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Old 10-21-2017, 10:54 AM
 
440 posts, read 513,574 times
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If you're putting some sort blame on yourself for not really feeling like you fit in or are having a good go of it in the Fort Lauderdale area, please read below and maybe you'll take a bigger look at the picture here and come to realize, like I have, that if you're a good, hard working individual who has had good friends and relationships in other places that you've lived that you find lacking here, Fort Lauderdale has increasingly become the kind of place where you don't want to live.


Just a few of the situations I've encountered in the past few years of living here:


A room-mate told the landlord that I was a drug dealer in an attempt to keep all my furnishings, clothing, artwork, etc., in the apartment I had recently moved into that the room-mate said he needed someone to share the rent with as he couldn't afford it alone anymore with rent increases in a highrise apartment building with a security guard and cameras in every hallway. The landlord changed the locks on the apartment had the office remove my security code to the front door so I had to call the police who would not let me into the apartment as I didn't have a signed lease in my car (it was in the apartment), although I did have mail in my car with my address of the apartment on it, which I didn't know at the time I could have showed to the police to prove my residency.


After paying for an attorney to file against the landlord and the room-mate, I was given one day to remove all my belongings which was too much for me to move with a friend as everything needed to be packed so I hired a moving company specifically informing them everything had to be insured moving everything into storage while I paid to stay in a hotel while looking for another apartment.


I had to pay to stay in a hotel for three weeks as it took that long for the condo board to have a meeting at the building where I had applied to be approved to rent in that condo building.


As the movers were brining in my belongings to the condo I had been approved to move into after a background check, I noticed there were holes punched in my oil paintings, deep cuts in the wood of the Eames chairs I owned, tears in upholstery, stains on lampshades, etc., that had not been there when I watched the movers moving my belongings out of the building I was locked out of and into their moving truck to take to their storage until I could have them move it into a place for me.


I took the moving company to court but they stated I didn't pay for insurance because they didn't offer insurance, even though they told me as I was signing the contract with them all of my things were insured. Normally I read contracts but the whole situation was so stressful, I took their word for it when they said I was insured when they handed me the contract to sign.


I went through three local law firms who financially raked me of the deposits I was required to give them to file a lawsuit for me by putting the room-mate on the lawsuit with the landlord, although I found out from a reputable firm afterwards that the law does not allow me to sue a room-mate, only the landlord, in a lockout situation.


I was sent to a malpractice attorney out of town by another attorney who said there were more than ample grounds to sue the Fort Lauderdale law firms for malpractice but that I had to get the case settled first but none of the firms I had contacted after the first three firms tried to screw me over financially would take the case as they stated the other law firms had so convoluted the case, it would cost me more money than I could get awarded by a judge against the landlord to fix the lawsuit to make it admissible to court without being thrown out by the judge on technical issues.


Friends in South Beach said I should just get out of here but I was attending real estate school here and wanted to finish the course.


I was hired by a real estate firm where I found out from a secretary who befriended me that I would never get a listing working there because all calls into the office were screened and any call having to do with a listing was given to the broker or his son. Agents were required to put the phone number of the firm on business cards and that's how the calls got screened.


I went back into retail. The manager of that small store left two days after I was hired taking clothing with him that he said was the value of what he hadn't been paid for over a month by the owner. The owner repeatedly would call during shifts to find out if any sales had been made in cash and then he would drive up and get the cash. I hadn't been paid after two weeks of employment so I threatened to file a small claims suit but one of the customers told me not to bother as the owner didn't have any money as he had spent it all on crystal meth. I later read that companies that hadn't been paid for the merchandise in the store came in and took it back and that later on, the owner committed suicide and his family was asking for donations to bury him. I did not contribute.


The next local small store I worked at was privately owned also. I went that route again because none of the corporate stores I had applied at here called me for an interview, although I had years of retail experience in other cities with corporate stores. At the store where I was hired, one of the owners would try to be funny and introduce me as his "Lesbian" employee whenever I wore a designer plaid shirt as he said, "Lesbians always wear plaid." He also referred to me a couple of times to customers, even though I am not Asian, by an Asian name when I was steaming some wrinkles out of shirts. He said I was his, "Chinese laundry boy."


