I Wanna Be a Caveman

 Okay, time to stop bellyaching about my problems with the Canadian busybodies that have taken over every aspect of life in my country piling on licensing, certification, fees, rules and regulations until I feel like somebody will be waiting outside my bathroom door to charge an effluent re-assimilation fee every time I take a shit. I mean on top of sewage taxes and the skyrocketing prices of toilet paper of course. s i g h...

Now to bellyache about some OPP's felt by homeowners in America. These are other people's problems not just because I'm not American, but because I have no hope in fuck of ever owning, buying, or even financing a home. I might as well watch the Chuck E. Cheese story suggested by John Oliver at the start of the vid below because even though I have never been to a Chuck E. Cheese, there's a chance I will before I die. Actually, the Chuck E. Cheese video is suggested at the start of the full video where this dandy little bit of satire comes from. Watch the full episode on HOA's if you think these outrageous actions are in any way exaggeration.

Things are not as bad as all this in Canada... yet... but give us time. We usually catch up to the States pretty quickly in areas that fall into the category of widening the income gap, shrinking the middle class and turning average citizens' lives into gladiatory stand-offs against our fellow bondservants for the amusement of our owners. Here's an article from a few years ago. I'm sure it's far worse now.

Okay, I guess I am exaggerating. But not as much as you might think if you've somehow been sheltered from the reality of life in Canada/US for a while by - I dunno - living and working in Asia for many years. My bestest buddies from over in Asia, The Fam, have just arrived safely back in the US of A and are currently house-hunting and encountering daily the heartache and the thousand reverse culture shocks that flesh is heir to when one takes up arms against a sea of rival house-hunters. Odds are, since 80% of homes sold now up there come with HOA's whether the buyers know it or not, they'll end up exposed to the neighborhood tyranny that can come with one. Like many of the people in the video, they're already gut punched by the outrageously unchecked inflation in the housing market along with the simultaneous explosion in sellers' abilities in belief suspension exhibited in the elasticity of their acceptance of what qualifies as "fair" market value. Greed shame has been surprisingly easily replaced by pride, boasting, and self-congratulatory back slapping when prospective sellers (and we've all heard them) talk about how 8 years ago they bought such and such property for 100,000 and now it's worth half a mil. What are they expecting us to say? "Oh clever you! You've made no additions or repairs to your house or property, the roof, plumbing, fixtures, furniture, and base structure are all 8 years older and more dilapidated. With your fixed mortgage, you've paid thousands less in payments than you would have if you'd rented a comparable home. You've done no work at all, saved money, and are getting 400 grand for it. Congratulations! You've earned it!" 

Now this is not the case for everyone, but many. And if you're like me and often wonder how people can delude themselves into support for government that makes laws that allow life to become so miserable for all but the privileged few who can buy homes, this kind of real estate appreciation engineered by strategic inflation and interest rate control and easy money that comes with it is one thing that goes a long way toward loyalty to the devil. A tweet from 2019 has become a meme that I need to insert here:

"First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then be legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil." Dwight Longenecker.

Which stage do you think the real estate market has reached? But before you answer, there are several "advantages" that come with such evil that I would consider to be worse than just getting rich by screwing your fellow citizens. And the worst part? It's not even a new thing!

The following are excerpts from an article I wrote for my masters course last year about something that happened in the States 90 years ago!: 

 I am going to concentrate on two interrelated areas in the US, ethnicity, and its almost requisite corollary – poverty, in relation to good neighborhoods, schools and jobs, where the idea of merit has traditionally been accepted erroneously as the top criterion of acceptance, when affluence was, in reality, more important. In America, where the concept of all people being created as equals is entrenched in their constitution, it is still more difficult for the disadvantaged to go to good schools, get good jobs and live in good neighborhoods.

We need to start with the neighborhoods because where you live figures largely in where you go to school, who you have within your social network, how you speak, behave, think, all can have an enormous effect on your acceptance to college/university and/or your ultimate position in the workforce. Neighborhoods are not created equally in America. This goes back to the Federal Housing Administration that was created in 1934. It was necessitated by the Great Depression, during which massive numbers of mortgage foreclosures took place. The FHA part of FDR’s “New Deal,” was designed as a way for the government to help people buy houses by underwriting, or financially backing, their mortgages. In the years following WWII, this discriminatory agency of the federal government (Truman/Eisenhower) withheld mortgage money from certain urban areas using data that suggested probable loss of investment in those areas. This was called “redlining” and it was assessed mostly on racial composition. Virtually all black neighborhoods were redlined, and as a result, nobody bought, nobody built, and urban blight was consciously manufactured. This despite opinion polls that routinely reflect the notion that people being poor and jobless is their own fault. 

