Warning: My frustration level is about THIS HIGH. So, if reading someone ranting and raving, complaining and whining on a Friday is not your idea of a good time, check me next week when perhaps I will be a little more Mary Poppins because right now I am feeling more Ursula than Ariel.
Today's Calculation of Frustration: 3 Jurisdictions + 3 Program Launches + 2 Stroppy Bureaucrats)/2 Well-meaning Micro Managers = 1 Exhausted Project Manager on the War Path.
No sooner than I write a post about liking workaholics that I darn near have a weeklong nervous breakdown from work overload. And a real estate agent we work with to buy houses just called to see my "workaholic" and raise me a foreclosed home tour from 3pm to 8pm on Monday night. I folded.
As you know, we were finally given the go ahead to get started buying houses. And about 2 weeks after getting the "clear to launch" our local government partners have already jumped out of pocket, starting running around the room and generally riding herd. They were requesting face-to-face meetings and calling before 10am with idle threats. Please, if you want to effectively threaten me, wait until after 11am. Before then, I can only sort of listen and nod with the vague understanding of someone whose mind is still in the morning mush stage.
Now I have had time to absorb all that has happened. And here are my generalized responses:
Dear Jurisdiction 1, you have a lot of nerve. You have given me a sliver of the toughest, most crime-plagued neighborhoods in the city with a housing stock that is older than the Union itself and asked me to turn it around in the blink of an eye. With 5 dollars. You are delusional. You have also requested that I only sell, not rent, the houses. Oh my dear sweet partners, I would love to take you on a daytime tour of these neighborhoods where an unfamiliar car draws young men out of their houses, where young women are actively marketing their wares and where a news van just hangs out waiting for the next story.
Rehabbing for neighborhood stabilization reminds me of gardening. Although I may think begonias are beautiful and have a deep desire to have them in my garden, if I just plunk a few down in my hard, weed-choked soil and walk away, they will die. I have to prepare the ground. I have to pull weeds, mix nutrients in the ground and make sure the plant will have the right sun/shade mix so that it will thrive. It's the same with scattered site rehab. We do not have enough money to buy out entire blocks or neighborhoods and change the very nature of the soil, so we have to choose ground to sow that is somewhat ready for planting. I drove through neighborhoods earlier this week that were heartbreaking. Most of the houses were abandoned, vacant, boarded up or in deep disrepair. It was in the middle of the day, but no one seemed to be at work or at school. There was a sense of listlessness and isolation tinged with menace. What am I supposed to do over there, dear readers? Buy 3 of the 10 empty houses I can see without turning my head? Let's say I could get them rehabbed without having to replace everything in the house multiple times due to theft. Now they are ready for sale. Who will buy them? In my town, lucky "urban pioneers" get robbed when they are not at home; the unlucky ones are assaulted in their homes, pistol whipped in front of their children and then robbed by roving bands of dysfunctional and untethered young men. The jurisdiction is apoplectic about the possibility of renting the houses, so what then? Shall we let them sit empty for 12 months or more? Is pretty blight better than ugly blight? I think blight is blight. Here is my suggestion, Jurisdiction 1. Let me work in a slightly wider sliver so that I can get into neighborhoods that are actually tipping point neighborhoods and not tipped over neighborhoods.
Dear Jurisdiction 2, please do not tell me about how I need to be buying more houses more quickly when you have a 30 day minimum approval period for acquisition. It is not 2008. We are not the only people out there buying houses. There is no such thing as a 30 due diligence period in a residential home sale. That sort of nonsense just kills deals. The banks could care less that we are a non-profit working with the county's NSP program. You may have heard the phrase "money talks, bs walks." It's still true.
Dear Jurisdiction 3, bless your heart. You are so in earnest to get everything right with crystal clear "processes" that you will ne-e-e-e-ver get started. Never. AND because you are passive-aggressive, you COLD IGNORE the emails I send you that contain clear-cut action items in them. Action items that we previously agreed to. I have spent/wasted about 35 hours hunting for houses, putting in offers on houses, sitting in conference calls and meetings and writing 11 million different lists and spreadsheets for you. I am all out of effort in this relationship. I need you to put your back in it, too. Until you can meet me halfway, I am putting you on ice.
So yeah. Working for governments is like being bound up in red tape, dropped into the English Channel and being told to swim for the shores of Calais. Fast. Or being in a 3 legged sack race -- too many limbs, too close together with too little coordination. We get to the finish line, but we don't get there quickly and after making so many stumbles on the way to the goal, our hair is a mess, our clothes are filthy and the people who opted out of the race (the investors) went and ate all the cake while we we were madly hopping about the fairground.
On days like this I feel like a flailing swimmer, flapping about in the ocean with a life jacket on spending way too much energy just to keep her head barely above water. Add to that the fact that I have been having fond memories of my former life at the law firm when at 8:30pm I would be preparing to order a sashimi dinner on the client, here I am digging into my bottom drawer to make saltine and peanut butter crackers. It's a lifestyle choice that I consciously made and through all of the irksome obstacles, I am much happier here in this ocean of hyperactive ambitions than I was there in that cesspool of dashed dreams. But still. No one told me I was signing up for a 3-legged race.
