I was perusing my Twitter feed when I came upon an automated tweet by @Philly_Buzz.

Click the photo for the article.

They blame one man – Robert Coyle, a man they call a “dream killer,” a “slumlord millionaire.”

The word “slumlord” is what stuck out to me the most, in this instance.

Once upon a time, Mr. Fox and I were living in Indy with what we thought was our “American Dream”.

This “American Dream” consisted of a run-down house in a not-so-nice part of Indianapolis. It had a crack in the main sewer line, faulty wiring, was far from up to code, and it was over 100 years old. But it was our home. There was mold, and it was affecting my health.

The woman that sold it to us was a slumlord, in most senses of the word. She sold it to us under a conditional land contract “as-is” and advised us against getting a home inspection, telling us that it wouldn’t matter if we got one because she wouldn’t do any work to it before we bought it. So after almost two years, we broke the contract and found an apartment. And then she took us to court for money that she knew we didn’t have.

When I think about the hell that the people referenced in this article are going through, I think about our own struggle to find our “American Dream”. Granted, we weren’t on our way to being homeless because of the mistakes of our formidable slumlord, but we suffered monetary loss at her hands. Our stories don’t really compare, but the sentiment still exists. I just hope that the people involved are able to hold on to some semblance of what they had previously called home, instead of being put out on the streets because of the actions of some money-grubbing selfish asshole with nothing else better to do with his time other than ruin lives.

philly buzz slumlord millionaire homeless foreclosure american dream