[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Good evening. Casual talk radio
[email protected]. Welcomes you back. My name is Leister. I'm your host. Or if you're here for the first time, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining. Today's episode is going to be a little bit unique. I do that every now and then, but today it's going to be a little unique because I'm going to start with one topic, then I'm going to spin over to a different topic. The reason I'm doing it in that order is that the starting topic is important to understand the context around the second topic and its importance to the overall message.
The starting topic is around the actress known as Cindy Morgan. Cindy Morgan. You may not know the name unless if you're slightly older than my age. I would assume most of the people listening to the show are around my age range or thereabouts, and you probably don't know the name off top.
But if I were to name at least one of the movies that she was most known for, you're instantly going to click.
Oh, yes. Her, Cindy Morgan was largely, I would say the most notable role she had was in Caddyshack. Caddyshack. She was the blonde. She was the really hot blonde in Caddyshack. So now you're like, oh, yeah, or if you didn't see that she was in Tron. Now I didn't see Tron. So I don't know about Tron, but this is the original Tron, not the garbage that came out later. I'm talking the original, the first know, the corny looking Tron. But I would argue that the Caddyshack role is what made her, she didn't have very many movie credits. She had things like American Jiggle, the midnight hour, Falcon Crest. She didn't have a lot of credits outside of these because when she got into the business and she was scouted for Caddyshack mostly, they recognized she didn't have a lot of experience. They were going to use Bo Derek, who was another well known actress, and she had a lot of credentials. Did she? But when they scouted Miss Morgan, they saw how just absolutely gorgeous she was and she really was, and they figured, this is what we want. We want somebody that's just drop dead gorgeous. It's the same story as what you might have expected with Pamela Anderson and Baywatch and the idea that certain people, they look for a certain specific visual that they think is going to sell this. Certainly it did sell. Her role was memorable.
Fast forward.
She disappears off the literally, I don't even think she quit the business. She did some small stuff, but she disappeared off the radar. There was nothing that. No. So after the fact, stories started coming out about Caddyshack, and they were reflecting around all the different stories and scoops happening. And one of the stories that came out, she did a nude scene in Caddyshack. I think it's a sex scene even. And later, much later, one of the people talked about what got her to doing the scene, and it was not her willingly doing it.
Turns out she was initially asked to do it. She said no. She first declined. Somebody else contacted her and essentially threatened her, saying, you'll never work in this business again if you don't do it. So she reluctantly did it after this. She then said, well, I didn't have any problem with the nude scene, but I did have a problem with bullies, which is why I said no. So it's this ironic thing in Tinseltown of nude scenes and whether they are willing to do it or not or they're coerced to do it or not, there's countless of these.
But fast forward.
And as she gets older, and this is very most recently, there were messages sent around concerning messages coming from her over social media that she was about to get kicked out of her place. She was renting a place.
People often think that celebrities are instinctively wealthy. They got all the money in the world and nothing to worry about. But if we haven't learned from people like MC Hammer and Mike Tyson, often what happens is that you get to a level. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to stay wealthy. And as I said, she didn't have a lot of credit. So it's not like she made crazy amounts of money over her career. I would argue she probably made basic decent money, but not millions and millions and millions because she didn't have a lot of roles. And what we learned from the movie business is when you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of credentials. You might only make a couple of, there may be residuals or there might not be. Depends on what's negotiated. When you're new, you might not make that many residuals, if at all.
So the message that she was having trouble and allegedly on the verge of losing her home was concerning to people. And then two weeks later she's dead. She's found dead.
Found dead at the age of 69 in her home. It was a roommate, and the roommate came home from a vacation. This is literally on the 30 December, they noticed a foul smell. Police broke in, they found her and she had died of natural causes.
They said it was natural causes.
After this was reported, people were thinking there was foul play, but they said, no, it was natural causes. A message was leaked out. Cell phone message coming from Cindy Morgan to her at the time. Landlord.
This is where my second part of this begins as I talk about the rental industry. And it truly is a business.
I rent now. I have rented, I've bought a home, I also have rented it broad span. So I'm aware of what's involved in the rental business. I can tell you from direct experience that the rental business is shady. The rental business is against you. The rental business is aligned with very wealthy people, against people who are not wealthy. And I would argue it's a scam in some ways. It's a scam at multiple levels. That is what I want to talk about, because when I saw the message to her landlord, it inspired today's episode as I wanted to share thoughts around that message.
The message was disheartening. I can only describe it as disheartening.