After several instances of having my shifts cut down and given to "boytoys" he hired, I quit and went back to being in business for myself selling antiques and collectibles at a market in Miami Beach. I paid 10% of what I took in each market to my worker, so if I took in $2,500., for example, they received $250. in cash. After going through three employees who I hired one after the other from this area who either didn't show up the at the time I came to pick them up or would wander away from the booth and disappear or not wait on the customers and read a book, I finally had my fill of it when a Fort Lauderdale man who had begged me to work with me as he was, "down on his luck", walked away with over $2,000. from the cash drawer while I was waiting on a customer.


I filed a report with the Miami Beach police but found out about all the work I would have to do to take him into court if he was caught, including trying to get the State Attorney office to issue a warrant which would not probably get me back my show earnings for that day if the creep who stole my money was caught as he took the receipts with him and it I couldn't prove how much he had stolen.


I had already had my dealings with the office of the State Attorney in Fort Lauderdale so I just chalked it up to experience and only work by myself now.


To go on with all the trauma I've experienced here, I had been assaulted in front of postal employees on camera in Fort Lauderdale by some lunatic who said he was going to shoot me in the parking lot of the Post Office. I called the police and they never showed up. When I called back the dispatcher, she said they were busy with more important things and nobody had been dispatched. Her supervisor I talked to said I could file a report at the police station. The officer who took the report never put in the report that there were witnesses and that it was on camera. A police official asked me to file a complaint against that officer but he was excused of any neglect of duty after I went to the main police office in Fort Lauderdale on Broward and was sworn in and stated under oath that I had informed the police officer who took the report that the assault happened on camera in the Post Office and in front of Post Office employees.


The police caught the the man who assaulted me a warrant to appear in court as he had a post office box at the post office he assaulted me at. The man didn't appear for the hearing so I was told I needed to go to the State Attorney office and ask them to put out another warrant to apprehend the man who had assaulted me in the post office. I filed the documents but received a letter stating the office of the State Attorney had more important matters to deal with.


Once I was attempting to turn into a parking lot only to find a police car in the entrance drive with an officer and someone he was writing a ticket to standing in front of the police car behind the car he had stopped. If I not been paying attention, I could have easily rammed into the police car and pinned the officer and the person he was writing a ticket to between the two cars. As it was, I had to wait for the cars coming out of the exit lane to exit before I could drive into the store parking lot through the exit lane. I reported this to the store manager and he called the police department to report it as he also felt the police office was endangering himself and the person he was writing the ticket to by not simply having both of their vehicles pull into the parking lot instead of blocking the entrance drive and standing between two vehicles that could have been driven into each other by someone turning into the entrance.


When I came out to my vehicle, the police officer who had been writing the ticket told me to get up against my car as he was arresting me for making a "false 911" call. As he was starting to put handcuffs on me, his partner said he better lay off since the store manager was standing outside the store witnessing what was happening and recording it on his cell-phone so I was released after almost being arrested for taking an action here about a public safety issue.


I talked to a local young straight woman yesterday and asked where her and her boyfriend go if they want to go dancing as it seems that there are only Gay dance clubs left here and she said she goes to
Boca Raton. She said they used to go to clubs down at the Riverwalk area but that the city let that whole area go to seed since they never did much of anything to help promote the area by putting up signage on Broward and Andrews and she told me that the shopping plaza there will be torn down to just build another high rise. She said that she sometimes goes out with her Gay friends to Gay dance butt she said it seems that people are getting more obnoxious and she tired of getting pawed at by men and women alike and she says it's not fun being out with her Gay friends as they seem obsessed with being on their cell-phones looking for hook-ups, even when on the dance floor.


Being Gay myself, I certainly see what she's talking about as I've been subjected to more than my share of drunk and intoxicated retirees and the overabundance of trashy hustler types trying to manhandle me in one way or the other when I am out dancing in a club here.


Both the woman I talked to and her husband work at good jobs but she said she's looking elsewhere to move in the U.S. as she said most of her friends and family have moved away as they've increasingly found it hard to find jobs where they aren't required to speak Spanish and she said that everyone in the office where she works speaks Spanish except when they are waiting on customers and it makes her feel very isolated, more so because she was born and raised here. She said that her parents are still here and she would stay if she could live near her parents but houses in the area they live in are now going for $500,000.+, as wealthy out of towners who only live in them part-time have been buying up things in the neighborhood putting the prices of the houses out of reach of most of the people she knows.


