#100% of the income from ALL THREE CLASSES will cover ALL my rent

[pottedfairies]

my advisor wont let me teach 3 classes (as opposed to 2) and im going insane how theyre like “:((( don’t hurt urself while teaching and learning” meanwhile ive been doing that genocide-work-life balance since i was born I CAN HANDLE IT IM BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE GIMME MY MONEYYYYY. 2/3 classes i wanna teach ive taught before i have the slides an everything ANDDD the 3rd class ive also taught just not at this uni IM BUILT DIFFERENT‼️

[crystaljins]

Stars above | 01

Characters: Taehyung x Reader

Word count: 3.3K

Synopsis: Your nagging roommate is desperate for a third person to help meet the rent and your university just so happens to be running a fully-funded government grant for anyone who signs up to participate in the Intergalactic Exchange program.

Having an alien for a roommate is just asking for all kinds of trouble, though.

Alien!Taehyung x reader

Rating: Teens

Notes: So here it is! The beginning of the end! The long awaited alien!tae drabble series. 

For many of you, you may have heard that this is my last bts fic. It’s a bit of a cop out to do a drabble series as my last ever fic but it’s got 11 parts and I think it’s got enough content and a character arc to be satisfying, and I feel it’s fitting that I started this little blog with a taehyung x reader fic and I’m finishing it with one.

Thank you guys so much for the last few years and I look forward to going on one last journey with all of you. Without any further ado, I present to you the fic!

Masterlist

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

You’re suspicious from the moment your roommate shows you the flyer over breakfast one morning. It’s brightly coloured, with information neatly categorised across the glossy surface and your university’s insignia proudly nestled against the corner. 

“Planet BTS-0713 exchange program?” You read out loud, through a mouthful of cereal. She nods enthusiastically, still brandishing the paper like it has the recipe to world peace printed across it. She seems absolutely smitten by the idea but you remain skeptical; after all, while Nayeon has a list of endearing characteristics, altruism unfortunately does not make the top 100.

“Doesn’t it sound exciting? And they don’t just cover our rent, we get extra since it’s part of that intergalactic-peace treaty-agreement thing they’re trying to establish.” She explains. Ah, there it is. The ulterior motive behind her sudden desire for an alien roommate. “It would really help after Yura skipped town last month. I know you’re struggling too.”

You pause, swallowing your cereal contemplatively. As skeptical as you are, there’s a strong element of truth to Nayeon’s words. Yura had always been a little bit of a dodgy roommate- she’d always get a bit weird about paying rent and seemed to think she shouldn’t have to pay the same amount because her room was the furthest from the bathroom, not to mention you’re sure she’d been secretly stealing your nutella despite her insistence that there would be strictly no splitting of groceries. But she’d hit her peak when you and Nayeon had returned home from a night out to find her packed and moved out, the day before rent was due. Of course, none of your calls or desperate texts came through. She’d literally vanished off the face of the planet and the two of you had had to scrounge together your savings to pay her share, and were now struggling to maintain a three-person apartment on the income of just two people. Financially, the government exchange program would help massively, especially since you haven’t been able to find a third roommate in nearly two months now. 

“I’d be keen if it were just a matter of giving them a place to stay.” You finally admit. “But the reason the government offers so much compensation is because you’re basically their legal guardian while they’re on this planet.” You inform her. “The extra money is allowance for showing them around and you’re supposed to help them adjust to all their classes and the transport systems and culture here. You can barely keep a goldfish alive- I had to bury Sergeant Sprinkles the first through to the fourth in Jin’s flower box on the roof. He’s getting suspicious. How will you manage an entire alien life form?” 

Nayeon wrinkles her nose at the thought, but then she steels herself. 

“It’ll be fine!” She insists. “They’re different to goldfish. And Sergeant Sprinkles the fifth has been alive for nearly two weeks now! Besides, I’d really love having a little exchange student to show the best places to get burgers and where the cheapest tequila in town is! Plus,” she glances from side to side as if there’s anyone to overhear you in your apartment at 8 o’clock in the morning. “I hear that they’re just really attractive versions of humans. I’ve been so lonely since Hoseok and I broke up. ” She confesses. And there it is- the final confirmation that altruism is the furthest motive from Nayeon’s mind. With a sigh, you gather your bowl and shuffle over to the sink. In truth, Nayeon has a way of getting her way. And it’s not like a third roommate will magically appear. Your bank account is zooming dangerously close to that dreaded elliptical number.

“Ok. If you’re really that determined.” You relent. You pause midway through your scrubbing of the bowl to point accusingly at her. “But you’re taking full responsibility for our alien roommate! If I hear a single complaint then you’re on garbage duty for a month.”

Nayeon nods eagerly and obediently before throwing her arms around your neck in excitement.

“Oh, thank you (Y/N)!” She cries. “This is going to be so fun!” She promises.

++

 Despite Nayeon’s promise, having an alien roommate is, unsurprisngly, not fun. Kim Taehyung is a nice enough guy- curious, with a sweet disposition and wide smile. And he certainly lives up to to rumours of the good looks of his fellow aliens. 

It’s just that he’s well... he really is an alien. You’ve never met someone quite so eccentric. 

Admittedly, he hadn’t arrived in your apartment with too much fanfare- you were working on an essay in your room and Nayeon had lead him into the apartment, narrating the layout of your apartment loudly enough that it filters into your room and you know he’s arrived. 

Other than a wide smile over dinner and a cheerful introduction, you had tried not to interact with him too much- you hadn’t wanted to adopt yet another of Nayeon’s responsibilities that she didn’t follow through. And judging by her constant swooning, you had nothing to worry about. 

But the next day is really when his alien nature had struck. You had come out of your bedroom to find him in hysterics over breakfast and Nayeon waving a spatula around in confusion. After much probing and hysteric crying from Taehyung, you had eventually discerned the source of his distress; Nayeon had made him scrambled eggs for breakfast. 

That in itself wasn’t the issue- scrambled eggs are one of the few dishes that Nayeon is actually good at. She’s mastered the art of a hangover breakfast and scrambled eggs is her specialty. No, the issues lay with Taehyung’s discovery of what eggs are. 

“You EAT their FOETUSES!” He had cried, eyes swollen and nose snotty. An interesting thing to note is that people from his planet have differently coloured tears to you guys- shimmering blue lines had traced down his cheeks and the effect would be rather hauntingly beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that even on Planet BTS-0713, their nose runs when they cry. 

“Stop crying!” Nayeon had cried back. “It’s not a FOETUS the eggs are UNFERTILISED.”

It had taken an emergency trip to the grocery store to buy vegan-friendly groceries for Taehyung (and obviously you had to do it since Nayeon wouldn’t know a vegetable if it slapped her in the face) and a bottle of strawberry milk (although you chose to withold the information of where milk comes from) to calm down his hysterics. 

And then there’d been the time you’d had to sit with him in the emergency room because he’d watched a documentary on his planet about the pets that humans keep and had tried to pet a squirrel. Apparently the documentary had confused squirrels with dogs and he had gotten bitten. Luckily, he’d had his rabies shot before he came to earth but you’d still had to hold his hand while the doctor cleaned his wound and your favourite shirt was stained blue because he’d cried onto it. 

Probably the last straw, for Nayeon at least, is when the two of you find him throwing up into the sink. She’d left her Urban Decay Naked Ultraviolet Eyeshadow Pallette open on the coffee table because she likes to do her makeup in the living room even though you keep telling her the landlord will get mad if she stains the carpet, and Taehyung had mistaken them for a snack they sell on his home planet. 

“Can we send him back?” She had begged you, a far cry from his first night where she’d insisted on sitting next to him the whole night and personally served him dinner. He’d only managed to crunch through one of the slabs of makeup before it had occurred to him that he’d made a mistake but the impression left by his teeth tells the story well enough. 

“He’s not a toy. You can’t just return him because you didn’t think things through.” You scold, hands on your hips. “Have you even taken him out once since he’s been here? What happened to taking full responsibility?”

She pouts, folding her arms and releasing an annoyed huff. 

