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Originally Posted by pan6467
I know Ohio used to have a law that if you were a landlord and this type of thing happened, your property would be confiscated. It was made to prevent absentee landlords and slum lords from having dope houses.
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I'll need to find out if the same is true for Maryland.
Our street is more or less "transitional," though when we purchased our house we assumed that it was transitioning faster than it probably is. Our house is half a duplex—the other unit had been lived in by an elderly woman who died and has been on the market for about six months—which is flanked on one side by kind, considerate neighbors (Bob and Helen) and on the other by a whore house. On several occasions we've seen cars with single male drivers pull up outside the house and women come out of the building and get in the cars. One Friday not too long ago, a man came around after midnight. He walked up the pathway between our house and Bob and Helen's and tripped their motion-sensor floodlight, then opened our back gate to knock on our back door, calling out the name of one of the women that works/lives in the whore house. Petrified, I stood at a window in the dark and watched him shuffle up and down the pathway, not knowing if he was drunk or high, or whether he'd come to "do business" with her or fight. I was relieved when he finally left a few minutes later—it took forever, or seemed to.
Another residence two doors up the block from the whore house had once had all the external appearances of a drug den. I believe all the "residents" of it were kicked out and it was renovated, but since then it's been converted to a multi-dwelling building and is probably being occupied by other interesting (read: "trashy") characters.
About a month ago my partner and I had returned from grocery shopping and pulled up to our house. The doors were unlocked and I was on the phone with my sister, ironically having a conversation about the safety and security of our respective neighborhoods. I'd seen something moving in the passenger-side mirror but didn't think much of it. Suddenly the curbside back door of the car had opened and a guy was
climbing into our car.
Both my partner and I whipped around and started screaming at the guy, "Get the f*ck out of my car!! What the f*ck are you doing?!! Get the f*ck out of here!!!" I was hopped up on adrenaline and ready to take the guy down if I had to, but she was more concerned with keeping him calm so he wouldn't flip out on us. We got out of the car and he backed away, mumbling with slurred speech something about how he thought we were his friend who was supposed to come pick him up and said that
we had scared the shit out of
him. Whatever, dude, you're the one climbing in our car.
I haven't seen the guy since, but my partner mentioned seeing him walk towards her from half a block away as she was arriving home from work one evening. She exited the car quickly and came inside the house without waiting for him to catch up.
As for the whore house, Bob—who originally tipped us off about its true function and nature—said that he has tried in the past to get the police involved with shutting it down. For reasons I don't think he's ever explained in detail, it hasn't worked. We do have Neighborhood Advisory Councils and I intend to get to the next meeting for ours three weeks from now and raise this issue to see where it will get me.