergency staff to contact, no organization, nothing left but an apartment building lacking basic essential amenities and maintenance which the organization was slowly taking over by storing their old files and supplies in the rooms now vacant after removing the amenities. Carpets with mold growing under them, walls with mold growing in the insulation, and toilets breaking from wear and tear because they have not been replaced in over a decade.

Now to add insult to injury, they remodeled the chapel in the building and hired some new preacher in place of taking care of the people who relied on their organization. Makes you wonder why a religious chapel would take priority over people here.

Our fire alert system has not been updated in over a decade either, wall heaters have not been cleaned or maintained in about that same time, and sinks are routinely clogging at the base of the building. To get any response from them requires many attempts to contact the staff, and most times we don't even know who to contact.

Then the belligerent neighbor dies, which was a huge drama as he was in the hallway attacking another neighbor while suffering what appeared to be a stroke. Others say it was more than a stroke, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt.

He had a cat living with him, a female the same age as my Rhodey. Now Rhodey is slightly underweight at 7.4 lbs because he has a kidney disease, he should be around 9 lbs if he was healthy.

Six days after he died, during which time two of the neighbors were trying to contact the staff over and over again to get the cat from the apartment, they finally got her to safety and she weighed five lbs. Now when I contacted the only person I can get hold of, Kelli Hurley denied that all this happened, all of it except the death that is.

Then she added that someone else had died and made a snarky remark about me not caring. Here's the thing, I don't care, they're already dead and living people take priority over dead people every time.

Using dead people as an excuse to ignore living people is a huge problem and one that many rumored to have started the whole mess. Remember Peter Mardil, they had informed us that it was the death of someone in one of the other buildings he managed that caused him to simply lose his interest in doing his job.

Assuming what they told of us Peter, which I doubted until tonight, it appears there is a big problem with them wanting people to die in their care so they can use these deaths politically. The problem is that this kind of tactic actually works.

People will donate a lot of money to help the organization deal with the dead person but no one cares at all for the living people who the organization now wants to die. If you see the problem then please do me a favor and contact Compass Housing Authority on every website you can to let them know how fucked up this is, or contact Seattle Housing Authority and let them know you don't approve.

https://www.compasshousingalliance.org/

https://www.seattlehousing.org/

Disabled Is A Lie

Working with disabilities is not impossible, however, getting a job after being declared disabled is almost impossible. The problem is not the discrimination, even without the laws against it.

The problem is much deeper than that, ironically perpetuated by the working class in the USA more than the wealthy. If you are compassionate, you likely have this predefined concept that a disabled person needs special considerations resulting in you being aggressively nice.

This is the polite but obvious "don't stare" mentality, staring is not a problem, the condescending attitudes are. Disabled people are not less than you, the label is a misnomer, they are just not typical of the species.

If you have no compassion you likely think all disabled people, or a lot of us, are lazy people who just don't want to work. This stigma is precisely why so many of us are stuck being paid from your tax dollars.

How can someone show they are not lazy if you do not offer them a chance to work? Think on that a moment before you go crying about disability fraud, and remember that only a few claims are fraudulent at any given moment.

These stigmas make getting hired impossible, because no one wants to work someplace they are treated like a child nor will someone who thinks they are lazy hire them in the first place. This creates a very hostile situation, forcing most disabled USA citizens to just avoid trying.

Another one is pain, many disabilities cause large amounts of constant pain and we learn to smile in spite of it. This pain is considered debilitating for many reasons, the most prominent one being sleep deprivation caused by it.

This prevents a schedule from being followed unless the pain itself can be managed or removed. The ironic part is that any surgeries that could lessen or even stop pain are not offered for the few cases in which an option is possible, instead everyone screams at the person suffering and with the government they guilt trip the person suffering.

To make all this worse, most disabled people want to work. Consider that disability payments pay less than the poverty wage, sometimes as little as half that, and without a job the only thing you have to entertain yourself is old tech tossed out by other people.

Or you could read those old books that you collected from a trash bin for the thousandth time. This life is not fun, it's boring, tedious, monotonous, and often a cause of suicide.

In short, without some way to participate in the world, you are not really alive, and with our excessive population we can't just move to the wilds and live in peace. So you who are typical, you have no option other than to keep paying us a few thousand dollars a year, or offer us medical help that works and hire us while treating us like you get treated.

Those are your only two options, so stop your bitching and just make the choice. We are not going away just because you don't like us.

Disability - The Product Of Society's Faults

The notion that a disabled person cannot contribute to society is both foolish and based on old superstitions, a product of our fear of both differences and change. The reality is simply that no one wants to pay us a liveable income for what we contribute.

