First off, Yes. I work in property management. No I am not a Landlord. I am an Assistant Community Manager for a Section 8/LIHTC project apartment, which is part of a larger company that buys older properties to convert into projects.
I have a resident who has made it their goal to write a manifesto on all their rent checks. Please note that their monthly rent is currently $29. Unless they make over 100k a year, their rent is generally going to always be 30% of their gross monthly income.
There are some late fees on their account, but we are legitimately trying to get rid of them and make sure that they are caught up and doesn't owe us anything but their monthly rent.
Now that I have given that infodump... What can I do?
If they keep sending these IRL Hexbear posts (some of them reference Luigi) eventually my manager or someone higher is going to see this and be able to use these little rants as ammo to evict them. They see me as an enemy. I'm one of the people sitting in the office in the A/C supposedly making more than the maintenance team slaving away repairing people's stuff. Btw, I'm the lowest paid gal around here, and half the maintenance team is low-key liberal Transphobic.
So Hexbear, what can I do to save another comrade from losing their housing? Any idea how I could help them funnel that energy towards something productive for the cause? How can I make them see that us here in the community are not their rivals just because we have to sell our intellectual and emotional labor?
This is the type of struggle someone gets into after labor got bombed and disintegrated into the ground. Imagine if you could just invite them to a Sunday service where they can get all the info of Marxism they'd ever want.
But from my perspective, there's no negotiation with someone who doesn't trust you. Your intentions could be pure, shit, your actions could be pure, but if they don't like you then a lot of good it would do you. As a rule of thumb, if ever I don't feel listened to, I believe I basically need to become an empathetic listener on the scale of a therapist to get someone to ever hear out your case. Basically praying they let slip what their problem is and what they need out of a solution because they love talking about themselves so much to the exclusion of listening to how you fit into the picture.
In essence, they need to feel listened to not only by you, but by themselves before they'll ever hear you say "look, I need you to lock the frick in because I'm dedicating my career to making life better for you and you're trying to torpedo the whole frickin thing. If you want to talk about communism, great, me too. Just don't do it where the capitalists can hear us"
Thank you for giving me exactly what I would like to tell them, distilled so perfectly.
Hopefully I can get that passed on somehow.
maybe send a letter? You could also add a "ps: I make x $/h, maitenance makes more. Stop doing what the Capitalists want you to, stop being angry at your fellow worker"