For Real Estate

If you really want to hate yourself, here's the way to do it: I suggest having a really tough time in your 20s—like, going-to-rehab tough, taking-eight-years-for-an-undergrad tough—and then having a weird stop-start approach to work for many years, working at places that were short-term contract or, frankly, abusive, until you finally become self-employed at the age of 32 (the same year you have your baby), diligently setting aside 25% of what you earn (and lord, you don't make much) so you can pay your taxes, and then slowly build up a client roster, despite a global pandemic during which you were routinely billing a cool $400 a month because the work dried up and also you were taking care of the aforementioned baby, now a school-aged child, and slowly bringing clients back despite the rumping-frumping pandora, now to a level where you can now afford luxuries like "new shoes," all of which is happening against the backdrop of one of the most runaway-locomotive housing markets in the world, and then think, one day, optimistically, that maybe we should think about buying a house, and arranging a meeting with a really nice guy at the bank who tells you that you and your husband can carry a mortgage that is worth, basically, a shitty shoebox on the busiest street in town, and that your shoebox will bring you a 6% ROI, so it's "a good idea," and also, have you considered having a job with a pay stub? And then walking out into the brilliant June afternoon, blue skies above and self-loathing in your heart, because you suspect—strongly—that you are an utter and total loser who is not keeping pace with the other adults of her generation, people who have things like pensions and RRSPs and deeds to the houses in which they live, while you have a collection of thrift-store shoes and a seven-year-old who knows what a landlord is.

Do I sound defensive? I am. I'm defensive, I'm angry, and I'm tired. I'm tired of worrying about when my landlord is going to want his house back. I'm tired of looking at 1000-square-foot houses that sell for $650,000. I'm tired of worrying about where I'm supposed to come up with money for this, what I'm supposed to trade in on my life—the flexibility I have with my clients and my child? my mental health? the town I live in and love?—so that I can get a good-on-paper job to impress the bank man. I'm tired of being jealous of the people who bought ten years ago, or whose families could give them money. I'm just tired.

Real estate has been a conversation topic for years, even among us supposedly feckless millennials. In 2017-2018, I knew more than a dozen people who were evicted: greedy landlords, take-backs, houses for sale, and renovictions set so many people adrift. I've been evicted, once, through no fault of ours. We were good tenants. We paid our rent on time, kept the backyard clean, hushed our newborn to keep our neighbours happy. And then one day, the woman who owned our house moved to Toronto to be closer to her family, and we didn't have anywhere to live. I know what it is to have a house and then, you know, not. I don't want to feel that again, so it seems wise to work towards owning a home.

But the other side of that coin is that houses are fucking expensive! Much more than they should be, honestly. It's borderline criminal that things like housing and food have been turned into market assets, because at the end of the day, if you live in Canada, you cannot sleep on the beach like Jack Kerouac or a surf girlie. You need a roof over your head. You still need to eat. There's that meme that says "Housing, but 'everyone gets a first plate before anyone gets seconds,'" and I tend to agree with that. I'm not talking about a summer cottage and a place in town: I know people who own three or four or five houses, and complain about their tenants as they sit on five million dollars of assets. More than half of MPs own multiple properties. Like, please, I am ready for the cake?

And I'm not throwing shade at anyone who owns their house—they bought young, or lived with their families while their condos were built, or had an inheritance instead of a beloved family member. I'm just pissed at the system that has let us down. The affordable housing stock in Stratford is dingy and on the edge of town, creating a ghetto-ish micro-neighbourhood that is underserviced and a little scary. The affordable housing stock in Toronto is dingy and dilapidated, with a decades-long wait list to boot. The government has not invested in alternative housing models, like co-operatives, in many years. They've made it cheaper for developers, sure, but that comes at the cost of things like urban intensification (read: walkability, access to services), developer fees that pay for vital municipal services (your library, schools, and transit system), and even diversity of housing stock (there's a reason new builds tend to be megamansions in the small towns and one-bedroom condos in the cities: it's because developers like it that way). The system is broken, and all my liberal meme shitposting isn't going to solve squat.

Writing about it helps, because I know I'm a bit alone (most people own their houses in Stratford), but I'm not totally alone. We have people everywhere who are grappling with this question. There are people who have built their life, which includes being a chronically-ill artist, around their current rent and can't save up for a house. There are the people who moved towns in order to afford a house. There are the folks who are generally very successful on paper, but who want to buy where they live and that market is bananas. We have people who have thousands of dollars in the bank but no income; where do they go? We have people selling two properties to buy one, and crossing their fingers that they can afford a house that will contain both their family and their stuff. We're all facing our own special personalized bullshit, but the container is all this stupid fucking decade-long moment in the market. 

The physical sensation I associate with my real-estate thoughts is suffocation. It feels like my chest is being squeezed, like a firm boot on my sternum, like I can swim towards the surface and never make it. It is prelude to a panic attack; it is also rage, pure and simple. It feels like there's no easy solution: we can't beg or borrow enough money to make this good, and meanwhile, the housing market turns as plasmatic as a microwaved grape. I'm not rooting for a market crash; I'm rooting for benevolent aliens to crash-land on earth and start developing laneway houses, because honestly, that seems more likely. 

I'm ready for my NDP socialist hellscape, please. I want good, high-quality affordable housing. I want a cap on the number of properties a landlord can own, or the amount of rental income a landlord can receive. (Landlords hate this idea, but tra la la, I don't really care.) I want the banks and the government to work together to make housing accessible to people nation-wise, because I don't want to move to Thunder Bay to buy a house. I want developers to build three-bedroom condos. I want a better tenant-to-homeowner pipeline. I want co-op development to be funded. I want subsidies for tenants. I want it all, and while I'm full of good ideas (again, unless you're a landlord, then all these ideas are very bad), I have zero ability to pull it off. The system is rigged. I'm stuck. And all the blue skies and bank meetings don't take the boot off my chest.