How people find their way to this collection of essays is a mystery to us. We don't advertise. Lately, however, there has been a really big uptick in visits that has us floored. We can't figure it out but we sure are happy about it. The river of this grand collective experience we call Life on Earth has so many moving parts that it is, most likely, unwise to push too hard on any given objective lest the fabric of inter-connectedness be ruptured. Even wisdom, itself, is only ever applicable when shared at the appropriate time, so that it can be applied to constructive action before it becomes too oft repeated and out of fashion. Better then, to commit what one has been working on to that great repository of ideas we call the Collective Unconscious, trusting that, when the time is right, it will work its way up through the subconscious minds of many to where enthusiasm first primes feelings of curiosity. The process of discovery that is lit in that manner has the force of personal agency that is free of the kind of demagoguery so many movements are bedeviled by. If an idea's time has come, it should have no need of a champion but, rather, flourish on its merits, alone.
Don't try to take in too much of what is written here in one sitting. Doing so will reduce its contents to verbiage. It was compiled over the course of countless bouts of writing, interspersed with backup discussions, the consulting of news articles and periods of contemplation. As a result, the argumentation is rather dense. You'll get mental indigestion if you read too much of it and your interest in issues of social equity may well suffer because of it.
If you glean a useful thing or two, rather than plodding on, leave off. The mind can't make much of more than a couple of good concepts at a time.
That said, we sincerely appreciate any smidgen of interest this work evokes. To be sure, how the national rental market affects the general economy - in particular, the spending power of younger and more financially vulnerable groups - is nothing to be sniffed at. Naturally, we think that a grievous financial arm-twisting is being perpetrated upon those Americans with the least ability to provide appropriate push-back and that local government, in too many places, plays an enabling role in the resultant shift of power, if only by willfully choosing to ignore the situation, on the old saw that it is just the so-called free market at work and that constitutional precepts preclude constructive action from being taken. Under that view, those who ultimately tire of the struggle to survive and fall by the wayside are nothing more than collateral damage, from whose demise we will not suffer, as a society.
Our essay not only takes issue with that point of view, but also goes on to suggest how government might act to make this particular engine of social inequity much less of a factor in the grander picture of inequality in America.
Once again, thank you for your interest. Happy reading!
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
Post-move status report
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.
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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