you ever contemplate that sentence? "i want to own a house." that's the bedrock want of ~~~western civilization~~~ right? but it means something completely different depending on how rich you are.
a rich person "wanting to own a house" sees the house primarily as a generator of capital. it's an investment whose market value is likely to go up over time, and in the meanwhile it can be rented out to those who can't buy a house as a fun little double-dip of stolen profits. i say stolen because most of the time rich people don't live in the houses they own. human beings interacting with a rich person's property in any meaningful capacity is a necessary evil that they very openly resent. in their ideal world, your presence as a renter would be as a ghost, intangible, leaving no trace, making no demands. i mean if you're a renter you know most landlords just straight up expect you to be purely effervescent already even when it literally breaks the law.
meanwhile to working class person, "wanting to own a house" means wanting a place to live that you can't be fucking evicted from. it means a home that you can reasonably expect to stay for longer than a year or two.
i don't want to be "a homeowner." i want to live in a place surrounded by people who live in that place, all of us rooted and safe, where we can build something that lasts. i only want to own a house insofar as it puts something solid and heavy under my feet, and keeps the rain off my head. the perversity of ownership is inescapable and its logic is a cancer on society
mind you- by rich, i mean the income there is off the charts. you know what they had though?
1: nice single family or tasteful multiplexes made from brick- they just looked nice, they weren't like supermegamansions, just cute little houses next to brick beergardens & restaurants 2: they had four genres of food in different businesses on the same intersection literally two blocks away 3: they had some nice views- not amazing! just nice! a little pretty glimpse of south lake union, that was it.
even the views just has a highway right through it, now the houses RIGHT THERE on that view were fancy- but even then! they were just modern three level townhouses of so-so quality that had inflated value because of The Amazing Lakeside View.
everything was walkable, relatively modest, everyone looks like they've lived there for decades & it was pretty trivial for them to get any part of town. the air was fresh, the food, despite being from local chains was the best I have had from those chains like we're talking 'NIST EXAMPLE OBJECT' but for Sushi/Pizza/Gyros
it was calm, quiet, chill, cute, safe. the whole time all I could think of was how wealthy that felt- when I do remember a time in the mid 2000s where living somewhere like this felt achievable to even a college student if they didn't mind living with a few others. now it's basically impossible unless you're living in a rich parent's vacation home or know the person renting the place.
we're really in such a fucked up country where wanting something that at best, is a mediocre D grade background matte painting neighborhood in the worst Ghibli knockoff film you've ever seen feels impossible and unsustainable.
I used to predominantly focus on living in places like this, just as a renter!!! just in one of those 'nice' (read: really bougie & nice in like, the 80s or early 90s) apartments or townhomes- because here's the kicker:
every time i've been through the cascades or just gone anywhere a little bit remote In Nature here in washington, it strikes me how much of the land is always walled off to resorts and vacation home communities. you can pick any direction from seattle to drive in and within thirty minutes at most you'll be face to face with one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see. but see it is all you can ever do. you can't stay there. you can't be there. you can't really appreciate it, you can just get out of the car for a while and stare as long as you can afford before you need to get back on the road.
when beauty is a factor in the price of housing, beauty belongs to rich people.
hey you ever think about how in the soviet union workers took frequent vacations to state-funded resorts that belonged to everyone
