Reply #21: I'm not "breaking and entering" because two gates are open. [View All]

The back door of the house is also open, and also the door to the garage apartment. Plus a LOT of the stuff is simply strewn all over the yard.

I did have a small problem a couple of weeks ago, when a very aggressive young woman yelled out to me as I was going in through the side gate. She informed me she was "from the bank" and that if she saw me entering the property she was going to call the police. "Why?" I said. "All of this stuff is only going to be thrown away anyway."

"That's true," she said. "But if you enter the property you are trespassing."

But even after that they STILL didn't secure the property! Both gates are still open, the back door to the house is still open, etc.

It's almost as though they WANT people to come and salvage, because the more we take the less there is for them to throw away. It's like the message is, "Just don't let us catch you doing it."

However, people a lot more brazen and destructive than I am are vandalizing the house. I can't understand why they do that, and why the bank doesn't secure the property for that reason alone. A couple of days ago for example someone took a chisel to the door frame around the front door lock and absolutely destroyed it. There were splinters of wood all of the front porch and the door was standing wide open. I can't imagine why anyone would do that when it's so easy to get in through the side gate and the back door. It just looked like wanton destruction to me.

It's a Frank Lloyd Wright house too, as the previous owner informed me and another neighbor later confirmed. So it would be nice if people had a little respect for its intrisic value, regardless of who owns it. But I guess I'm the only rag-picker who knows that.