"Section 8" mentioned in the full HOA video refers to the housing act of 1937, around the same time, that has since been amended many times, but still, evidently, contains many of the discriminatory lending policies of the old FHA. 

Truman was a democrat, and he was concerned with human rights. In the Housing Act of 1949, his administration opposed the use of restrictive housing covenants by the FHA, which shows how a federal agency can flout presidential preferences and persist on an old policy trajectory until a new president, with views more congruent with an agency’s long-established policy, is elected. Even the president might not have the power to change discriminatory policies in housing despite violations of the 14^th Amendment’s equal protection clause, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It's a civil rights quagmire.

I think somewhere behind this civil rights quagmire is the usual culprit when almost any bad situation is investigated: for-profit industry. Housing is big business and there must be money to be made by segregating it. Segregation of education and the workforce is merely collateral damage to whatever industries are profiting. Perhaps fighting for-profit with non-profit is a solution. I recently read an article in which a group of tenants in the Bronx had their apartment purchased by a new landlord who threatened rent increases and evictions. They approached a non-profit organization that bought the apartment and sold each tenant the apartments for $2,500 each. That’s just over two month’s rent for apartments that are worth $72,000! It’s food for thought. 

However, we all know this is a dream that won't likely be repeated. I guess this means there are a lot of people who are fine with getting rich at the expense of their fellow citizens, keeping the "riff-raff" out of their neighborhoods, separating rich and poor hoods with big roads, building their countries in elitist ways. It's hard to believe it's 80% though. I think a LOT of that 80% is somewhere in the beginning stages of the Longenecker meme and would gladly take an honest alternative if it were offered. Both in Canada and America. But I could be wrong. 

Why was I writing about this in my schooling? It has a great deal to do with schooling, which, in turn, has a great deal to do with maintaining white supremacy, class competition, and some of the other "us vs. them" ideation that plagues our countries. You are probably thinking that Canada is not like that, but don't kid yourself. When it comes to making a living, supporting and educating our kids, Canadians will drop the gloves and chuck knuckles too. 

In 2018, when I lived in China, a student from Beijing was 41 times more likely to get into a top Chinese university. Not 41% more likely, 41 TIMES! When I lived in Beijing there were lots of empty apartments, but I lived in a hostel. Many of the people I worked with did as well. This was because it is quite common for parents of university aged children to buy apartments in Beijing (not rent, BUY) solely for the purpose of increasing the chances of their children of getting into good universities. Barbaric, right? But I think you will find that if we examine the patterns of residential segregation in Canada and the US, there will be a strong correlation to proximity to better schools. We are privately segregating both our homes and our educations and the number one criterion is money. Of course, if you design a system in which poor people and people of color get less of what is necessary for success in public education and, by extension in life, then the achievement gap is caused by the availability gap, isn't it? I mean, those were NOT poor or even middle class Chinese just buying Beijing condos and not living in them. And with the carefully engineered housing inflation in the US and Canada, it will not be average people who can buy homes and participate in HOA's for very much longer if they even can today.

When a real estate agent speaks of a "gated community" nowadays, what is the general impression they are hoping to give? Who are the people in the community hoping to "gate" out? And is there any better, or more absurd example of social, ethical, and cultural decline than neighbors whose dandelion seeds are reportedly infesting lush, green lawns being penalized, fined, foreclosed, or evicted by the HOA while we are all aware that if you are 35 or younger, good luck ever getting a home, much less a lawn in your lifetime!? 

If rental rates were not so outrageous and landlords were not so mercenary about raising rent and/or evicting tenants, I'd almost be happy to have escaped this decidedly oleaginous aspect of home ownership. I mean if I thought I could find a cave where I could live without some smarmy landlord holding out his/her hand every month and smiling at how much cleverer he/she is than I to have purchased the cave through the benefit of arbitrary social standing and nothing more, yet FULLY believing that he/she had somehow earned that privilege, I would. But I don't think that cave exists. Anybody know where I could find a cave like that?