i am extremely privileged and lucky to rent an apartment in the middle of the city for very reasonable rent. i won the jackpot and lucked upon a good placement in the city's random housing queue system many years ago, and im renting this place first hand from a city-affiliated housing company.
the company is trying to go over the tenants heads and push through a renovation-- which is badly needed because the buildings water system is falling apart and they have intentionally continued to let it degrade despite it having been predicted to need addressing ten years ago-- where they intend to wastefully rip out and throw away the insides of the whole building, rebuild and decrease the size of the apartments, and double our rent. since it is an old building, many of the tenants are of older age and have lived here a significant portion of their lives, and would be forced to move (where?) because of this. the tenants and renters union are fighting back, but ultimately the law and courts always fall on the side of building owners, so we are simply delaying the inevitable.
its given me a constant underlying anxiety over the whole situation for a long time now. one of the effects of this anxiety is that, when i am commuting to and from work, i will gaze longingly at every single housing i pass by and imagine living there instead. this has become even worse in the past month since i switched over to skipping public transit and doing a full 45 minute biking commute, where i pass by countless buildings every day and ive picked out specific nice looking nicely situated ones i can imagine living a beautiful peaceful life inside if i had money that would allow me to just point at a building and decide i want to live there
i dont know what the point of this post is i was just having a particular bad case of it today and im feeling the need to scream
help