We have 18 units in the building, only 2 of which are actually lived in by their owners -- the rest of us are renters, so pretty powerless in our building. Only the 2 owners ever go to the meeting of the consorcia, and even they've pretty much given up on that, since none of the owners of the other 16 units show up, if there's a problem they'll just discuss amongst themselves.
All of this was fine when we moved in, but our portero has a drinking problem -- that has gone from being the occasional jolly drunk a couple of years ago, to being the surly guy you want to avoid. However we no longer have to avoid him, since he no longer even bothers working his shifts -- which were from 7 - 10am and then again from 6 - 8pm at night. Now he just takes out the garbage, sometimes not even that.
Last year he didn't work for more than 2 months of the year, and he still took his 28 days of holiday in January. So he makes 2700 a month, or about 35000 pesos a year -- but if you consider he only works about 9 months a year now, if that -- he's making around 3900. He's single. Has an on again off again girlfriend that does not live with him.
Since he got back from January vacation he has worked less than 14 days. In fact the only time we have seen him in more than two weeks was last weekend when we got the building administration to send an ambulance for him -- who took him away, dried him out, rehydrated him, deposited him back at the building -- and then I saw him the other night blind drunk again.
Everyone in the building likes the guy, and has tried to get him help numerous times, but hospitals aren't set up for treatment, and he hated the one meeting he did attend one time because he felt that everyone there was a crackhead or worse than him (I think denial still reigning).
So basically we're stuck. The poor guy is only in his 40s and will probably drink himself to death. He's refused help, and obviously the building administration doesn't know what to do because you fire a guy like that and he'll end up on the street. You keep him in the position, and you're basically enabling his addictions, since you're giving him a house and salary and he has job security so really he can just shut himself in and drink away his life and not really put anything at risk.
By the way, the building has even more of a problem if they do try to throw him out -- the reason they hired him for the job in the first place is because he was one of the construction guys for the building. He fell from two stories up and broke a hip, had a head injury, who knows what else (we weren't around at the time, this was 8 years ago). They hired him to stop him from suing.
