The small town where I live is one of the places that has long drawn people from all over the world because of its beauty and affordability and because it is a college town. In the past year or so, affordable housing has become a thing of the past. People who have lived here for most or all of their lives, who work hard and live from paycheck to paycheck are being given notice by property management companies that their rent is being raised by several hundred dollars. We have a substantial homeless population. People are selling their homes and moving to less desirable places in Washington and out of state because they can't afford the property tax here.
Although I have a tiny but beautiful low-end condominium that is paid for, I do pay monthly condo dues. My sole income is my Social Security check of just over $1000. Living simply, I have been able be oddly financially comfortable while aware of my financial vulnerability. Because investors are buying condominiums in my complex, the owner demographics are changing from low-income and retired people, mostly women, to those who have substantial disposable income, mostly men. Because this is a low-end condominium, like the one that collapsed in Florida, it has become clear that the condo dues need to be raised for numerous safety reasons. The newer financially secure residents can afford steadily increasing condo dues. Those of us who are already paying all that we can afford are suddenly aware that we may need to sell and move to a less desirable place because there is no way any of us could hope to afford to buy another condominium or to pay rent for the limited housing in our small town.
I bought my condo in 1989 for $50,000, which was almost more than I could afford at the time. Today it is worth $300,000, more or less. Watching the video and reading the comments, I see how widespread is the phenomenon shown in the video and am particularly struck by the comments about "company housing" and the affordable housing shortage:
"I owe my soul to the company store"- Sixteen Tons- Tennessee Ernie Ford. Funny how everything that's old is new again.
Bottom line the US has a major affordable housing shortage.
This makes me want to cry. We’ve truly failed the young people of this country
Oh. They only charge 1500 a month. Wow, that’s savage. We are literally going back to company towns. Even if they are paying 15/he and you work 40 hrs a week, that’s 60% of your gross pay. That’s evil
So, the average person can't afford to live in the cities or in the suburbs. GG America.
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What I am thinking this morning is that I will stay in my condo as long as possible and then sell it and hope that I can live on the proceeds, paying rent and applying for Section 8 help for the rest of my life.
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"Money doesn't talk, it swears."
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No easy answers to any one of these current crises that have been brewing for a long long time.
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Then I found this, not an answer but something that gives me a choice:
For many years, my students at Boston College have read Viktor Frankl’s sublime work Man’s Search for Meaning, a reflection on his experience at Auschwitz and a sketch of the psychotherapeutic technique he developed from that experience. I’ve wanted them to meet this remarkable man, and to learn something about how his experience of extremity forced him to confront the stark choice between despair and hope — and to choose hope. The quote above is a snapshot of how he responded: to retain what he describes as “the last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Frankl was a sober realist: he details the horrors of Auschwitz and the moral corruption of those who worked there. His philosophy was not about wishing away problems or pretending they do not exist, but rather to acknowledge them in their grim reality. Yet in spite of this realism, or rather because of it, he describes how holding onto hope was literally a life-or-death choice. Those who lost hope, he said, developed a certain look in their eye, a fatalism that inevitably ended in death. They experienced an “existential vacuum” — his term for a complete loss of meaning, a loss of hope, a sense that nothing really mattered any more.
(am's note: I was unable to adjust the spacing for the above excerpt)