“(Y/N),” she tells you with the most serious expression you’ve ever seen upon her face. “He ate my makeup pallette. Do you see this? This is a bite mark.” She says, brandishing the pallette for good measure. “You can’t seriously expect me to spend time with him.”

You groan. You should have known it would come to this when you agreed to let him stay. After all, you had just finished cleaning Sergeant Sparkles the fifth’s tank not an hour before because it had gone bright green and Nayeon had insisted that he was dead and that there was no point in cleaning the tank because she’d just be traumatised by his dead body. The clean had revealed him not only to be alive, but also possibly slightly mutated due to the near radioactive levels of faeces floating in his tank. She hadn’t managed to keep the goldfish alive for more than two weeks; you’d had to take over for her, like you usually do.

“One night.” You say. “Give him one chance, and do your job once. If you don’t end up enjoying it, then you can talk to the manager of the program.” 

She cheers in relief. 

“Thank you! Also can you help me fill out this compensation form? I want them to cover the cost of this pallette.”

++

You should clarify: Nayeon is a great friend and roommate. She never leaves dirty dishes in the sink and she usually remembers to ask your permission before having friends over. She’s always happy to offer outfit advice, and every now and then she’ll even give you lifts into uni because you hate finding parking. And even with all her personality quirks, she’s a peaceful roommate and you’d even go so far as to call her one of your closest friends. 

What she is not, however, is reliable. In any way, shape, or form. You can never ask her favours because she’ll forget and on the rare occasions you do need something from her, you have to send her a reminder text the day before and on the day of, stick sticky notes with reminders on her bedroom door, the fridge, her car keys, the front door and on her shoes and even then she’ll still sometimes forget.

So really, it’s on you for being surprised when she stumbles into the apartment the next night, drunk and without Taehyung in tow. 

“You went clubbing?” You cry, catching her before she careens face-first onto the coffee table. She squints at you and hiccups a little. “For his first night out on earth?”

“You told me to do something fun.” She slurs at you accusingly. You grimace, because you had said that when the two of them had left earlier in the night. You should have realised that that’s the coat Nayeon wears when she wants to hide the fact that she’s dressed to go to a party and not her friend’s place for a study night during exams. 

“Fine. Ok. But where’s Taehyung?” You demand. You look around for a sign that he was coming up a little later than Nayeon, but your scan confirms it; the hallway outside your apartment is decidedly lacking the presence of your intergalactic guest. 

Nayeon frowns, and her face wrinkles up in the way that it does when she’s thinking very hard. 

“We got separated during the night.” She recounts slowly. “And then I couldn’t find him so I assumed he made his own way home.”

You nearly drop her in horror. You grab her by the shoulders. 

“Nayeon!” You cry urgently. “He’s an alien! He can’t find his own way home. He asked me what a train is yesterday! And I’m still trying to convince him cars aren’t sentient after you made him watch that weird disney movie the other day!” 

She gasps in drunken offence. 

“Cars is a classic.” She insists. You’re too busy to answer, your heart sinking as you think about quirky, crybaby Taehyung, lost in the middle of the city and completely naive to the ways of Earth people. Not to mention that a lot of people on Earth are still hostile to people from his planet. You’d been so insistent that this not be another instance of you taking over for Nayeon and becoming a glorified babysitter yet again that you’d let Taehyung bear the brunt of your negligence. No matter how unreliable Nayeon is, in the end, you’d been the one to agree. You’d relented because you didn’t want to deal with her incessant nagging, and you’d ignored every sign that Taehyung needed more help and support than what Nayeon was willing to give him. 

And now he’s lost in a random Earth city with no money and no phone, abandoned by the closest thing to family he has on this entire planet. 

You feel like your heart has been pummelled with a sledgehammer and it is in that exact moment that you decide that it’s time to take responsibility for your actions. 

And to take responsibility for Taehyung.

You just manage to pry the name of where Nayeon had left Taehyung, and then you grab your keys and sprint out the door, still in your loungewear and house slippers. 

++

Taehyung regrets signing up for this exchange program. It was supposed to be his chance, to “prove himself”. All his friends and family had all insisted that he was too much of an airhead to ever make anything of himself and that he wouldn’t last two seconds on a cutthroat place like Earth. He’d just been foolishly stubborn- there had been something magical and enticing about the cultures and the landscapes shown in the documentaries that aired on his home planet. He’d thought he could handle it; how wrong he has been. 

For one thing, his roommates, his supposed legal guardians on earth, hate him. Nayeon hadn’t stopped complaining about the makeup incident for twelve hours now, and you had been quiet and recluse in the same way you always seem to be. Not to mention he’d overheard your conversation the day before- he had one chance to prove to Nayeon that he could live up to the fun alien roommate ideal she had in her head or he’d be homeless and stranded until the end of his exchange. 

Not that he’s even sure he wants to continue this exchange. Between the barbaric food (they eat unborn chicken babies!) and the unfriendly culture, Earth seems like the most horrible, primitive, cruel society to exist across all thirty galaxies and planet systems with intelligent life forms. He should have gone on exchange to MonX instead. 

At least then he wouldn’t be stuck here, in the rain, cold and wet and alone. He’s not sure where Nayeon went- she’d been quick to ditch him the second they made it inside the doors of the “fun place” she’d promised to take him to. Said “fun place” turned out to just be some horrible, noisy, crowded, dark room where humans seemed to lose their minds and drink a substance that sounded suspiciously like a potent neurotoxin when Nayeon had described it to him. He’d been kicked out soon after, and with no way of contacting Nayeon, he’d decided to wait out on the side of the road. Only, then a lady had come up to him and slapped him, unprompted, accusing him of being a “filthy space demon” and he’d been quick to try and find a new corner to loiter in and wait for Nayeon to take him home. 

It’s been a few hours now and there’s no sign of her. It’s also been raining steadily for at least an hour now and he’s soaked through and chilled to the bone. He feels stupid and childish when the hot tears start to trickle down his face but he’s scared and alone. 

He’s about to dial the “sos” alert they had given him for strict emergencies when he’d first arrived on this planet when he hears it. 

It’s difficult to discern through the steady stream of rain but it definitely sounds like his name. He squints forward, and he makes out a figure racing through through the rain towards him.

As the figure draws nearer, he’s able to identify it- it’s you. You’re sprinting desperately through the rain, still dressed in what he’s come to recognise as your house clothes, with your house slippers still on, soaked and muddied. 

He watches, bewildered, as you skid to a stop before him. Your hair and clothes are soaked through and you’re completely out of breath. 

“Are you ok?” You gasp, between pants. You double over, trying to gather yourself, and he just stares. When he doesn’t respond, you try again. “Are you hurt? Gosh, she didn’t even leave you an umbrella! I told Nayeon to check the weather before you left. And the bouncer at the club told me a drunk woman slapped you?” You crouch before him, examining the tender skin of his cheek which has probably gone a soft purple thanks to the swelling from the angry woman’s earlier slap. “Taehyung!” You call urgently again. With your fingers pressed into his cheeks, he experiences the rush of emotions coursing through you- panic, worry, guilt. It’s for him, he realises with a start. It’s a shock to realise that the standoffish, quiet girl who had a knack for acting like he didn’t exist and scolding her roommate was capable of this level of distress on another person’s behalf. And with the prolonged contact of your fingers to his cheek, the sensation only grows to the point that he’s baffled that anyone, let alone you, could feel like this towards a random alien they hardly knew.

It’s enough to shake him out of his stupor. It’s a bit embarrassing to say, but you’ve genuinely left him at a loss for words. He doesn’t know if it’s the way you’ve clearly raced straight from your apartment to get him, or if it’s the sheer relief at not being stuck on the side of the road on a random planet light years away from his actual home. But whatever it is, something peaceful settles within him. All the lonely days, the crippling embarrassment from silly errors, the homesickness, melts away at the sight of you, soaked in the rain and genuinely concerned for his wellbeing. 

He drops his head onto your shoulder, which is still warm despite the icy chill of the rain, and he’s crying before he knows it. 