I'm just a middle class working guy who's also getting quickly priced out of living here. I haven't seen any initiatives taking place by any city officials in Fort Lauderdale to work to with developers to build affordable housing on all those empty lots south and north of the downtown area but I have seen plenty of new luxury housing and low income housing developments go up in the years I have been living here so it seems that the government of Fort Lauderdale, along with other communities around here, are not interested in keeping the middle class people working in this area living in this area. Even when it comes to the low income housing, people who have applied for it have told me the waiting list used to be about 2 years to get into it but now there is so much demand for it in this area with so many people moving here from places in the Caribbean that have been hit over and over again by hurricanes over the past several years, the waiting time is now indefinite with no timetable given when someone in need might be able to move into low income housing.


It seems odd to me that with all the new luxury high rises that have been built over the past few years, plus the fact that there are luxury townhouses being put up all over the place, that all the extra property tax revenue could go into developing affordable housing for the middle class on all the empty lots that are all over the city, particularly on Sistrunk where there are more buildings torn down than those left standing on that street, but I guess I'm too much of a dreamer to think that the government here would want to keep a community of middle class people living here to support the local businesses that the wealthy don't spend enough time here to support and that the poor don't have enough money to be patrons of regularly.


Due to the lack of any government interest in the well being of anyone but the rich and some of the poor here, along with what I've come up against quite regularly on a personal level or heard happening to other decent people who live here, I'm working my hardest over the upcoming months to get out of this area before the brutal heat and humidity we've been experiencing these past years hits this area again in May, partially because I've noticed that there are no initiatives in place by Broward County to build a system of locks to keep high water levels from the Intracoastal from entering the rivers and canals that surround this area during extreme high tides and during storm surges from hurricanes, even though hurricanes do regularly hit South Florida and sea levels are rising.


If you take the time to notice, you'll see that at certain points of the day, the rivers and canals run backwards inland and then later back towards the ocean. This is due to water from high tide coming into the Intracoastal from the ocean and then draining back out towards the ocean during low tide.


As no efforts are being made by the county, the City of Fort Lauderdale or any of the local city governments in this area to control this flow of water coming inland from the tides, other than some water gates that can be opened into the Everglades that don't prevent flooding near the coast and low lying areas near the coast during King tides and storm surges, and considering that sea levels are rising, if you plan on staying here and taking the risk of being flooded out by a storm surge from a hurricane, which has happened in the past with flood waters covering large parts of Fort Lauderdale, or wish to take the chance with rising sea levels and King Tides flooding the area like they are now doing in parts of Miami Beach, which has raised property taxes to install pumps and put blockage valves in the rainwater drains that seawater is now coming up through during high tides, I'd like to strongly suggest that you get a boat if you don't already have one and keep it at ready in your yard.


Also if you decide to move here or plan on spending the rest of your life here, I also wish you good luck dealing with the increasing number of low class user types who've chosen to make this area their home whether you have to work beside them, work for them, have them work for you or if you have to have any other association with them in the Fort Lauderdale area.
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Old 10-21-2017, 05:44 PM
 
16,979 posts, read 21,625,959 times
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I only see ONE common denominator in all of your tales........YOU!
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Old 10-21-2017, 07:50 PM
 
Location: Fort Lauderdale
772 posts, read 450,892 times
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Your opinions are all valid but the first mistake you made was having a roommate. Unless you are destitute, which I'm sure you aren't, NEVER have any roommates. Even if you have to downsize. I've never had any myself, but all the stories I hear about them end in disaster.
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Old 10-22-2017, 10:13 PM
 
Location: Up North
3,426 posts, read 8,872,161 times
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I wouldn't roommate with anyone from down here unless they were vetted by a friend or relative. Lots of scammers and cheapskates down here who will do anything for a couple of dollars.