What was being discussed here is that the landlord was pressing, saying, quote, two weeks is the end of the month. Your agent contacted me and said you would be out and made arrangements for you to move. Stop. The landlord was only focused on getting their place back and getting the person out of there.
So landlords who rent properties, either they own it straight out or they financed it. The point is they have to collect a certain amount of money, not just to maintain it, but also because chances are, if there's a loan, they have to make payments. There's also property taxes, there's licensing, there's all sorts of expenses that they have to cover. And because of the way the industry works, everything works largely on a monthly lease of some kind. That could be a month to month or twelve month or 16 months. But the point is, it's a monthly lease. You are expected to make payments on a monthly basis. The expectation that you make payments on a monthly basis is connected to the expectation that you're paid at least biweekly. When they screen you up front, they try to identify that you make enough money for a monthly payment times a certain amount, because they're trying to ensure that you're able to make payments time over time.
This is flaw number one. Flaw number one, a person might qualify from a money perspective in terms of how much you make per month. And then something like Covid hits and you no longer are making three times that salary. It is never revisited. So the rent company is making the assumption, yes, we're going to make this agreement under the knowledge that we can put you out on the street if you don't make the payment.
The vast majority of states in the United States support the idea that you can kick somebody out because they know you, as the rent company, still have bills to pay yourself.
So I don't put blame on, in this case the landlord, because the landlord probably has their own bills to pay.
My problem is that the governments, plural, as in state and federal, arguably don't do enough to protect people from being evicted quickly or without fair circumstances.
What we saw during the pandemic, as an example, and I can speak on this with direct specificity, what we saw during the pandemic is that certain of the states started offering these blockages. The landlords, you could not evict somebody straight over.
Second to that, they would offer these financial deals. And I may have talked about this in an old episode, but the person, the tenant, would have to apply for this aid, go through a process which usually took months because of staffing constraints.
During the meantime here, the rent company cannot evict that person.
They can still go through the paperwork, they can still file to evict. They just can't actually do it, which makes no damn sense. But that's what was happening.
Eventually the financing comes through, you get the aid. The aid doesn't go to the tenant. The aid goes to the landlord. The landlord has to file their own paperwork justifying the amount of aid based on the amount of months. And that assumes that the person is behind. It assumes that they fell behind on the rent, as in, if you're current, you can't apply in anticipation of you falling behind in the future. Which would make better sense, right? Because the governments understand that they don't want to have to give money at all. They would rather not have to give money. They're fine sending it to Ukraine, but they don't want to give it to keep people in their homes when they could, because a better program would be to anticipate shortfall. A person applies. They were required to prove at the time, three times the rent is what they made.
They report they just lost their job by whatever happened.
Now they only have one times the rent. They no longer have a pad. They know they have other utilities because those are required and they can be shut off if you don't pay. So you have a shortfall. What should happen is the moment that you are notified that you're going to lose your job, meaning your margin has decreased, you as a tenant should be able to report that to the landlord. The landlord should be able to apply for aid on your behalf and frankly required to do so. And if they don't apply for that aid, they are prohibited from evicting you. If you can prove that you're in a shortfall that was outside of whatever, if you don't have the money and you report that they cannot evict you, they have to go to the governments and take advantage of this aid. There were landlords that refused to take advantage of the aid that actually happened in this case.
Ms. Morgan, this is long past the pandemic, but the point is that the pandemic caused a lot of irreparable harm that continued to have a domino effect this far. Later, many people are still feeling the burn of it. So I again, don't blame the landlord because the landlord has bills to pay too.
The missing piece here, the governments aren't doing anything to help prevent the loss of somewhere to live.
What is then the downstream impact? The downstream impact is two. One, possible homelessness increase, which we saw spikes of. We know certainly in southern California, it's getting worse and worse and worse. We know that, we saw that, we saw how bad San Francisco is, we know how bad LA is. So increase in homelessness. Meanwhile, we have no problem shipping money over Ukraine. I digress.
Second, we have situations like this. Let's say that she died from natural causes.
Was she by herself? Was she alone where she had no recourse? Was it food? What was it?
And was it triggered by, in her case, a feeling that she had no way out and there was nothing that she could do and that the outreach was not heard.
She did say that there was somebody that she was trying to get connected, but it just didn't happen.
All I'm saying with all of this, and I felt it was a great story to tell because I have intimate knowledge of the matter, not her. I'm talking in general with renting.
The governments know that this happens. The governments know that you can be kicked down the street with no warning. The governments don't want to do anything to avoid it or prevent it. The governments would rather, after you're at risk, then try to intervene, but then put red tape in front of it. Meanwhile, they're all too happy to ship more money to Ukraine. My point is only to say it's disheartening to see that this happened to her.