He doesn’t really mean to spill his guts out to you, but one of the most valued things on his home planet is companionship, and he’d been sorely lacking in that since coming here. But he feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders by the time he finishes. At some point during his rant, you’d wrapped your arms carefully around him and as the bare skin of your neck tickles his cheek he feels a rush of something through his body, though he’s not sure whether it’s from you or from him. It’s an unfamiliar emotion- one that feels warm and sweet, almost fond, but tinged with hesitation and concern. 

“I’m... sorry.” You finally say. “I didn’t realise it had been that bad. I’ll... I’ll try harder.” You promise. 

And when he pulls away and gazes into your eyes, he belatedly realises that you have warm eyes. Despite your aloof and sometimes grumpy nature, the way you regard him is gentle, and sweet, directly contrasting your supposed personality. But, glimpsing that, he knows from that moment that things are gonna be better. 

You lead him back to your car with the promise of dry clothes and a warm dinner at home, and Taehyung finally feels like maybe this exchange won’t turn out to be that awful. 

[fishandloaves]

#JusticeForGrenfell💚

I haven’t seen much noise about this on tumblr and because it’s a topic that is very close to my heart, I thought I would write my own thing...

Today (14th June 2020) is the three year anniversary of the Grenfell Tower Fire. In the early hours of 14th June 2017, a fire broke out in a 24-storey tower block in Kensington, West London. The fire quickly spread, engulfing the entire building. The tragedy resulted in 72 recorded deaths, and more than 200 people were left homeless. It was 100% avoidable, and the fire was a direct result of funding cuts and cutting corners and finding loopholes to avoid adhering to fire safety legislation. News outlets across the country described this as a tragedy. It was not a tragedy, it was a travesty. Mass murder by any other name. 

The Grenfell Tower Fire was one of the most visceral visual manifestations of racial and socioeconomic injustice in modern memory. I’m going to include a brief history/explanation as to why and how, but I am by no means an expert so I encourage you to read about this further. 

Grenfell Tower was in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but was managed by the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. In 2015-16, Grenfell Tower was significantly ‘redeveloped.’ as part of a £10million refurbishment project in partnership with Rydon and other contractors, which was part of a £57m neighbourhood regeneration scheme. As a part of the redevelopment programme, the building was installed with new windows, cladding, and thermal insulation. As part of this, new aluminium composite rainscreen cladding was introduced, of which two types were used: Reynobond PE and Reynolux aluminium sheets. The changing of the cladding was mainly to ensure ‘that the character and appearance of the area are preserved and living conditions of those living near the development suitably protected.’ - in other words, fire safety was compromised to make the building more aesthetically pleasing to the wider (note: wealthier) community in K&C. The company doing the cladding, Arconic, knew that it was unsuitable for high rise buildings over 10m (Grenfell was 63m tall). The new FLAMMABLE RS5000 insulation, produced by Saint-Gobain, failed several fire safety tests and was generally deemed unsafe for high rise buildings. The combination of flammable insulation and cladding caused a fire that should have been compartmentalised to one flat to engulf the whole building. The residents were subject to a ‘stay put’ policy that meant the majority of them were left unable to escape. I have highlighted the companies that are complicit in this corporate murder in bold here, because I believe their names should not be forgotten and they need to be heard so they can be held to account. 

The building had no central fire alarm, no proper fire exits/fire-safe doors, no sprinkler system, no evacuation plan. It failed fire safety checks. Grenfell Tower’s infrastructure was illegal.  The area had also suffered cuts to the fire brigade under Boris Johnson, who was at that time Mayor of London.

In January 2016,  the Labour Party tried to introduce a bill that would require all rented housing to be ‘safe for human habitation’, and would have given residents of accommodation like Grenfell Tower the power to sue their landlords for breach of contract. It was voted down by 72 Conservative politicians, who at this stage has a majority in Parliament. They voted it down because they were landlords themselves deriving income from property. Landlord MPs can affect all decisions to do with housing legislation as long as they declare their interests, and they had a financial interest in the rented sector that led them to vote down secure safety protections. 

The Grenfell Action Group raised concerns about fire safety in the building for years prior to the fire. In a blog post dated 20th November 2016, about 6 months before the tragedy, the Grenfell Action Group warned that “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.’ ‘The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won’t be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the health and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!’ [emphasis added]. The government’s own equalities watchdog found that the management of the tower breached their rights to life and adequate housing of the residents, as well as many human rights inquiries since.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy is inextricably tied with race and class. This was a council estate, which meant it was occupied primarily by working class people, the majority of them council tenants, Muslims, immigrants, and refugees. Grenfell tower stood in the most deprived area of the wealthiest borough of London: it was a stark, brutalist block surrounded by cushy mansions and estates. Furthermore, the process of concentrating processes of urban “regeneration” and gentrification is a wider symptom of the privatisation of social housing, and is trauma from neoliberalism. I could go on forever about how political history and gentrification and the ways in which this ultimately led to disaster, but I’ve already gone on for too long so long story short: this was an entirely avoidable tragedy that is a culmination of racist and classist policies, where profit for the companies and aesthetics for the affluent upper class neighbourhood was prioritized over the lives of members of one of the most deprived communities in the UK.

Today, not much has been done by way of justice. Although the ‘safe for human habitation’ bill was passed post-Grenfell, it only applies to new buildings. Current households with unsafe flammable cladding, of which there are approximately 24,000, are not required to be retrospectively made safe. The government has missed the target of June 2020 to get rid of flammable cladding. Some 246 buildings still have Aluminium Composite Material installed. The public inquiry into the fire has been put on hold because of the pandemic. It has already revealed that companies such as Arconic, Saint-Gobain etc. knew that their materials were unsuitable for Grenfell Tower, but the council went ahead with the regeneration project anyway to save some money.  Survivors of the fire say nothing has changed. The survivors of Grenfell Tower are yet to be offered permanent housing and were even threatened with being branded as ‘intentionally homeless’ if they refused significant relocation outside of London.

Please do not forget about Grenfell Tower. Do not let corporate greed and murder go unforgotten. This was one of the starkest illustrations of racial inequality and poverty and our lifetimes, and we must keep fighting for justice. The poor and the weak should not be cooped up in these unsafe buildings as lambs for the slaughter. 

Please please email your MP and demand that the inquiry is continued and that the findings are widely publicized and lead to proper policy change implementing proper regulation of these criminal regeneration projects. Pressure your MPs to push for funding to be reallocated to these deprived communities. Please keep fighting for the Grenfell residents who are dealing with the trauma of losing their loved ones and gross incompetence by their council and potential permanent homelessness all at once. 

Please follow Grenfell United, an organisation made up of survivors and bereaved members of the community and sign up to their newsletter for ways you can actively get involved. Please also consider donating to the Grenfell Foundation. Most of all, please do not allow Grenfell to leave the public consciousness. Don’t allow these to be covered up. Keep talking about it, please keep fighting for it. Love and solidarity 💚  #justiceforgrenfell

[lunarr-rrose]

Case Study #1 - Mokena Self Storage

Fernando Angelucci is working on a large deal in Mokena, Illinois. This is a project that he is very proud of and excited about.

In this video, Fernando discusses this project, how he found it, and what the different factors he had to take into consideration. Everything is covered including his thought process as well as the results or expected results of the project is in this 7-minute video.

Fernando O. Angelucci is Founder and President of Titan Wealth Group. He also leads the firm’s finance and acquisitions departments. Fernando Angelucci and Steven Wear founded Titan Wealth Group in 2015, and under his leadership, the firm’s revenue has grown over 100% year over year. Today,  

Find out more at

https://www.TheStorageStud.com http://titanwealthgroup.com/

Titan Wealth Group operates nationwide sourcing off market investment properties for Titan Wealth Group’s acquisition as well as servicing a network of thousands of active real estate investors world wide. Prior to founding Titan Wealth Group, Fernando worked for Dow Chemical, a Fortune 50 company, rolling out a flagship product estimated to gross $1B in global revenues.  

With an engineering background, Fernando is able to approach real estate investing with a keen analytical mindset that allows Titan Wealth Group to identify opportunities and project accurate pictures of future performance.  

Fernando graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.A. degree in Technical Systems Management.

