Yes, it's annoying. No, they shouldn't have done it. Yes, you can drop the dime (but they were probably leaving town so what good will that do?). No, I'm not excusing whever did it. Yes, you could blame the a) absentee landlord, b) slumlord, c) both of the above. But be aware that housing providers in fact have little control over their tenants (this still being America, "in loco parentis" having been abandoned decades ago, and the laws that warmed the heart of the days when the landlord was truly a lord of the land being almost totally reversed). And tenants who are leaving or who have left especially so.
 
Anyway, here's a hot news flash. This is a neighborhood with a high percentage of students. Every "permanent" person in the area knew it when he or she moved here. So, it should come as no surprise that in May and August -- and to a lesser extent in June and September -- people who've been collecting studently things leave and don't want them any more. It should also come as no surprise that many of these folks leave on weekends. And, it should be even less of a surprise that the stuff not only gets left on the street, but gets picked over and often scattered as a result.
 
There's good and bad about things like high density, a large student population, a mixture of private homes and legally licensed row/twin multifamily conversions. Sure, we'd like to -- I believe this was in a popular 40's song -- accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. But if anyone thought that this was going to be an urban theme park for people who really wanted Gladwynne or Paoli with the cache of living just left of Center City, they totally misunderstood the urbanity of the urban experience.
 
Always at your service and ready for a dialog,

Al Krigman

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