No doubt, the reader will be familiar with the statement, "I wouldn't go back there, even if you paid me!" Well, that about sums up our feelings toward where we lived in Seattle. Say, for some incredible reason, our erstwhile landlords were to offer to PAY US to return and resume looking after the house we were in, RENT FREE, we wouldn't waste a moment considering their offer.
Even when you take into account the fact that the restaurant we've been slowly restoring still has but one source of power - our outdated old wood stove - or that it's forty miles to the nearest supermarket, or that the cultural isolation out here is palpable, or that it snowed quite a lot on Easter Sunday, there is absolutely no comparison between living as owners out here and our former life on someone else's property in a city where all things seem to be piled on top of everything else. And that is quite aside from the added detraction of being squeezed like a financial orange every month so that people whom you know are no better than you are can have orange juice, while you must make do with water. Every screw hole I drill, every spadeful I dig, every blade of grass I mow, every square foot of floor I scrub, it all feels so much better to me now, and so much easier, because I never have to ask myself, "Who, exactly, am I doing this for?" You get a whole lot more satisfaction out of working on a place when you know that both its long-term utility and its resale value belong exclusively to you (singular or plural, as the case my be). Those great big, double sided, super lightweight storm windows we built, completely from materials abandoned by the previous owners, have become an endless source of self-congratulation for us. They're handsome and ever so efficient. It's like being in a different building, altogether. Compared with conditions we faced a year ago, it's like night and day. Sometimes I just stand there, amazed at the serendipitous way these discards came together, holding my palms close to the plastic, trying unsuccessfully to detect a downdraft, as snow flakes drift past the window. Only we could have done it this way, like it was meant to be. You don't get that kind of satisfaction out of being a renter.
In the meantime, on the sad side of things, we hear from friends back in Seattle that the old house now looks forlorn. The owners cut down all but one of the trees we so carefully shaped for maximum appeal and best use by birds and squirrels. The yard, they say, is stripped bare and untended, the resident animal life gone. No one lives there yet and it's been 17 months since we left. Now, all, including our former landlords, can see what we brought to the property simply by being there. In reality, the house was no more than a patient that we were keeping alive. In what kind of crazy world are doctors expected to pay patients for the privilege of being able to use their skills on them? And yet, that's exactly what we were doing. It wouldn't have been so bad but for the fact that we knew we were being used, without acknowledgment of our services in the form of an appropriately-scaled rent offset, and that, regardless of how we attempted to put our case before them for consideration, the owners would steadfastly choose to see the situation from whatever perspective best suited their being able to get as much rent out of us as possible.
Well, now reality has come down on them with a thud and, no doubt, they're beginning to comprehend the total cost of no longer having us there to tend the property. Now, they're compelled to do both the oversight and the work themselves or, just as bad, having to pay someone else to do it for them.
This regrettable turn of events only serves to make me more convinced that, on balance, landlords under the current regulatory regime, take more money and services from the renting community than can be justified by what they offer, in return, and that government needs to do a better job of addressing that imbalance.
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