Titan Wealth Group was founded in 2015 with the vision of gathering individual investors that have the means to invest but lack either the time to find high-yield investment opportunities or the access to these off-market deals. All too often, founders Fernando Angelucci & Steven Wear came across investors who had deployed their capital only to regret the lack of consistency or degree of returns their investments were producing. In response, Titan Wealth Group provides access to highly-vetted real estate secured investments and off-market acquisition opportunities primarily in the Greater Chicago MSA. Today, Titan Wealth Group not only assists individual investors but has grown to support the acquisition goals and capital deployment of investment groups, private equity firms, and real estate investment trusts (REITs).

As a facilitator of wealth growth, Titan Wealth Group believes that success is not limited to the sum of our efforts and is infinite with what can be accomplished through partnership. 

#SelfStorage #RealEstateInvesting #AlternativeFunds ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So one of the deals I'm currently working on, one that I'm very proud of and extremely excited about is a large REIT grade Class A Self Storage facility in Mokena, Illinois, which is a Southern suburb of Chicago. It's a very interesting deal. And just goes to show how your network truly is your net worth. So I had a developer reach out to me with since become very good friends with. And he had a project in Mokena, but he was a little tight for funds and wanting to partner up and figure that more heads were better than one. So he brought me the deal and he said, Hey, Fernando, is this something that you'd be interested in participating in? I said, send over the due diligence information and I'll take a look and I'll let you know my level of interest. Well, when he sent over the due diligence package, I was extremely excited.

One of the things that we always look at as self storage developers is the amount of supply and demand in any given market. And when we say market we're specifically talking about the trade area right now. The trade area is going to be a one, a three, or potentially a five mile radius around the subject property. The reason for that is 90% to 95% of your customer base will come from that trade area depending on the density of the population in the area. So if you're in the urban center, it's going to be a smaller trade area. Whereas if, you know, farther out in the rural areas that you're going to have a larger trade area to encompass, cause it's based of the drive time. The amount of time someone's willing to drive to get to your self storage facility.

So the reason I was excited about this facility was when I looked at the demographic study, as well as the supply index ratios and the feasibility study, it showed that the market was extremely underserved almost by four times. Which means I would be able to increase the amount of storage in the area four times the amount that's currently there and still not meet the total demand. So it was sitting at about a 1.5 net rentable square feet per capita. So 1.5 square feet of storage per person in that trade area, which is extremely low. The national average for equilibrium is about six square feet per person in your area. So that's why I saw that there's the ability to four times the supply. Once we build our facility, which is going to be roughly 140,000 gross square foot. Net rentable about 108,000 net rentable square feet. Will only be at a three to three and a half net rentable square feet per person in the trade air, which means that there's still a ton of demand in the area. And if we remember our, you know, economics 101 class, when there is unmet demand, the price increases to meet, to basically have the part of demand fall off. It's unwilling to pay those prices. So those are very good statistics for us.

This facility is going to be a REIT grade Class A facility. Now what I mean by that is it's a third generation facility. When you look at it from the outside, it almost doesn't even look like a storage facility. It kind of looks like a luxury office building. Luxury, you know, almost like commercial building. It's going to be three stories tall. They have really nice facade on the outside, massive landscape package. You're going to have huge sign and a lot of glass doors just so you can see glass windows. So you can see all of the brightly colored storage locker doors in it. It'll have roughly 960 units give or take a few, depending on how the final plan shake out. Sits on a four acre parcel and it'll take roughly 9 to 12 months for us to build it. It's a large structure, but we have a superstar development team on the project with us.

We will hold the asset for about four and a half years in total. So how does that break down? The first 9 to 12 months is actually building the facility and then getting CO or Certificate of Occupancy from the municipality. Once we have that, then we're going to start our leasing activities. It's going to take another about 24 months for it to break even. Which means that the cash flow coming from the property is enough to cover all the expenses and the debt service or the mortgage payments on the property. So now we're at about month 36 or so, and then from month 36 to month, you know, 50 to 52, 56 or so, we're going to be leasing up from break-even to what we consider stabilization. In the self storage industry, stabilization is considered 90% occupancy. The reason why it's not a hundred percent is because if you're at a hundred percent occupancy, that means that you're not charging high enough rents.

You always want to have a little bit of vacancy. And the reason why is a hundred percent occupancy facility at a certain rent threshold versus raising those rents and being at a 90% occupancy threshold, that 90% facility is actually going to be producing more cash flow than the facility that's at a hundred percent occupancy. So that's gonna take us about, you know, 50 to 56 months or so. At that point, we'll start courting the REITs. Now, remember I said before, this is a "REIT grade" facility. Now what that means is that you have these large Real Estate Investment Trust companies that specialize in self storage. They don't want to take the risk of building the facilities themselves because they're sitting on so much cash. They'd rather have somebody else do that. And then just come in and buy it. When it's ready to go to the market.

They want stable. They want consistent and safe returns for their investors through the stock market. So they would rather buy it once it's completely stabilized. These large REITs will actually come in and they're going to start making us offers in the very low cap rate ranges. Usually in the five to six, maybe six and a half percent cap rate range. Cap rate, just to remind you guys again is going to be your net, your annual net operating income divided by your purchase price or your build costs. Your all in total project costs. So this facility will be producing in excess of a million dollars in net operating income per year. And based off of that multiple, we should be able to sell this thing anywhere between $17million to $18million. Could be a really good deal. Our total cost into the project will float between $12million to $13million. So it'll be a pretty healthy return for the project. So we're really excited about that.

If you'd like to learn more about self storage or some other projects that we're working on currently, feel free to drop us a line. My name is Fernando Angelucci. And I'm The Storage Stud.

[thoughtremixer]

Update on the aftermath of the whole police incident and the fund raiser...

Hello, everyone.

So, it’s been a while since the last update and I wanted to let y’all in on things.

I have been talking to a therapist about a lot of things, and my mind is slowly coming back to a certain point in my life.

I still have a high distrust about cops. It used to be “a little hopeful” before my arrest. But now it’s “if there’s a social media cop, I immediately shame them”.

I didn’t raise 100% of the funds. Nor do I want 100% of the it. I just want enough so I can work less.

Some people seem to think that my distrust for the cops started because I spent time in a holding cell. That’s laughable.

I was arrest time and time before for harden criminal activity like... not having an ID, calming down an ex-girlfriend while she had a panic attack (some White couple reported us because I was trying to stop her from killing herself into incoming traffic), jumping between trains, you know... random criminal activity that makes for good jail time stories.

Even the times when I done things like reported my bike stolen (3 times), cops usually SHAME me when I’m talking to them, like I have no common sense. My personal experiences with the cops are so bad, I don’t really call them for anything. If I see a domestic violence problem, I try solving it myself if I’m able to and I done it a few times.

Getting kneed by three police officers in riot gear for being a member of the press isn’t something fun. I’m still trying to find a class lawsuit against the NYPD for what they did during the protests. Once I find one, I’ll be one of many voices in that. The fact that I lost a phone, an (rented) electric bike that was less than 3 days old, a helmet and a month of income... all to start my birthday... really pissed me off.

Also, funny story... people think I’m making things up in my own personal story, and since I got no video, it didn’t happen... despite that I have a broken phone, and a google activity history that puts me RIGHT in the heat of things.

Another thing I gotta put up with... people who think I’m seeking attention because I said “I have suicidal thoughts”. This isn’t from one arrest. The arrest opened the floodgates to a LOT of suppressed problems and THAT is what making me suicidal. But the good news is, I am not an extreme case. But it doesn’t mean that I cannot have them. It’s thoughts, just like me wanting to do nasty things with Janet Jackson. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

I haven’t done any press work since that day. I’ve done some minor stories, but only if it doesn’t involve people wanting to scream at me for recording them. I’m only going to go after light stories. I’ve been asked to cover shootings and police work and I kept refusing them all the time.

I’m spending more time working to move into another place. I’m moving into a quiet neighborhood where the majority of the people there are White. Not exactly the place I wanna be, but considering everything that happened to me within the last two years, I rather be in a place where people can’t find me for at least a year or so.