I know a number of people born and raised down here that do not seem to have friends or a group of friends. This is strange considering they were born, raised, and went to college in the same area. I'm not sure what had caused this but it is common here. In other parts of the country it's almost unheard of unless you have some type of personality defect.
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Old 10-23-2017, 10:40 AM
 
370 posts, read 898,363 times
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Try Minneapolis. I/we lived in Broward (east and west) for 18 years and it never really felt like a home to us, so my wife and son and I left for the midwest for some opportunities that seemed good (yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time). What a mistake. We ended up stuck in that horrific soul trap for 8 years before we could get back, and it was the people, not the weather that made it a hell. Now we're back, but in central Florida and could not be happier. I hear Seattle is similar (Google "Seattle Freeze").

My point was not to contradict you, but just to warn others. Yes, Broward can seem aloof, but there are other places that are much, much worse.

And I agree, a stranger as a room mate is a recipe for disaster.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pear Martini View Post
I wouldn't roommate with anyone from down here unless they were vetted by a friend or relative. Lots of scammers and cheapskates down here who will do anything for a couple of dollars.


I know a number of people born and raised down here that do not seem to have friends or a group of friends. This is strange considering they were born, raised, and went to college in the same area. I'm not sure what had caused this but it is common here. In other parts of the country it's almost unheard of unless you have some type of personality defect.
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Old 10-23-2017, 08:59 PM
l22
 
30 posts, read 32,741 times
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If I were you, I wouldn't waste your time posting on here. You're really only going to get responses from people with very strong opinions who will say you're wrong. Fort Lauderdale isn't unique, there are plenty of places that are cold as hell. It's just the weather is nice down here, so everyone somehow thinks everything is automatically solved (not talking about you). There are good qualities to South FL too for sure, but they're not for everyone and people often get distracted keeping up with the jones's instead of staying focused on their life (not talking about you neccesarily). Hang in there and remember you can leave here or you can try and find opportunity here. Every place has good and bad qualities, here is no different. It's just different in how those qualities end up coming out due to South FL's transient nature and outdated flashy culture which people would laugh at elsewhere.... A lot of people are moving out it seems. Regardless of what you choose to do, stay positive and good luck to you And yeah, no one trusts anyone down here, which affects things for sure. Make your own way. Look after yourself.
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Old 10-24-2017, 10:11 AM
 
1,980 posts, read 2,082,460 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterRice View Post
Your opinions are all valid but the first mistake you made was having a roommate. Unless you are destitute, which I'm sure you aren't, NEVER have any roommates. Even if you have to downsize. I've never had any myself, but all the stories I hear about them end in disaster.
Agree. I live in NYC and spend more than half (55%) of my net income on rent. Money experts advise against allotting more than one-third of income on housing, and they promote sharing with a friend or relative. Yet I know too many close friends who are no longer friends at all after they were roommates. Choosing a stranger as a roommate is just asking for trouble, even drama. And there's another wrinkle: We Americans are true individualists, an added complication. We want to control our own space and everything in it. So... don't share a place unless you're destitute. "Downsizing" your lifestyle to have your own space? I definitely have, and it's worth it.
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Old 10-26-2017, 12:40 PM
 
Location: Lakes by the Bay, FL (for now)
984 posts, read 4,290,073 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by masonbauknight View Post
Agree. I live in NYC and spend more than half (55%) of my net income on rent. Money experts advise against allotting more than one-third of income on housing, and they promote sharing with a friend or relative. Yet I know too many close friends who are no longer friends at all after they were roommates. Choosing a stranger as a roommate is just asking for trouble, even drama. And there's another wrinkle: We Americans are true individualists, an added complication. We want to control our own space and everything in it. So... don't share a place unless you're destitute. "Downsizing" your lifestyle to have your own space? I definitely have, and it's worth it.
Completely agree as well with both posts, spot on.
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Old 10-28-2017, 06:39 AM
 
Location: Middlesex County, MA
397 posts, read 314,051 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HotandHumid View Post
If you're putting some sort blame on yourself for not really feeling like you fit in or are having a good go of it in the Fort Lauderdale area, please read below and maybe you'll take a bigger look at the picture here and come to realize, like I have, that if you're a good, hard working individual who has had good friends and relationships in other places that you've lived that you find lacking here, Fort Lauderdale has increasingly become the kind of place where you don't want to live.


