Just thank God that's not all of Kansas. The parts we drove thru, a few weeks ago, were heavy with corn crops, farm equipment, feed lots and cattle.
Hey Cody, what is the follow-up on your new neighbors that had a domestics situation? Who was the guy kicking the door? Any more suspicious behavior or did it all stop? My community is mostly great law enforcement and very patriotic. It is an agriculture-based area so lots of the old values here and even adopted by most immigrants. Most of the crimes, thefts, domestics, and drugs have a Mexican cartel and gang connection. It was at a high a few years back before we got folks in local office that really came down hard and cleared the parks from the out in the open drug trades and shut down the prostitution district. Seldom is there a shooting. Cops here are not afraid to use their weapons. The addition of two Latino women on the force really made a difference in slowing domestic abuse problems. They are a lot rougher during arrest than the male officers, but no one is crying police brutality. Male egos are a thing of pride here and getting knocked around by a female police officer for hitting a woman. isn't something they want going public.
Well, whoever was kicking or fist-hitting the door, stopped. Other than that one "incident", nothing has happened. The young daughter has returned to school, so she's no longer at home during the day. However, their front door must be warped or something, because every time they come home or leave, we can hear their door open/shut. And, it's pretty loud. Apparently how their door sounds doesn't bother them, but we are going to tell the manager how loud it is when they open/shut it. In an e-mail, some time ago, from the owners of the complex, it was stated that the complex now accepts HUD people. HUD can bring in some "questionable" people sometimes. But, I looked the complex up online and nothing was stated about it being HUD approved. So, don't know. Only unless some kind of noise bothers my wife while she works in our spare bedroom during the day (her job) or some kind of noise, like the door opening/shutting while we are watching tv, we now (pretty much) just mind our own business. We have lived in apartment complexes that had much friendlier people than here, but..........
It could very well be that the complex is honoring the HUD/VASH initiative which is only for veterans who were chronically homeless. The government picks up a major portion of the rent and utilities but with that, the vet has to adhere to a fairly strict contract. There are scheduled inspections once a month coupled with a potential of an on the spot inspection of the premises by a government inspector and so forth. If the premises aren’t kept up or the vet is found with any drugs on the premises (or after a UA) or even if someone appears to be living there that isn’t on the contract then the vet is more or less homeless again. The reason I’m writing all that is if the property isn’t listed with HUD then it’s probably listed as HUD/VASH and would only be found by going through Vets Affairs.
Bobby, I've only met one young Veteran since living here in 2 years. From what I understand, any Veteran's here live in their own house or in a 55+ Community. And, I don't know if government housing is part of a 55+ Community. When I think of Veterans, I think of those that fly our U.S. Flag on Veterans Day, Flag Day and so on. By driving around the complex on Veterans Day, wife and I were the only residents flying the flag. The city we live in isn't known for any kind of military people at all. I'm sure there are Seniors here that are prior military, but, as already stated, they live in 55+ or their own home. The closest military base to us is the Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
It doesn’t make any difference how many veterans that are in a city. In the first place, you wrote that your apartments are “starting” to take in HUD so how do you know it isn’t HUD / VASH whereby the person who is placed in an apartment would be semi-supervised and a veteran? Plus, if indeed the apartments do offer HUD / VASH, they get some sort of a tax credit for doing so. And also note: We live directly across from 2 gates to the Redstone Arsenal, which among other things is an Army Post. Your logic insists that all veterans fly the American Flag on whatever occasion but that isn’t the case. We fly our country’s banner 24/7 but we are a rarity in a city with a few thousand veterans and at least 1000 who are active Army and 40,000+civilian and government workers on post. Now, I believe you have an American Legion and a half dozen other veteran organizations in your area so why would there be all those organizations if there were no or very few vets in your area?
Like I said, Bobby, this city isn't like Jacksonville, FL.. We met a number of Veterans eating at Denny's and other restaurants. Many were wearing baseball caps depicting what Service they had been in. I don't see this here at all. As far as our apartment complex goes, I have found nothing online that states it's HUD or any other government housing type. So, I really don't know. Anyway, there are only a handful of Seniors that live in our complex. It's mostly Millennials and a few Gen X folks.
We passed that once and I thought about what a hassle it would be to give your address for delivery. "OK, deliver that to 1964 Zzyzx Road." "What road?" "Zzyzx. "Gezuntheit! Summer colds are awful, aren't they? Now, what's the name of the road?" "Zzyzx." "You really should see a doctor for that cold! Or is it allergies?" " No, it's my road, Zzyzx." "Dust allergy, huh? Those dusty roads will really clog up your nose! Now, what's the address? "ZZYZX, DAMMIT!" "Oh I can sympathize.....I always get crabby when I have an allergy attack. Let's just get the address and you can go back to bed." "Never mind, we'll just drive to Los Angeles and pick it up at the store."
ZZYZX reminds me of the Superman character who was a "trickster deity" from the 5th dimension named Mister Mxyzptlk. The only way to send him from whence he came was to trick him into saying his name backwards.
Actually, some guy built a health spa resort in Zzyzx, which failed (golly, I don't understand why....who WOULDN'T want to spend a week or so in the back of beyond in the Mohave? I imagine they'd get the overflow of guests from the Death Valley Resort.....). Now there's nothing there but a UCal desert research facility.
I saw that and could not figure out if he sold it to the government or if they just took it...and under what auspices.
@Mary Robi There actually were springs there said to have beneficial health effects. Perhaps they dried up like Beowawe? "Beowawe (/ˌbeɪoʊˈwɑːˌwiː/bay-ə-WAH-wee) is a small town, in Eureka County, Nevada, United States." "The community is the site of a mining operation and a geothermal power plant, and has a public library." Beowawe geothermal power plant, 1996 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowawe,_Nevada