With that being said... I still need help, and if you can assist me, that would be nice.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-nukirk-recover

But let’s say you want to help in another way while helping yourself:

https://www.betterhelp.com/rpc/bc5dab879d7549e1-1-01

This is BetterHelp, an online therapy service that let’s you talk to a licensed counselor. It’s a nice alternative to going to therapy in person, especially with COVID-19 still out and about. The link will give you a free week. And I’ll get a free week in return for referring you.

Which is great because I got two months left before I have pay for another three months. I’m going to do it because I may need to talk to them for a year on the other problems I got upstairs. 

[aspiringminimalist]

Breaking Up With The Idea of Home

I always see these beautiful home interiors. I love their intricate rugs and mid-century furnishings and gorgeous light. Then I think about my own apartment life, spending 75%+ of my monthly income on rent, cyclically selling belongings to make each move easier than the next. And I think: I want to own a home.

I want to settle in. I want to paint a mural in the living room. I want to drill holes in the walls. I want to build a kitchen island that isn’t on wheels. I want to put my initials in the wet cement of my front walkway. ...Or do I?

I have spent exactly 6 days in Durham, North Carolina, a place I spent the same amount of time in just over 11 years ago, and loved it. Before I got here, my friend and I have spent 6 months researching the housing market in the hopes to buy here, to live in or to rent out. But since arriving, brimming with hope and possibility, ready for a fresh start, I have felt overwhelmed by the confronting truth of how utterly unfulfilling it is to live in a beautiful home in a dull town.

I have lived in cities all my life, but because I so love camping and hiking and the beach, for a day or three at a time, and because I so hate pollution and noise and the frantic pace of bustling streets and non-stop traffic, I somehow concluded that I was *not* a “city girl.” But I also have never had a license, or a car, and thus travel 100% of the time via bicycle, or if I must, via walking.

At present we are 1.2 miles from the closest business. Double that to reach downtown. Downtown Durham is not like the downtowns I know. It is widespread, and even after 20 minutes of biking the grid, hadn’t seen it all. The roads were wide and multi-laned. The buildings were homogenous, and businesses covered all the basic necessities: food, shelter, alcohol, laundromat, bike shop. But where was the warehouse for aerial silks classes? Where was the PaintNite? Where was the club after club after club of nonstop live music? Where was the little theatres with museums of bad art? The “little free libraries”? The culture? The history???

Bikeability has always been important to me, but I hadn’t really placed value on convenience until now. But I’m glad to have this realization, because it allows me to let go of idealizing home interiors by remembering the importance of exterior placement.

Here’s the exterior of the home shown above, found in Joshua Tree:

If I lived there, I’d have my beautiful home with my beautiful things just the way I liked them - and just ready to be photographed for Instagram - but I’d be stuck in the middle of the desert, with no neighbor to speak of.

A house, my friends, is not a home.

Source: benjaminheath

[lkmrn]

De-Colonize Your Life: How to Identify and Dismantle White Supremacist Patriarchy

I found the event on Facebook. It sounded like something he would talk about. I don’t know if he’s actually go to it. They. They didn’t share much of that part of their life with me. Neither the pronouns. I’m guessing, based on what I gathered from their profile after I I friended them. A new identity, sense of self, completely disconnected from me but nonetheless running parallel to mine. I thought as much, although I’m still cautiously unraveling the gender binary in order to include identity beyond gender. I still have room to grow. No one else I know is going to this. Practically no one has committed to attending to begin with. There are about 200 people invited and 100 (including myself) expressing interest in going, and 7 people confirmed attending. How many of those seven were involved in organizing and promoting the event? I wonder if they feel the same disappointment I would feel over that turnout, if I would even be able to get seven people to show up and talk with me. I wonder, ashamed, if this energizes them, if they’re pumped about sharing their knowledge with those seven, soon to be eight with myself included. I’m the rest of this bus ride and two metro rail lines away from getting to the east side of Los Angeles. It takes over two hours to get to Mariachi Plaza, the station I’ll end up in order to walk the rest of the way. I feel guilty because I don’t do these things very often when I know I should. It’s just the commute. It takes so long to get downtown from the valley, but I don’t want to risk the potential financial ruin of taking my car and having something break down again. I wonder how other people do these commutes. I’ve already gotten used to reading on the bus, but food is a big concern for me. Do other people pack a meal? What do they pack? What’s a good meal that doesn’t need to be heated up or kept cold, that you can eat sitting on the bus bench or standing up because the seats are all taken, or sitting on the ground waiting for the gold line train? Maybe just fruit and carrots. Sometimes they have food at these community events. But they ask for a donation, or they just go ahead and charge. And I don’t have cash on me. I’m still worrying about finding a second job starting this coming month so I don’t have to dip into my savings again in order to cover rent. It’s been months, and I’ve been teaching group piano and voice classes two days a week. I make $400 a month. My rent is $650. I feel bad for feeling bad about how I’m struggling. I went to art school, almost $40,000 a year, on my parents dime. No scholarships, no financial aid, no honors or awards from my high school telling my college that they needed me there, that my name, my talent would put them on the map. My senior year, I started seeing posters going up about students whose parents paid for their spot there. I wondered if that included me, shutting out some prodigy’s dreams of becoming the next Michael Pisaro because they couldn’t scrape together the tuition. I still don’t know if I’m that person. I don’t know who I am. The bus drops us off at the North Hollywood Station. I put my bookmark in its new place in my book, gather up my backpack, and walk down the steps from the back exit. Some people yell thanks up to the driver. I always wanted to do that, but I felt weird doing it, like I need to be a regular in order to gain that level of cordiality. Anyway, the moment’s passed. People complain a lot about the red line. People from the professional and working classes alike whisper their uneasiness, a lot of words like unsafe, crazy, homeless, dirty being thrown around. From my rose-colored glasses, there’s nothing much wrong. It’d be nice if more people chose to take the buses and trains, instead of clogging up the freeways, and maybe Metro would expand its services so my commute times would get cut. So I could see my friends in Burbank without having to call a Lyft home or risk driving my car. Every now and then, I think I’d like to see the bus pass my stop because it’s operating at full capacity, instead of the rides when I’m leaving the bus empty well before it’s final stop. I lose access to data when I go downstairs to wait for the train. It’ll be at least another year before they somehow open up internet access in the underground stations. No noticeable construction necessary. It makes you wonder