It's disheartening to see how she was treated and to see that the landlord ultimately was not sympathetic.
I would say this for anybody listening who happens to be renting, who may be in a similar situation or nearer thereabouts, the one point of feedback I have, and it's not a matter of fault, I call it out as a simply my message.
Please do not communicate with your landlord over text messages.
You're wondering why you need to be in front of them face to face. The reason I say this and reason I'm so adamant, people often are less likely to be emotionally moved by your plight when it's an impersonal form of communication, as text messages are, whereas your situation may be better received when you're in front of them and they can see emotionally that you're struggling. And that's not just for landlords. That's anything your employer, landlord, teacher, whatever.
I personally believe there is too much reliance on text messages for urgent and critical types of communication. I'm talking urgent things. I'm not talking casual. I'm talking when you have something like this, you're two weeks from getting kicked out.
Please don't sit on text messages with your landlord. To me, you need to see face to face. You need to talk to them face to face. If they're off site, as in they're not physically close, get on the phone. I don't mean text messages, I say phone. You should hear their voice. They should hear your voice. If they claim they're not available, I would call that a lie because they're your landlord. Their job is to be available for you during business hours, and if they're not, you might have a legal case.
I'm saying please do not defer to impersonal forms of communication for these important, urgent messages. And if you're struggling to me, I would consider that rather important.
If it's any other situation you're dealing with, threat, threat of bodily harm or something, please. I don't agree and never will. That text message is what you should be doing.
I understand we're in this world and I've encountered people who are much older than I who have been plugged into the matrix and convinced that text message is the right answer. I'm starting to see more of people defaulting to text messages, and that concerns me as somebody who is in technology myself.
Because you're losing the emotional connection necessary from a phone call or a face to face interaction, it's up to you what you do. I'm sharing it as an impassioned plea. You can ignore me. That's great.
Hey, I'm sharing it because I will share it. It's my show and I'll do that. But when I see something like this, I'm going to ask the question, what if she had simply talked to that person face to face where they can't hide behind their phone, where the emotion is felt, where the urgency resonates? Maybe it could have turned out different. We don't know. I don't know. I'm saying I would rather start there because it's truly urgent. Important. I got on the phone when I was in Nevada and I was having rental issues myself. I got on the phone and talked it out and they were not willing to work with me. But at least I got on the phone and explained, here's the okay, I've got this going on.
You're going to need to work with me because you ain't going to get paid either way. And it worked out. Not thanks to them, it worked out thanks to the state and my efforts. But the point is, I got on the phone, I was calling, I was getting on the phone and things got worked out eventually. And then I was able to get away from that garbage. But I got on the phone, I wasn't text messaging anybody. I refuse. So in closing, renting everything. If you own property and you'renting it out, it's profitable. You can make a lot of good money. It's a good business for generational, especially if you are in an area where there's not a lot of availability that you can kind of slip in and set your own price.
But when you're on the other side of it doesn't feel so good. And I'm not suggesting that everything is the same for every person. I am saying the governments know the game and homelessness. We have to look at the connection of the rise of homelessness and the cold nature of renting. You can say just pay your bills sounds good while you're working. But during a time where companies are all too happy to lay people off and fire people for not wanting to stick something in their arm, or not wanting to put some on their face, or for their own personal beliefs, or because people get offended. And I may tell that story on another episode because it just happened again today.
When you're in this era of overly sensitive people, when you're in this area where your rights don't matter in lieu of everybody else's. When you're in an era where your rights get trampled on because somebody else is screaming for their rights to matter, when you're in an era where it's not about the work and you lose your job for silly reasons because automation is coming in, because it's going overseas, whatever, it sounds good to just pay the bills. Just say, yeah, just pay your bills, pay your bills. Sounds all good. When it happens to you and you're not able to pay the bills, all of a sudden you want people to feel sorry for you. That's not how it works. You have to understand the game is rigged against you. You can recognize it for what it is, and you could ignore me for what I just said, but the game is rigged against you. It's always been rigged against you. I would argue the rigging is worse, but it's always been rigged against you. There's not much you can do except to recognize that it's rigged against you. And the prices of things, which I may talk about in a different episode, going significantly up to make it harder for you to own things, is all part of the game. See, it all connects together. It's all one big Okie doke designed to hold you back. You can let it happen, or you can push back. I'm not suggesting it's easy. I am recommending that you be mindful of the game that's being played and how you're being trapped in what's happening around you. That's all.
