This night I am thinking about why I forgot to write this morning.

It’s because we’re looking for a place to live. It’s complicated, because there are several factors to consider and more than one possible way this could all shake out; but regardless, we will be moving out of our current rental within a few months. And that means we’re looking for a new place to live.

I hate looking for a place to live.

I hate renting.

I know this is not new: plantation owners in the South used rents to create a new slave class, even after Emancipation, which we call sharecroppers; I have not doubt that many people are still stuck in that impossible cycle. Before that, the English landowners drained all of the wealth in Ireland through exorbitant rents; they also got the IRA, a centuries-long guerrilla war, and the very first eponymous boycott, named for Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee English landlord.

Plus, y’know, every colony that’s ever been taxed, and every serf who has fed his lord instead of himself, and, well, pretty much all of us who aren’t at the top of the capitalist feudal food chain, have dealt with this same issue.

Don’t you think it’s time we just cut the crap?

Look: I don’t own a house. It’s not by choice, it’s because I’m a public school teacher in the United States — and there’s another issue that I wish we would just figure out; the idea that the state where I currently live had been 49th in paying teachers, and then the teachers themselves walked out in order to bring attention to the issue, and now we’re like 47th, is just — it’s exhausting. Because I don’t own a house, I need to borrow someone else’s. I get that. I am perfectly willing to pay for the privilege of living in someone else’s house.

I am not willing, however, to make someone else rich by profiting off of my willingness to pay for the privilege of living in their house.

After all, I am asking nothing from my landlord but — well, land. I am a grown person: I am perfectly capable of carrying out minor repairs and performing general upkeep; if I cannot do a necessary thing, I am happy to call in a professional to do it for me, and if I didn’t have to fork over like 40% of my monthly income in rent, I would be happy to pay for said professional. Since I do need to fork over a ridiculous proportion of my income in rent, I am consequently not willing to wipe off the wall when I sneeze on it. (I’m exaggerating. I’d wipe off the wall. Or at least try not to sneeze in an obvious place.) And in exchange, because I am turned obstinate and intransigent by the extortionate rent, my landlord turns to the modern version of Capt. Boycott: the property management company. They, of course, require a certain percentage of my rent in order to manage me; and my landlord certainly isn’t going to sacrifice that amount from his profits: so the cost gets passed on to me.

So because I am charged too much, I have to be charged more; because I am resentful of how much I have to pay, everything gets done slowly, and poorly, because my landlord and the property managers look for the lowest bidder for any required repairs, and they are generally slow and incompetent as well as cheap. And the value and overall quality of the property goes down, and everyone suffers because of it. And all because my landlord can’t just rent out the property for enough to cover his costs for the property; he’s got to squeeze me dry. Just because he can.

From there we add the ridiculous application process, where I now have to hand over $55 or more per adult applying, and the obscene “security deposit” which is really just another wad of cash we hand over to the owners, because never have I ever gotten the full deposit back after moving out, regardless of how well I have kept the place up, and even added minor improvements; doesn’t matter, because the owners want to keep my money, so they find a way to charge me for the privilege of no longer living in their home.

 

I’m sorry this blog wasn’t funny. I’m sorry that I have nothing insightful or valuable to add to this whole issue. All I can ever think when I go out hunting a new rental is that I wish I could be a real estate tycoon, not so I could make billions, but just so I could go ahead and rent out my properties for a reasonable rate, based on a reasonable interview with a would-be renter, and the simple fact of trust between myself and my tenants. I just want to give people a chance to not hate everything about where they live. It would make everything so much nicer.

 

Too bad I’m not rich.