I can see a mattress in the dining room when I peer in from outside. 

X, being an entrepreneurial type, lets it be known that (tough guys with tough pasts and probably tough futures) can bunk down (for lack of a better term) in the rooms--for a weekly fee (in cash).All bedrooms will be filled with weekly paying (guests, as she calls them) unauthorized subletors, or she may stay there concurrently with the children sleeping wherever they can find an unused horizontal space--except in the subleted rooms.The main living area may be subleted to 2 or three more individuals if she moves out.The bedrooms typically contain just a dirty mattress on the floor, and may have lot of new looking (grown man's) clothes on the floor and fast food debris.Mrs.

@Scott M. thanks looks like gone as nothing in living room, refrigerator gone but left bed in the room and mattress.

The money will just be sitting in the bank or under your mattress collecting little to no interest that will definitely less than inflation (especially right now). 

No bank will approve you if the down payment/reserves/closing costs are in cash under your mattress.

If it's a stained mattress, pots/pans, and other junk, donate it or toss it.

The current tenant is worried that the abandoned tenant will come back for his things (mattress and clothes are all that he left) and then possibly steal some things while he is at work.

Cash is great to have on hand, but remember that cash is always losing value when sitting in a bank or under a mattress (and this loss is accelerating).

The inspector was Joe Topper and I thought he did a really good job.

I'm given to understand it's different behind bars, keep in mind "how will the paperwork look" in general), don't miss credit card payments, ideally you want the down payment funds in a bank account and not under your mattress (the term we use is literally "mattress money," and it generally cannot be used), etc.