Overall, it really does seem like it's the increasing homelessness and maybe the worsening economy that's driving all the weirdness in my neighborhood this summer.
The increasing local homelessness problem is well-known, and people are speaking of rent increases and housing problems, even though I'm not seeing that with local wage levels and the amount of units available and their relative prices, at least from what I can see.
(Actual houses might be another matter -- prices are going way up, so maybe that increases your property taxes and puts your house out of your income-level reach and then you can't afford your payments anymore and you end up homeless, etc.)
As my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's) clothes pointed out to me, practiced thieves don't want to go into houses where someone's living, so anyone with half a brain would have heard my box fan running at full-tilt inside my small cottage, and avoided it.
So, it's likely someone who's mentally "out there" or on drugs or both.
A (gay) (music education) (graduate student) who I know from the local brewery actually suggested it might be related to meth, the use of which has gone up a lot the last 1-2 years, he says.
Like, he's lived in his apartment for a number of years, and the past 1-2 years, there's been this explosion of Grindr profiles looking for meth use.
The one (young) (white) (female) bartender with (pussy hat) energy has also recently spread word about some meth users coming around to local bars, including this one (scrawny) (white) (female) trouble-maker who stands behind people ordering off of their credit-card tabs and who listens for their names and then when it's her turn to order, she says, "Oh, I'm with [name she just heard]," to get free drinks off of someone else's bill.
And, those stories made me think of how just several days earlier, I'd been running errands in the downtown area and I came across 2 homeless people I'd never seen before, this (agitated) (scrawny) (white) lady with (tan) (hard-bitten) skin walking all fast and funny and turning around and being like, "HEY, ARE YOU COMING OR NOT," to this equally (tan) and (hard-bitten) (white) guy with a (shaved head) who was like ten to fifteen feet behind her, slowly riding a bike that was way too small for him, so that he was like crouching on it and his knees were all the way up by his mid-body whenever he pumped the pedals
The (gay) (music education) (graduate student) who I know from the local brewery also had an odd experience at his cottage way on the other side of town, where he lives on the second level of a building complex with open staircases, and like a week or two after my break-in attempt, he got woken up at like 5am by someone trying his door handle, and then he heard someone trying it at the apartment next to him, and then he couldn't go to sleep at all that night, though he's not contacting the police since he told the local building manager afterwards and he thinks that that's enough, unless it happens again, at which point he'll contact the police then.
And, though he says that that's far away from me, it's walkable in under an hour, and homeless people do walk long distances all around town.
My guess is that there's one or a small group of them and they've recently acquired this behavior and are maybe even teaching it to each other, and they have their standard routes through town where they go through and try this shit, and the 2-3 block area where I live happens to be one of those strips.
I do wonder how and when things will improve.
This can't be permanent?
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