Trespassing Tenants: Please Explain How This Works, again

 It's September 25, almost 1:00 a.m., and I received a phone call from Robert Tucker (8-G) telling me that he wasn't able to get a chair at the local drop-in center (Robert's had to resort to that over the past  few months because H.S.I. refuses to appropriately remediate the mold in his room, which has been causing him extreme difficulty breathing). It's been raining steadily all weekend, and Robert returned to Kenmore Hall to attempt to take shelter in the lobby for the night. He was told by front desk staff that he couldn't use the lobby overnight because it's "closed" between midnight and 6:00 a.m.; they have been told by Security Director Ralph Garcia to call the police and have tenants removed for trespassing if they insist on staying in the lobby.

Have you noticed two significant words in the same sentence? Tenants are being accused of trespassing... in an area of the building where, during other hours, they have the landlord's consent to be. Isn't it ironic that tenants are being threatened with having the police called on them for wanting to use a common area of the building they have lived in for years? 

Another tenant, Xavier Thomaes (6I), also wants to spend at least part of the night in the lobby.

The issue of closing the lobby has been going on for years now; I've posted about it on 1/17/14, 1/19/14, 6/15/19, and 4/16/15. Why do tenants who merely want to sit quietly in a common area of the building have to be harassed by ridiculous rules? They're not disturbing anyone. Robert wanted to point out that the front desk staff was polite about the situation today; THEY aren't the problem - the problem is the arbitrary rule created by Ralph Garcia that serves no credible purpose. 

For Mr. Tucker, part of the issue is one of principle; he has lived in the building long enough to remember when the lobby was open access 24 hours a day. Back in 2014, a few of us used to gather there and talk amongst ourselves quietly - it was a gathering space where tenants could peacefully gather to socialize until well after midnight. There was one significant exception; I think EVERYONE remembers when one notorious tenant named Butch used to park himself in a chair facing the corridor and mail room, and drink himself into a rage every single night. He'd spend hours cursing at other tenants as they walked by, and would sometimes throw things at neighbors. No significant action was ever taken against him in spite of his disruptive and ugly behavior (some of it was described in the 6/15/14 post). I'm pointing this out because his reign of terror literally did not end until he was finally evicted years later, and his wretched behavior was SO different from what other tenants were engaging in back then, and now.

Robert has had a bad case of bronchitis for about two weeks now. The weather is getting chilly, and it's been raining since early Saturday. He doesn't want to get sicker from being exposed to the weather. He started calling the drop-in center around 6:00 in the evening of the 24th to see if a chair was available, and proceeded to call again at half-hour intervals for several hours to see if any chairs had opened up. On a night like this, it is unlikely that anything WILL open up. He's also called his caseworker and left a message explaining the situation. It's unlikely that he'll hear back from his caseworker until he arrives for work in the morning.

I'm sure there will be more on this issue in the coming days. It just makes very little sense to be  using the police department for petty issues like this when he's not actually doing anything wrong, and when the police should be focusing on other bigger issues.