Just a few of the situations I've encountered in the past few years of living here:


A room-mate told the landlord that I was a drug dealer in an attempt to keep all my furnishings, clothing, artwork, etc., in the apartment I had recently moved into that the room-mate said he needed someone to share the rent with as he couldn't afford it alone anymore with rent increases in a highrise apartment building with a security guard and cameras in every hallway. The landlord changed the locks on the apartment had the office remove my security code to the front door so I had to call the police who would not let me into the apartment as I didn't have a signed lease in my car (it was in the apartment), although I did have mail in my car with my address of the apartment on it, which I didn't know at the time I could have showed to the police to prove my residency.


After paying for an attorney to file against the landlord and the room-mate, I was given one day to remove all my belongings which was too much for me to move with a friend as everything needed to be packed so I hired a moving company specifically informing them everything had to be insured moving everything into storage while I paid to stay in a hotel while looking for another apartment.


I had to pay to stay in a hotel for three weeks as it took that long for the condo board to have a meeting at the building where I had applied to be approved to rent in that condo building.


As the movers were brining in my belongings to the condo I had been approved to move into after a background check, I noticed there were holes punched in my oil paintings, deep cuts in the wood of the Eames chairs I owned, tears in upholstery, stains on lampshades, etc., that had not been there when I watched the movers moving my belongings out of the building I was locked out of and into their moving truck to take to their storage until I could have them move it into a place for me.


I took the moving company to court but they stated I didn't pay for insurance because they didn't offer insurance, even though they told me as I was signing the contract with them all of my things were insured. Normally I read contracts but the whole situation was so stressful, I took their word for it when they said I was insured when they handed me the contract to sign.


I went through three local law firms who financially raked me of the deposits I was required to give them to file a lawsuit for me by putting the room-mate on the lawsuit with the landlord, although I found out from a reputable firm afterwards that the law does not allow me to sue a room-mate, only the landlord, in a lockout situation.


I was sent to a malpractice attorney out of town by another attorney who said there were more than ample grounds to sue the Fort Lauderdale law firms for malpractice but that I had to get the case settled first but none of the firms I had contacted after the first three firms tried to screw me over financially would take the case as they stated the other law firms had so convoluted the case, it would cost me more money than I could get awarded by a judge against the landlord to fix the lawsuit to make it admissible to court without being thrown out by the judge on technical issues.


Friends in South Beach said I should just get out of here but I was attending real estate school here and wanted to finish the course.


I was hired by a real estate firm where I found out from a secretary who befriended me that I would never get a listing working there because all calls into the office were screened and any call having to do with a listing was given to the broker or his son. Agents were required to put the phone number of the firm on business cards and that's how the calls got screened.


I went back into retail. The manager of that small store left two days after I was hired taking clothing with him that he said was the value of what he hadn't been paid for over a month by the owner. The owner repeatedly would call during shifts to find out if any sales had been made in cash and then he would drive up and get the cash. I hadn't been paid after two weeks of employment so I threatened to file a small claims suit but one of the customers told me not to bother as the owner didn't have any money as he had spent it all on crystal meth. I later read that companies that hadn't been paid for the merchandise in the store came in and took it back and that later on, the owner committed suicide and his family was asking for donations to bury him. I did not contribute.


The next local small store I worked at was privately owned also. I went that route again because none of the corporate stores I had applied at here called me for an interview, although I had years of retail experience in other cities with corporate stores. At the store where I was hired, one of the owners would try to be funny and introduce me as his "Lesbian" employee whenever I wore a designer plaid shirt as he said, "Lesbians always wear plaid." He also referred to me a couple of times to customers, even though I am not Asian, by an Asian name when I was steaming some wrinkles out of shirts. He said I was his, "Chinese laundry boy."


After several instances of having my shifts cut down and given to "boytoys" he hired, I quit and went back to being in business for myself selling antiques and collectibles at a market in Miami Beach. I paid 10% of what I took in each market to my worker, so if I took in $2,500., for example, they received $250. in cash. After going through three employees who I hired one after the other from this area who either didn't show up the at the time I came to pick them up or would wander away from the booth and disappear or not wait on the customers and read a book, I finally had my fill of it when a Fort Lauderdale man who had begged me to work with me as he was, "down on his luck", walked away with over $2,000. from the cash drawer while I was waiting on a customer.


