I am being priced out of my apartment. I don’t live in a great area. I hear gun shots in the summer. They are old apartments with few modern amenities, and a very shitty layer of BLACK vinyl siding added to them to make them look more modern. They want to raise my rent nearly 100 dollars with the new lease.
“It’S nOt Us RaIsInG iT, It Is ThE iNcReAsE iN mArKeT vAlUe!” is the reason I get for the increase. It has nearly doubled in the 6 or 7 years I have lived here.
So I need to move. I have a decent job, but would be spending half of my pay check on a shitty apartment!
I can not fathom someone making less living somewhere else. As frustrated and tired as I am, I have it GOOD compared to many people. They are either living in even worse neighborhoods, or have two incomes that still barely cover rent. And if people lose their jobs for one reason or another, then what?
We need affordable housing. Whether that is apartments, public housing, more houses, - whatever, we need more of it and we need to drive down the cost of living somehow. I know, everyone wants to protect their property values - unless they are retired and living in the same home for the last 20-30 years that they paid off, but can’t afford their property taxes now!
There are small homeless camps a couple miles from where I live. They aren’t nice. It is dirty, trashed, and there are stories of violence. But these people are there because they literally have no where else to go. With a law like this, you can imprison them for 6 years. Really? You want to spend the cost of a trial and then housing and feeding them for 6 years? Why don’t we house them for one year, with counseling and job training and help them re-enter society on their own. Or a safety net that would prevent them from being homeless in the first place.
The homeless problem doesn’t have a single cause. Some of it is a run of bad luck. Some of it medical conditions making it hard to work. Some of it is drug or alcohol addiction. Some of it is mental health related. Rounding them up out of camps and into jail doesn’t fix any of this. They are still screwed when they get out of jail later, only now with a “criminal record”.