why they took so long to get it done in the first place. Anyway, I’m not as bothered by the inconvenience as the commuters sitting at the top of the steps. I have my book. I picked up this book about white supremacist patriarchy permeating supposedly feminist pop music. It’s really interesting reading a philosopher’s take on music I’ve been listening to for years, even if it’s critical. I got the suggestion from one of my professors. Not from him personally, but from his Facebook post. I’m trying to open myself up to ideas and opinions that aren’t my own, gravitating toward topics that I’m already interested in. Hence this workshop, a series of what will most likely be a combination of lecture and discussion, in order to activate my sense of responsibility to disadvantaged communities around me. I hope that I’ll be given a role in their movement, something small that allows me to support them. I’m getting excited as I draw a little bit closer and closer, an anxiety that tangles fear with future potential elation. I’m starting to feel hungry, but you can’t eat on the subway. It’ll have to wait until I get to Union Station. As the time passes, I start drinking more water, clearing my throat. There’s a funny feeling creeping up in the back of it. I hate when this happens. I go off schedule with these excursions, and my body starts attacking itself. Or maybe the subway actually is germ-infested, and my refusal to appease my body by eating dinner at that moment has allowed a virus to break through my immune system’s defenses. I’m on course for an incredibly annoying sinus infection that will last close to three weeks. But in the moment, I don’t care so much. I think my body can handle anything. I need to switch from the red line to the gold line at Union Station. As soon as I get off the subway, I can smell that deceptively irresistible scent of warm pretzels from Wetzel’s, and my body begs me to stop at the very strategically placed stand to the left of the top of the final staircase to the main part of the station. But my financial worries force me past down the corridor to reach the stairs leading up outside to the gold line station. I check Facebook again when I get there. No new attendees, definitely not Fernando. I go ahead and confirm my attendance, considering I’m more than halfway there anyway. A thought starts planting itself into my head, that somehow Fernando will see this, and he (they) will think more of me. That my interest in their interests wasn’t passing or manipulative. I let that scenario play out while I’m waiting, distracting me from the book I hold open, leaving me on the same page for the entire 20 minutes. My focus returns on the train. Of course they won’t notice. Even if they did, it wouldn’t change their opinion of me. Because I’m not sure if the dissolution of our friendship was ultimately because of me. But that’s a one-sided conversation that still to this day has not ended. I make it to Mariachi Plaza, and for a few minutes, genuine elation takes over any anxiety. I feel genuinely happy to be here, seeing kids skateboarding around the open area in front of the steps of the station, the older folks sitting on benches conversing in their native tongues. It’s a home that isn’t my own, but it feels open and welcoming nevertheless. That thought makes me feel a little guilty, and the anxiety returns. I’m a white person feeling at home where quite a few other white people had previously felt at home, had in fact purchased homes somehow with their seemingly endless supply of income. You see, the millennials who don’t buy avocado toast are the ones gentrifying low income neighborhoods. I’m not one of them. I don’t want to be one of them. I look up directions to the place where the meeting will be held. It’s about a 20 minute walk. I have about thirty minutes until we’re supposed to start, so I try to walk a little slower. I tend to show up early to things, but for this I want to be right on time. I just want to find a seat in the back and take everything in. I don’t wanna make a spectacle of myself, prostrating myself to the organizers, telling them how invested I am in improving myself and how much I care about their cause. How much I am on their side. No, it’s best to show humility. This isn’t about me. I’m there to observe and support. I show up 5 minutes early. I sneak a glance inside as I walk past the door, not breaking my pace. There are a few people inside, sitting around two large white plastic tables pushed together. I start getting nervous again. I decide to walk a little ways down, then head back. Just until the workshop is supposed to start. But I’m afraid this is one of those things that doesn’t start on time. I wish I’d had friends who were into this sort of thing. Then it wouldn’t be so hard to go. I’d have someone to talk to about interesting things, to help make introductions to other attendees. Time’s up. I head inside and sit down in the first chair I can find. A few more of the seats have filled up, but the room is still pretty empty. The organizers started passing out paper and containers of markers. Some of the participants start doodling while a few others work up the courage to say a few words to each other in between excruciatingly silent pauses. No one is talking to me, so I pull out a pen and my planner, and I dive into my future laid out on the pages. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice someone walk in. I don’t lift my head up, out of fear that might draw attention to myself. They sit a couple seats down from me, and again out of the corner of my eye, I notice a familiar figure. I know him from school. Relief washes over me, surprising myself. I call over to him and start in on a conversation. I don’t remember what we talked about. We probably tried to catch each other up on how we were surviving post-grad life. I was focused more on having a friend I could share this with. We started about 10 or 15 minutes late because the organizers were waiting for the last of their own to show up. I don’t remember what he said, but he was charismatic and impassioned. More people showed up as the night went on, probably regulars. They talked a lot, about their own experiences in the neighborhood, fighting against displacement, struggling to support themselves through school. They threw a lot of curses as whiteness, at the patriarchy, at capitalism, which I self-righteously agreed with. Then a guy in the back, dressed in militaristic uniform, began expanding on the destruction of capitalism, namedropping Marx and more contemporary communist ideologues. That was when I started checking out. I’d heard enough white men elaborating on the benefits of a classless system, the need for the oppressed to rise up against the bourgeoisie. Not that I didn’t sympathize with the message; I was tired of the messengers. Anyway, the meeting ended, and although I didn’t feel as though part of a revolution, I felt part of a new community. I was overcome by excitement, anxious elation, and I couldn’t wait to get started. I imagined walking back to Mariachi Plaza with my friend from school, starting what would be a series of revolutionary discussions. He was making his way up to the organizers, so I figured I’d wait for him outside. We hadn’t talked about afterward, but I figured it was a nice gesture. 5 minutes passed. He was helping them put up chairs. I kept sneaking glances back inside. At this point, I wondered if it was more awkward to continue waiting around for him outside, or if I should go inside at this point and draw attention to myself. I chose neither. I started walking back alone. I had no idea if he was taking public transit anyway. It was a stupid idea. Me, once again, imposing myself on others in order to feel better about myself. The white savior, white activist. Maybe he would think I’m rude for leaving without even saying goodbye. Maybe that’s who I am.

