…And I mean everyone! Like, you talk to people, some of whom are renting right now, the rest of them are staying in apartments left behind by family members instead, and their ultimate goal in life is always “save up some money, buy a house/apartment, rent in on airbnb, quit working”.
At this point, I don’t even know how many people have told me this is their life plan. Every one of those people either rents or knows so many people who rent. Everyone who lives in a rented apartment every year starts complaining about how rent prices are out of control and nobody can afford it. Like:
1- How can anyone think its a stable market that won’t crash in the future and allow you to retire like 20-30 years. Like, if everyone is saying that renting is way too expensive, I just think at some point people are going to leave the city because they can’t afford it.
2- Or that it’s an ethical sector of the economy that it’s okay to profit from. You see yourself being squeezed and all you can think about is how much you want to be the squeezer (is that even a word?).
3- That wanting to be a landlord is something to be proud of and something to be very open about. Like, "Yes, I want to be a leech, I want to make other people suffer while I prosper from their work.
I understand that they are just part of an oppressive system and they don’t see any other way out of it, but it is so boring and annoying to hear the 40th person tell you how they are going to buy an apartment in the center of town and rent it out to tourists.
Also I will forever remember this guy that was telling me his plan to buy an apartment and rent it like it was the smartest think anybody ever said. You could see the shine in his eyes as he was trying to phrase himself to explain me this simple trick to life, buying an apartment but instead of living in it, you rent it. He went on and on about how smart this trick was and he was going to retire in his 30s. He is not from a rich family so I have no idea how he was going to afford all that.
This is the sort of thing I’ve often fantasised about. But how would it work with finances? The community would still have to buy houses and land and disabled/marginalised people generally don’t have much money.
Well I’d be willing to invest everything I have, though by myself it wouldn’t cover much beyond some land and I already have tools and skills for building but it would require a couple other people with some amount of money, a few able bodies obviously as well. The construction would have to be mostly reclaimed building materials/harvested from the land. Rammed earth is literally dirt cheap, and a few trees from the land would go a long way. Most of the people I know claim to be socialists or MLs or some form of leftists and have some accumulated wealth but so far no one seems willing to actually do anything in real concrete terms. Also zoning laws and building codes are a nightmare to navigate when you are using alternative construction methods beyond something like straw bales around here. Logistics can be overcome, but without a few other people it’s hard to form a collective, hence my disappointment. I’m partially disabled and my window of opportunity is closing with age but that just means I work slower which only matters to capitalist exploiters who want economic output. Anyhow it’s been a thing I’ve been working on, I still haven’t given up. I guess it’s just sheer obstinance.