I filed a report with the Miami Beach police but found out about all the work I would have to do to take him into court if he was caught, including trying to get the State Attorney office to issue a warrant which would not probably get me back my show earnings for that day if the creep who stole my money was caught as he took the receipts with him and it I couldn't prove how much he had stolen.


I had already had my dealings with the office of the State Attorney in Fort Lauderdale so I just chalked it up to experience and only work by myself now.


To go on with all the trauma I've experienced here, I had been assaulted in front of postal employees on camera in Fort Lauderdale by some lunatic who said he was going to shoot me in the parking lot of the Post Office. I called the police and they never showed up. When I called back the dispatcher, she said they were busy with more important things and nobody had been dispatched. Her supervisor I talked to said I could file a report at the police station. The officer who took the report never put in the report that there were witnesses and that it was on camera. A police official asked me to file a complaint against that officer but he was excused of any neglect of duty after I went to the main police office in Fort Lauderdale on Broward and was sworn in and stated under oath that I had informed the police officer who took the report that the assault happened on camera in the Post Office and in front of Post Office employees.


The police caught the the man who assaulted me a warrant to appear in court as he had a post office box at the post office he assaulted me at. The man didn't appear for the hearing so I was told I needed to go to the State Attorney office and ask them to put out another warrant to apprehend the man who had assaulted me in the post office. I filed the documents but received a letter stating the office of the State Attorney had more important matters to deal with.


Once I was attempting to turn into a parking lot only to find a police car in the entrance drive with an officer and someone he was writing a ticket to standing in front of the police car behind the car he had stopped. If I not been paying attention, I could have easily rammed into the police car and pinned the officer and the person he was writing a ticket to between the two cars. As it was, I had to wait for the cars coming out of the exit lane to exit before I could drive into the store parking lot through the exit lane. I reported this to the store manager and he called the police department to report it as he also felt the police office was endangering himself and the person he was writing the ticket to by not simply having both of their vehicles pull into the parking lot instead of blocking the entrance drive and standing between two vehicles that could have been driven into each other by someone turning into the entrance.


When I came out to my vehicle, the police officer who had been writing the ticket told me to get up against my car as he was arresting me for making a "false 911" call. As he was starting to put handcuffs on me, his partner said he better lay off since the store manager was standing outside the store witnessing what was happening and recording it on his cell-phone so I was released after almost being arrested for taking an action here about a public safety issue.


I talked to a local young straight woman yesterday and asked where her and her boyfriend go if they want to go dancing as it seems that there are only Gay dance clubs left here and she said she goes to
Boca Raton. She said they used to go to clubs down at the Riverwalk area but that the city let that whole area go to seed since they never did much of anything to help promote the area by putting up signage on Broward and Andrews and she told me that the shopping plaza there will be torn down to just build another high rise. She said that she sometimes goes out with her Gay friends to Gay dance butt she said it seems that people are getting more obnoxious and she tired of getting pawed at by men and women alike and she says it's not fun being out with her Gay friends as they seem obsessed with being on their cell-phones looking for hook-ups, even when on the dance floor.


Being Gay myself, I certainly see what she's talking about as I've been subjected to more than my share of drunk and intoxicated retirees and the overabundance of trashy hustler types trying to manhandle me in one way or the other when I am out dancing in a club here.


Both the woman I talked to and her husband work at good jobs but she said she's looking elsewhere to move in the U.S. as she said most of her friends and family have moved away as they've increasingly found it hard to find jobs where they aren't required to speak Spanish and she said that everyone in the office where she works speaks Spanish except when they are waiting on customers and it makes her feel very isolated, more so because she was born and raised here. She said that her parents are still here and she would stay if she could live near her parents but houses in the area they live in are now going for $500,000.+, as wealthy out of towners who only live in them part-time have been buying up things in the neighborhood putting the prices of the houses out of reach of most of the people she knows.