The other fallacious notion common, especially among those who are paid to actually assist us, is that we don't want to work. Many people have this idiotic notion that disabled people are as lazy as they are. This is demonstrably fallacious due to the fact that most of us are disabled because we were over worked and under paid prior to the disability.

Yet when we seek to change our situation we are greeted with contempt and hatred from everyone. Well, almost everyone, oddly the scientific community is mostly generous and easily the least judgmental portion of society. It is important to note that one does not need to work in a lab to be scientific, one must only comprehend the scientific method and not be a total idiot who asks "why are there still monkeys?"

Back to the topic at hand, disability is mistakenly thought as an inability or lack of desire to work, when it is actually lacking the ability to do a specific set of tasks due to a physical or psychological difference, making the person unable to function the same as others of their species. Fore example, Stephen Hawking, a genius who is unable to utilize most of our tools, you do not expect to make him flip burgers, but someone with arthritis of the hands is often called to do just that.

The flaw in society here is the definition of contribution, most incorrectly consider a contribution to be a marketable act for profit. Most of the greatest contributions to society offered absolutely no profit to those who have made them, and quite often resulted in their ridicule, discouragement, and even murders.

Many years after society has essentially destroyed them, removing the possibility of them offering more contributions that could benefit society as a whole, do we discover that not only were they correct, they just saved the lives of billions of their own species and never asked for more than food on the table and the right to live a healthy life. This is the legacy our species gives our offspring, even today.

As a species, are are fundamentally insane, for we create demons in the darkness because we fear lighting that candle called science we created to illuminate that cavern called life that we must all walk through. Instead we cling to the blindfold called religion finding a false comfort in the lack of answers offered by following the blind leaders who are looking only where we have already stepped.

To progress as a species we must now discard our notions of the importance of profit and excess, we must understand the true value of all contributions before we lose the sources for more. Look at those who face chronic illness, pain, disabilities of any sort, look closely as what we have to say, what we build and create, and what we discover in this ever darkened cavern called life.

I promise you, the cure for cancer lies in the minds of one who suffers from arthritis, they merely need someone to listen to them.

Republicans Are Not Conservatives

The Republican party in the USA has not been conservative for many decades. Let's look at the ADA first, yes, the Americans with Disabilities Act was a Republican policy that the first George Bush signed in 1990.

This particular law was so intrusive that it opened the doors for many frivolous lawsuits, from people with disabilities, like me. This created a fear in companies, so they started not hiring disabled people as often, using things like credit scores as an excuse. Anyone disabled for a long time will have a horrible credit score, it comes with the disability.

The ADA was never a conservative policy, it was a Republican one. This act alone has caused a lot of USA citizens to fall through the cracks and vanish, even today many still cannot find any real help, and most of us do want to work but this deadly label hangs on us regardless of what we do. Republican supporters love living on the government dole though, it is an art form to them, attack what they enjoy doing to make themselves look superior.

The ADA is just one of many examples, several examples fit into one category; oppressive copyrights. Many voters here are under the misconception that cheaper labor costs are what have made China our source for products. This is not true, those labor costs are balanced out by the expensive shipping costs to get it to the USA.

What makes China appealing for companies is that they don't have the excessively strict copyright laws the USA has. Now both parties are guilty of supporting the laws in the USA that make it impossible to make key components or use vital procedures to make products here, but the Republicans are the ones who should be fighting to balance out these laws and keep them sane.

Conservatives know that oppressive copyrights can destroy an economy, and all true conservatives will oppose copyrights to balance out the liberal desires to protect a person's right to be paid for their work. The Republicans do not do this, because they are funded by some corporations in the USA that produce entertainment.

Yep, Disney and FOX, for example, are two corporations constantly pushing for stricter copyrights. Most music labels and Hollywood do as well. So what damage does this do?

Consider someone finds and formulates a cure for cancer that depends on a particular method of refinement. Getting their money for research back was a good way to encourage such research, so the basic copyright law of a few years was helpful in encouraging advancement. After those few years other companies can produce it and the cost will fall as the supply increases.

That was the idea behind copyright laws, but with the changes made by our government that one company has exclusive rights for that procedure forever. This means that those who need a cure for cancer must pay the company whatever price they decide to charge, for as long as that company exists. Apple and Microsoft take advantage of these copyright laws as well, thus the price hike before Google came up with a marketing strategy for Linux that broke their monopolies.

The Republican funders have a vested interest in copyright laws, they can now produce unpopular garbage and still get paid for the prime entertainment they produced several decades ago.