Gimmee

I’ve complained about the couple next door, with the in-law family diagonally across the street, using my yard as their yard. The parties that flow into my front yard, complete with the “bouncy” castles and cages, dozens of family members and friends, as well as the live bands, have caused me many sleepless nights.

Now, there are other people living in the home, perhaps keeping an eye on it while the For Sale sign continues to occupy the front yard. These are guys, obviously Mexicans with limited English language skills, perhaps illegal, probably also related to the extended family, and they drink.

Once they have consumed adequate liquid courage, usually about midnight, they like to go outside and shoot hoops. There are several basketballs involved and lots of male bonding, taunts, and celebratory whoops and hollers: some rituals are the same in any culture, any language. They play for a couple of hours before either they finally go back inside to sleep it off, or I become used to the noise and go back to sleep.

My dog doesn’t know them yet, so she goes berserk, streaking from one side of the house to the other as she monitors whether they are in their front yard—or Mia’s yard, retrieving yet another ball. She barks; oh, my god, how she barks! And she comes full bore through the doggy door to let me know that there are trespassers into her world of designated personal protection, which means she is waking me up half a dozen times each night. I have to pet her head and tell her “good girl” because she is doing exactly what I need her to do: warn me of intruders.

No, I’m not going outside at midnight and reasoning with several drunken Mexicans about the noise they are making. No, I’m not going to call the police. No, I’m not going to have them make friends with my dog, who is doing her job: protecting me from possible danger. No, I’m not going to move.

The house has been for sale about six months, unable to compete with the newly-opened gated community at the end of the block, where homes are bigger, more stylish, better landscaped—and about $30k cheaper than when the project began selling its homes. I don’t see the house next door selling soon as there are too many brand-new homes with prices falling into the same arena as all the older homes to which realtors added a hundred thousand to the selling price during the recent real estate boom. Buyers are eagerly purchasing the “cheaper” new homes, while sellers sit on their inflated real estate prices and wait for a miracle.

It is all evening out, with the speculators and the home owners on the losing end of the get rich quick real estate boom. Some people made big bucks when they sold at the peak and moved on, but others, such as my neighbor, didn’t decide to buy his new home, which requires selling this home, until way too late in the upswing. He is stuck with both the new mortgage and the mortgage on the home next door, which means something has to give pretty soon—or he has a source of money that can wait out the downswing.

In another six months, it’ll either become a rental property or be abandoned, the developing trend throughout the desert, especially in the older neighborhoods. Just another example of the “gimmee” mentality in action, people who want to abandon what they have for what they want without first considering the potential consequences to the community of their fiscal irresponsibility.