Today's Calculation of Frustration: 3 Jurisdictions + 3 Program Launches + 2 Stroppy Bureaucrats)/2 Well-meaning Micro Managers = 1 Exhausted Project Manager on the War Path.
No sooner than I write a post about liking workaholics that I darn near have a weeklong nervous breakdown from work overload. And a real estate agent we work with to buy houses just called to see my "workaholic" and raise me a foreclosed home tour from 3pm to 8pm on Monday night. I folded.
As you know, we were finally given the go ahead to get started buying houses. And about 2 weeks after getting the "clear to launch" our local government partners have already jumped out of pocket, starting running around the room and generally riding herd. They were requesting face-to-face meetings and calling before 10am with idle threats. Please, if you want to effectively threaten me, wait until after 11am. Before then, I can only sort of listen and nod with the vague understanding of someone whose mind is still in the morning mush stage.
Now I have had time to absorb all that has happened. And here are my generalized responses:
Dear Jurisdiction 1, you have a lot of nerve. You have given me a sliver of the toughest, most crime-plagued neighborhoods in the city with a housing stock that is older than the Union itself and asked me to turn it around in the blink of an eye. With 5 dollars. You are delusional. You have also requested that I only sell, not rent, the houses. Oh my dear sweet partners, I would love to take you on a daytime tour of these neighborhoods where an unfamiliar car draws young men out of their houses, where young women are actively marketing their wares and where a news van just hangs out waiting for the next story.
Rehabbing for neighborhood stabilization reminds me of gardening. Although I may think begonias are beautiful and have a deep desire to have them in my garden, if I just plunk a few down in my hard, weed-choked soil and walk away, they will die. I have to prepare the ground. I have to pull weeds, mix nutrients in the ground and make sure the plant will have the right sun/shade mix so that it will thrive. It's the same with scattered site rehab. We do not have enough money to buy out entire blocks or neighborhoods and change the very nature of the soil, so we have to choose ground to sow that is somewhat ready for planting. I drove through neighborhoods earlier this week that were heartbreaking. Most of the houses were abandoned, vacant, boarded up or in deep disrepair. It was in the middle of the day, but no one seemed to be at work or at school. There was a sense of listlessness and isolation tinged with menace. What am I supposed to do over there, dear readers? Buy 3 of the 10 empty houses I can see without turning my head? Let's say I could get them rehabbed without having to replace everything in the house multiple times due to theft. Now they are ready for sale. Who will buy them? In my town, lucky "urban pioneers" get robbed when they are not at home; the unlucky ones are assaulted in their homes, pistol whipped in front of their children and then robbed by roving bands of dysfunctional and untethered young men. The jurisdiction is apoplectic about the possibility of renting the houses, so what then? Shall we let them sit empty for 12 months or more? Is pretty blight better than ugly blight? I think blight is blight. Here is my suggestion, Jurisdiction 1. Let me work in a slightly wider sliver so that I can get into neighborhoods that are actually tipping point neighborhoods and not tipped over neighborhoods.
Dear Jurisdiction 2, please do not tell me about how I need to be buying more houses more quickly when you have a 30 day minimum approval period for acquisition. It is not 2008. We are not the only people out there buying houses. There is no such thing as a 30 due diligence period in a residential home sale. That sort of nonsense just kills deals. The banks could care less that we are a non-profit working with the county's NSP program. You may have heard the phrase "money talks, bs walks." It's still true.
Dear Jurisdiction 3, bless your heart. You are so in earnest to get everything right with crystal clear "processes" that you will ne-e-e-e-ver get started. Never. AND because you are passive-aggressive, you COLD IGNORE the emails I send you that contain clear-cut action items in them. Action items that we previously agreed to. I have spent/wasted about 35 hours hunting for houses, putting in offers on houses, sitting in conference calls and meetings and writing 11 million different lists and spreadsheets for you. I am all out of effort in this relationship. I need you to put your back in it, too. Until you can meet me halfway, I am putting you on ice.
So yeah. Working for governments is like being bound up in red tape, dropped into the English Channel and being told to swim for the shores of Calais. Fast. Or being in a 3 legged sack race -- too many limbs, too close together with too little coordination. We get to the finish line, but we don't get there quickly and after making so many stumbles on the way to the goal, our hair is a mess, our clothes are filthy and the people who opted out of the race (the investors) went and ate all the cake while we we were madly hopping about the fairground.
On days like this I feel like a flailing swimmer, flapping about in the ocean with a life jacket on spending way too much energy just to keep her head barely above water. Add to that the fact that I have been having fond memories of my former life at the law firm when at 8:30pm I would be preparing to order a sashimi dinner on the client, here I am digging into my bottom drawer to make saltine and peanut butter crackers. It's a lifestyle choice that I consciously made and through all of the irksome obstacles, I am much happier here in this ocean of hyperactive ambitions than I was there in that cesspool of dashed dreams. But still. No one told me I was signing up for a 3-legged race.
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