I'm just a middle class working guy who's also getting quickly priced out of living here. I haven't seen any initiatives taking place by any city officials in Fort Lauderdale to work to with developers to build affordable housing on all those empty lots south and north of the downtown area but I have seen plenty of new luxury housing and low income housing developments go up in the years I have been living here so it seems that the government of Fort Lauderdale, along with other communities around here, are not interested in keeping the middle class people working in this area living in this area. Even when it comes to the low income housing, people who have applied for it have told me the waiting list used to be about 2 years to get into it but now there is so much demand for it in this area with so many people moving here from places in the Caribbean that have been hit over and over again by hurricanes over the past several years, the waiting time is now indefinite with no timetable given when someone in need might be able to move into low income housing.


It seems odd to me that with all the new luxury high rises that have been built over the past few years, plus the fact that there are luxury townhouses being put up all over the place, that all the extra property tax revenue could go into developing affordable housing for the middle class on all the empty lots that are all over the city, particularly on Sistrunk where there are more buildings torn down than those left standing on that street, but I guess I'm too much of a dreamer to think that the government here would want to keep a community of middle class people living here to support the local businesses that the wealthy don't spend enough time here to support and that the poor don't have enough money to be patrons of regularly.


Due to the lack of any government interest in the well being of anyone but the rich and some of the poor here, along with what I've come up against quite regularly on a personal level or heard happening to other decent people who live here, I'm working my hardest over the upcoming months to get out of this area before the brutal heat and humidity we've been experiencing these past years hits this area again in May, partially because I've noticed that there are no initiatives in place by Broward County to build a system of locks to keep high water levels from the Intracoastal from entering the rivers and canals that surround this area during extreme high tides and during storm surges from hurricanes, even though hurricanes do regularly hit South Florida and sea levels are rising.


If you take the time to notice, you'll see that at certain points of the day, the rivers and canals run backwards inland and then later back towards the ocean. This is due to water from high tide coming into the Intracoastal from the ocean and then draining back out towards the ocean during low tide.


As no efforts are being made by the county, the City of Fort Lauderdale or any of the local city governments in this area to control this flow of water coming inland from the tides, other than some water gates that can be opened into the Everglades that don't prevent flooding near the coast and low lying areas near the coast during King tides and storm surges, and considering that sea levels are rising, if you plan on staying here and taking the risk of being flooded out by a storm surge from a hurricane, which has happened in the past with flood waters covering large parts of Fort Lauderdale, or wish to take the chance with rising sea levels and King Tides flooding the area like they are now doing in parts of Miami Beach, which has raised property taxes to install pumps and put blockage valves in the rainwater drains that seawater is now coming up through during high tides, I'd like to strongly suggest that you get a boat if you don't already have one and keep it at ready in your yard.


Also if you decide to move here or plan on spending the rest of your life here, I also wish you good luck dealing with the increasing number of low class user types who've chosen to make this area their home whether you have to work beside them, work for them, have them work for you or if you have to have any other association with them in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Not sure if you're coming back to this thread, but I just want to say I'm sorry if this has been your experience in the area. Personally, this has not been my experience. There are both negatives and positives to living here, as with anywhere else. Not sure if I'll stay here for the rest of my life or not, but it works for me for now. Good luck with your future endeavors, whatever and wherever they are...
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Old 11-05-2017, 01:17 PM
 
440 posts, read 513,574 times
Reputation: 452
Default Have you seen ther rent prices here?

Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterRice View Post
Your opinions are all valid but the first mistake you made was having a roommate. Unless you are destitute, which I'm sure you aren't, NEVER have any roommates. Even if you have to downsize. I've never had any myself, but all the stories I hear about them end in disaster.
Lucky for you that you have a financial situation where you can live in increasingly expensive Fort Lauderdale by yourself but the majority of the people I know here are in a relationship where both people contribute to the rent or they have a room-mate to help pay the rent or mortgage.

And please don't bother to tell me to cut my expenses to afford one of the expensive rents here to live by myself. I already budget myself to $10 a day for food and I gave up my car a long time ago to avoid having to cut the expense of paying for car insurance, repairs and gas and oil and got myself a bicycle to get around on.

The pieces of work I've found to date here, mostly people I was lucky to find out quickly had drug and\or alcohol addiction issues, which is quite common in this area, aren't exactly what one would call boyfriend material to want to go into a living situation with to help pay the expensive rents here that more and more people can't afford who want to stay living here because the average pay scales are so low.

Last edited by HotandHumid; 11-05-2017 at 01:25 PM..
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