On a trip from NYC to Buffalo about a year ago, I had a conversation with a stranger on a plane.

In idle conversation, I asked my neighboring passenger, “What brings you to Buffalo?” He told me that he was coming to town to speak to some investors in the Self Storage Industry. He then when on to give me the “pitch” for the benefits of investing in this burgeoning industry.

He gleefully told me that their #1 demographic target, is the “down on your luck” individual. “The reason our industry is such a rock solid investment is due to the failing economy, rapidly rising unemployment, home foreclosures, and the high divorce rate.”

He, added, with a chuckle, “we store garbage.” He said that their favorite and most often stored item is a couch. He said that people spend between $60.00 to $200..00 a month storing a couch that probably cost a fraction of the amount paid in storage fees.

He was delighted to share with me that the average self storage customer plans on storing for ONLY a month or two, but inevitably stores for at least for six months to a year. According to this schmuck, a large amount of these customers eventually default on their contracts and have their “garbage” seized. “We have people lined up, who come in and buy the junk and have it out of the facility within 24 hours of the seizure.”

Wow! What a great investment opportunity. By the time our plane mercifully landed in Buffalo, I politely said good bye to my travel partner. What a dick.

Fast forward to last weekend.

I was at a high school basketball game and I ran into one of my sons classmates mom. She is a hardworking, single mother of three boys. She bravely told me that she just scaled a fence at the local Self Storage facility to gain access to her newly rented unit. She did this to retrieve some athletic shoes that her son needed for that evenings game. She told me that she is recently separated. Her household is divided and as a result of the chaos, her sons basketball shoes ended up in a box in the unit.

She reluctantly explained that she was 45 days late with her payment to her self storage company so they electronically denied her access at the gate with a push of a button.

In a panic, she parked her car, listening to the objections from her embarrassed boys, she climbed the fence and went to her unit and retrieved the shoes. She had her son at the High School with his shoes before the starting buzzer.

She is 54 years old.

Its probably not fair for me to indict the entire self storage industry, but I've done some research and found that the scenario I describe above is an accurate description of the way they do business.

This is predatory and just plain wrong.