[weaselle]

The Plan to Save All - speedrun

I’ve tried to write this out before and it gets really involved and complicated because it’s a big idea I’ve spend decades developing. I want to try to get it all out in one simple, short, digestible bit. Here we go ____________________________________________________________________ (edit) the MOST simplified version/overview:    Phase One: initial membership all lives under one low-cost roof  Phase Two: start making $$ by creating alternatives to shitty institutions  Phase Three: use those institutions to create an entire city  Phase Four: showcase successful alternative that self-propagates via imitation _____________________________________________________________________ 

PHASE ONE: -leverage group dynamics to lower living costs of both money and time -find simple solutions to complex systems by addressing them under one roof -provide affordable housing and property ownership to minimum wage workers 50 to 100 people live in a single building with communal facilities: shared industrial kitchen, showering (like at the gym -- in fact, include a gym) common areas for recreation, etc. This lowers cost through efficiency, i.e. you don’t need 50 apartments with 50 ovens, you can have a large communal kitchen with like 4 industrial ovens. One Monthly Payment: everything including food and chores        -about one 50th to one100th of the 10 year mortgage (and property tax)        -all utilites: garbage, gas, electricity, water, internet, group phone plan        -meal plan, like at a college or whatever.        -laundry plan        -community fund (for building upgrades, amenities, repairs, etc)        -about one 50th to one 100th of the caretaker stipend        -a group healthcare/health insurance program Caretakers: about 20% of the residents no monthly bill for living there, plus paid a reasonable stipend. Caretakers have a 30 hour workweek wherein they do all building maintenance and cleaning, provide the meal plan, do the laundry, water the plants, feed the pets, etc. Not only does this solve an increasing time issue for the residents, each caretaker also receives the solution because they live in the same facility - in other words, the caretakers that do the cooking don’t have to come home after work and do laundry and the caretakers that do the laundry don’t have to come home and cook dinner. More time to be a student, do art, or care for your kids. Costs continue to lower through efficiency - you don’t need 100 apartments with 100 toolboxes containing 100 hammers. Shared facilities like gym showers means caretakers don’t have to clean 100 showers all over the building; about 25 showers in one place will probably do. Free Rooms (and board): semi-temporary room and board outreach programs it does not significantly increase each person’s monthly bill to leave about 5% of the facility’s rooms empty and absorb the corresponding room-and-board costs (in other words splitting the total bill 75 ways instead of 80 ways equals almost the same payment per person). This allows the group to offer free housing and food to whoever they decide needs help in their area - women fleeing abusive relationships, homeless veterans, disowned transgender teens, etc. Cost: about $1,000 per month, or roughly 2/3 a minimum wage income. My initial budget exploration shows that the total monthly cost to each paying resident works out to be about a thousand a month. Since about half the monthly payment is going to the mortgage, and property values / local minimum wages tend to be relative to each other, this amount tends to be about 2/3 of a full time income on minimum wage. In other words, out where minimum wage is about seven dollars, the property values are also lower, making the total monthly payment closer to $700, whereas in Oakland where I’m doing the most planning, the mortgage would make the monthly payments closer to $1,200 but minimum wage is 11 or 12 dollars. Remember, total payment includes food and everything. Built in Disposable Income Raise (through cost lowering) even if none of the residents ever get a raise in 10 years, after a decade the mortgage is paid off which means the monthly bill gets cut in half. Plus residents now own outright a share of the facility, which increases in value; the beginning of a retirement investment. But in phase two we go after more money anyway. **************************************************************************************************** PHASE TWO: -help the middle class pay minimum wage workers to create alternatives to corrupt, damaging, or flawed institutions -create monetary success and grow socio-economic\political capital -move into another, better building -help the next group of 50-100 minimum wage workers Develop Caretaker Positions into alt institutions imagine you want to start a business as a bike repair shop. Now imagine you are starting that business with 100 guaranteed customers paying a pre-arranged fee that has been budgeted to cover your business supplies, workshop lease, plus your wages and personal monthly bills. Dog walking, gardening, house cleaning, cooking or food delivery, whatever the group needs and the facility/community is designed for, there are plenty of business to start this way. A group providing a dedicated and funded laundry service to 100 people within a facility designed for it can easily expand to accommodate paying customers from outside the community and keep growing. This is how the facility can start offering house cleaning, laundry, meal plan, gardening, etc. The middle class is already paying for these things - gardeners, housekeepers, dog walkers, laundry service, food delivery... so the market is there. The wages for these jobs are typically more than minimum wage. As more middle class households become customers, more residents of the facility can quit their minimum wage jobs at corporate mega stores and start earning better wages working for themselves and each other. The community incorporates and is able to take part in all the unfair advantages afforded corporations over the common public. Soon the public will BE corporations, and either everybody has to pay a fair tax, or nobody does. This also helps the group include a health plan as part of the monthly bill. Move to Better Facility and offer the old one to a new group When the first group gets a property and pays the mortgage, they pay the bank an additional few hundred thousand dollars for their property. For instance, if you buy a 2 million dollar property from a bank and pay a 30 year mortgage, the total payments on your 2 million dollar property after 30 years will actually be about 3 million dollars. It’s less over a ten year mortgage, but still. SO when the first group owns their facility outright, they can enter a second 10 year mortgage on a different facility, but offer the first one to a second group while acting as the bank themselves - doing this for a cycle of 3 means that after 30 years the first group owns a single property just like a standard mortgage, but has helped two other groups own property and defrayed their own payments instead of shoveling so much money into a bank. The goal is to liberate more and more property from the banks and enter them into a system of citizen-to-citizen ownership where people own the buildings they live in, having paid other citizens for them. In the second facility, the building is nicer, there are more amenities, monthly payments go up, and you add people to the group. The people you add are more-than-minimum-wage professionals. Teachers, firefighters, admin clerks, paralegals. Some of them join the caretakers to provide their services to the group -- daycare, tax-filing, vehicle repair, IT service, plumbing, even community security officers who are people you know and trust who live with you... and of course coffee and cake and everything else. Once again, these are fledgling businesses with guaranteed clientele and budgeting, that can then be offered to customers outside the community. Once again, the other professionals added to the group can quit their outside jobs and work for each other and themselves. These all grow into full institutions along planned paths. The caretaker watering the plants and cleaning the house becomes a gardener and handyman. The gardener/handyman starts a landscaping home-renovation business. That business grows into a property development and construction company. The caretaker doing the laundry starts offering repairs and minor alterations (replace a button, hem some pants). They start a laundry/dry cleaner and taylor business. They grow into a clothing line. The meal plan grows into a restaurant grows into a farm-to-table network. After school programs, daycare and tutoring become a whole school. Each service within the community becomes a business that grows into an institution. PHASE THREE Build A City You have a large construction company. You have a school. You have a publicly owned non-profit bank/credit union. You have firefighters. You have Alt-mart, which I’ll have to explain fully somewhere else but involves a locally sourced mega-mart featuring a permanent farmer’s market and is designed to put Walmart and Target out of business. So. You have all the elements you need for a functioning city. Have your construction company build one. In this city, there is no private property; you lease a private residence directly from the city, which holds the whole city in a trust for the citizens and administrates it via an elected city council, which means each citizen owns an equal share of the city as a whole. The whole “rent” is therefore subject to regulation and available to fund public works instead of going into the pockets of some real estate mogul or slum lord.  Imagine if your city had your entire rent payment to help end homelessness, provide healthcare, maintain infrastructure and innovate powergrid alternatives, instead of trying to do all that for the 2% of the property value they have access to now. I have a whole bunch of city design stuff that addresses things like sustainable water sourcing etc, but, I’m trying to get through this quickly PHASE FOUR this is important. By the time you get to phase 4, the project is showing a successful straight line development from minimum wage/poverty and powerlessness, to autonomous socio-economic alternative achievable by any group. You start as a fry cook in your twenties, and you end as a comfortably successful citizen in a city you created, that takes proper care of you and which has improved the lives of countless people along the way, all by the time you are 65. Now THAT’s a retirement. You KNOW people are gonna copy that all around the country. It’s my socio-economic worm ... it self replicates, and has the potential to subvert and replace existing socio-economic systems. I don’t want to tell people how to live, I’m trying to free them to live how they want. If they want a city that allows homelessness but everybody gets a horse, then fine, that’s their city (which I predict will fail, but whatever) the power will be with the people, and the city I live in will have priorities I agree with.

[virgoheartt]

psa.

hey guys!! so, i don’t usually make posts like this because outside of the roleplay community, i’m not incredibly helpful or resourceful. however, over the last couple of months i have gained a lot of knowledge due to my circumstances that i’d thought i’d share in case anyone is going through exactly what i am right now, and that is: trying to get integrated within a homeless shelter that is clean, safe, helpful, and can equip you with things in life you might be lacking or struggling in, due to financial instability or whatever happens to be your situation. this post is very long and will be put under a read more, as not to disturb the flow of anyone’s dash. it will include links to helpful websites, clarifying and debunking some common myths about homeless shelters, resources for every state in america, and more (all placed on a page on my blog, as tumblr was being a massive ass about having this show up in the tags with certain links embedded)! i do apologize that this only covers the united states and not other countries, and if anyone has any resources or resourceful posts on tumblr about homeless shelters and what they’re like/what they can do/etc in other countries, please do message me with the link and i’ll add it to this post as soon as possible!! PLEASE LIKE AND/OR REBLOG THIS AS TO HELP SPREAD WORD AND HELP THOSE GOING THROUGH POSSIBLE HOMELESSNESS RIGHT NOW.

so, first and foremost, i would like to debunk a few common myths, that i myself, even had before knowing more about homelessness and shelters.

the first is that many think a homeless shelter will be worse than living in their toxic, possibly abusive household. and that is simply NOT TRUE. as someone who has lived with an older, highly abusive family member and then recently, a really toxic family member who drains me mentally and emotionally, i can tell you it’s not worse than what you’re going through right now. it’s going to be a massive transitional period, where simply luxuries the majority of us have (such as cell phone service, laptops, tvs, entertainment, etc) will become just that: luxuries. things you can only obtain after overcoming homelessness. but i guarantee you it’s worth it. a lot of those who face homelessness, i came to find out, are those who show a pattern of poor life skills. many are ashamed of it and to be honest, i was too at one point. but i’m not anymore. because 9/10 times, good life skills weren’t taught to growing children, as poor life skills usually roots from parents or parental figures lacking in sufficiently teaching their child/children how to live outside of survival mode. and that’s not okay, but it will be. because you’ll learn life skills through people who want nothing more than to see you succeed.

you have to be gone during the day, at which time you have to carry your belongings around. now, typically, if a homeless shelter is actually good and of some quality and value, you’re not going to be gone all day carrying around nothing but your belongings and standing in the heat, cold or whatever other disastrous weather that you might face while being homeless. a nice and helpful shelter will keep your belongings safely stashed away while they help you in the pursuit of finding a job, equipping you with things such as job readiness and preparation classes, transportation, and clothing, all to ensure you become successful. (*IMPORTANT SIDENOTE: not all shelters will offer all of the above, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good shelters to stay at. even those shelters which don’t have a lot of funding and thus, don’t have all of what is said above, a good shelter will try it’s hardest to find outside resources to help with your circumstances and situations.)

the majority of homeless suffer from severe mental health problems and substance abuse. while yes, according to a study taken in 2010, one in four homeless individuals suffered/currently suffer from a serious mental illness (and i just happen to fall into this category, as i’ve battled with schizophrenia since the age of fourteen), city officials have stated that lack of affordable housing, unemployment, and poverty are still the top three causes of homelessness in a survey conducted by the us conference mayors in 2014 and roughly is it said that one-third of those adults who are in shelters had chronic substance use problems in 2010, according to SAMHSA. that is about 184,666 sheltered adults out of a rough estimate of 554,000 adults living in a homeless shelter, according to the department of housing and urban development (hud) in december 2017. and compared to how large the united states’ population is, that’s not all too bad, considering. another thing to note about homeless shelters is that the good ones will always test for drugs/alcohol upon arrival and even if they decide to take them in, they’re helping them take initiative in getting sober and staying sober as a requirement to stay in the shelter and their program.

homeless individuals live most of their time in the streets. however, according to HUD’s survey, about 69 percent of homeless americans lived in shelters in 2014. and if not a shelter, it was said that at least 30 percent of unsheltered homeless seattle residents live or at one point lived in a vehicle of some type, according to the vehicle residency research progran.

your personal property will be stolen, no ifs ands, or butts. although you will need some sort of money saved up or after sustaining a steady income through a trustworthy employer, a lot of shelters (especially the ones that are of the golden few) will offer some type of place for you to put your things on a rent-type basis until you can get into transitional living. and more often than not, they tend to be air conditioned. however, as much as i’ve looked into it, i couldn’t find a place that helped individuals with storing away personal property at no charge or at a late charge.

now, some things in which a homeless shelter can/will help you with are the following (as always, please do your research prior to staying at a homeless shelter, if you can. thus, when you do the research you can see if they offer any of the following and if it doesn’t say on their website, then you can definitely inquire about it. if they don’t offer it nor give you resources to some outside resource that can help you, DON’T STAY WITH THEM.):

mental and physical health sevices

substance abuse services

employment assistance

shelter

transitional housing

permanent housing

housing coordination community integration

navigating around

case management

crisis medical services

crisis transition

some helpful resources/a short description of what they help with are listed below but the links can be found here (*IMPORTANT SIDENOTE: if you’re in fear for your safety in terms of searching for somewhere to stay and such, please be wary that computers can be monitored and it’s impossible to 100% completely clear, so please, if you are afraid your internet usage is being monitored, please call the national domestic hotline, which the number is listed below):

what it’s like to stay the night in a homeless shelter --- here is an accurate descriptive inside look at what it’s like to stay a night/a few future months at a homeless shelter, as written by an undercover journalist.

homelessshelterdirectory.org --- a website that will help give you all sorts of helpful information from quality/emergency shelters to helpful programs to help end homelessness and in almost every city in the united states.

the national domestic hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224 TTY for the deaf/hard of hearing --- a hotline for anyone of any age who is experiencing domestic violence. they’re open 24/7, 365 days a year.

ending message: homelessness is a demographic of people who have faced some sort of trauma in their lives, whether it be multiple incidents and varying from one thing to another, to simply only facing sudden homelessness, it’s a problem that faces a lot of people on a day-to-day basis all around the world, and even currently in my life. i hope this has helped in some sort of way and especially if it helped to relieve some anxiety you feel around staying at a homeless shelter, which i do sympathize with, but wish you the best in building a life for yourself again. if anyone needs me to clarify or touch on some more things or anything specific that i can try to help with, feel free to IM me here or for a short time (as i won’t have my laptop with me as to not encourage the chance of it getting stolen) i will be answering as much as i can in my inbox regarding this.

[pixiealtaira]

Dragged Kicking and Screaming  ( 12/ 22)

Title: Dragged Kicking and Screaming  

Or How Burt Hummel Mashed the Hummels and Hudsons Into One Functioning Family.

Characters(s): Kurt, Burt, Carole, Finn, with short appearances by the New Directions guys and various ops who mostly take up space. Rating: PG13     Summary: Somehow the Hummel household and the Hudson household had to come together…

Chapter Nine Chapter Ten

Chapter eleven

12.

“Good. Good. We are making great progress! Let’s see…we’ve covered allowances, groceries, school lunches, hmm…clothes!” Burt checked off his list as he went done it.  “I think we will go with Kurt’s clothing budget. Finn might like this.  I will buy 100 dollars’ worth of pants every other month. That might be one pair of pants or it might be several pairs of pants. If you wear it over your legs it is pants. On months I am not covering pants I will buy 100 dollars’ worth of tops.  It could be one top…shirt, sweater, sweatshirt, hoody…or it could be multiple tops. Undershirts are tops.  Long johns and thermals generally are considered pants, if bought in sets. I do not buy Halloween costumes anymore, save up for what you want or make it yourself. I will buy one ‘Christmas’ outfit in November…that is nice pants, button-up shirt, and a nice sweater of MY choice that are fit to wear to fancy dinners or parties that might come with the holiday season. I cover one swimsuit a year, one jacket a year, one winter coat under 250 every other year unless you outgrow yours, one pair of nice shoes…those could be nice boots, and one pair of gym type shoes, of a reasonable price. I don’t buy really expensive gym shoes. If you think you need those, you buy them yourself.  I do not completely cover uniforms.  I will pay for them, but you will work half of the cost off.  I buy 12 pairs of socks at the beginning of school and for Christmas and we check to see if any are needed for summer, if some are I also buy a pack of socks for summer.  I buy 8 to 10 pairs of underwear at the beginning of school and 4 to 5 pairs, depending on what comes in a pack, at Christmas and at the start of summer. You want more clothing, you pay for it yourself.  IF you don’t use all your clothing money for a month, you can talk me into adding the extra to your post high school account, but only that account. The household will cover half that for me. Carole, if you want to buy clothing from the family account that is the set up for you as well. This will cover plenty of clothing. In fact it can cover way more clothing than anyone really needs.”

“What about work clothes?” Carole asked.

Burt thought for a few moments.  “I buy Kurt’s and mine through the shop.  Doesn’t your job provide a clothing stipend?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Carole said.

“You bring me a list of what extra you need that isn’t covered by what your job gives you for it and we can work something out.”

“I just don’t see how that is fair…”

“Carole, you add just 50 percent of your income to the family account, after taxes and everything.  You have 50 percent to spend on whatever you would like.  As a household we cover kids clothing because one of the things parents do is provide clothing for their kids. The household provides some clothing for us.  You have money to provide beyond that for yourself.”

“I still think it is unfair.” Carole said.

“And I could go back to the lawyer and bank officials who helped set up this family account and have the official documents drop what I put in the family account to only 50 percent as well and make it more fair.” Burt said.  “They said to just come in and change that if I ever decided to since that was our legal agreement and I’m just putting in 70 percent to make family living easier.”

Kurt was taking notes.

“But how does Kurt get all his clothing?”  Finn yelled, slamming his fists on the table.

“I work, Finn.  I have a job.” Kurt answered.  “Actually, more than one.”

“A job?” Finn responded incredulously.

“Yeah, a job. It pays me and I use that money to buy myself stuff.  I also plan and shop sensibly and save and shop around. I often can buy six or seven shirts with the hundred bucks my dad gives me for shirts, one wonderfully awesome month I bought seven pairs of pants with Dad. It was glorious. The money Dad gives for clothing is not a small amount, and definitely not if you are wise.”

“Moving on, we come back to that topic though, so think through if there is really more you want to say. And the topic of jobs will be coming up!” Burt said before anyone could speak more on jobs. “Money wise we still need to cover outings and other items. We covered father and son outings, once a month for each of you boys…under 100 for Finn except twice a year. No spending limit on Kurt for this next year at least, except Kurt…be reasonable.  No big trips.  A father son outing may not be a trip to New York or Disneyland or anything like that.”

“Chicago?”  Kurt asked.

“Maybe, we’d have to see why.”

“One of the big races?” Kurt asked.

“In Ohio?  Yes.  I’ll have to think about others.”

Kurt nodded.

“I am willing to fund two large family outings…family vacations.  One if out of state. None if the whole family isn’t included.  We can discuss smaller family outings.  I might be willing to do several of those, it will be a ‘we will see’ deal.  It will greatly depend on the circumstances of life when the ideas are brought up.”

“What kind of circumstances?” Finn asked.

“If you had good grades, if you were behaving decently, if you hadn’t broken rules for a while, if you had kept up with your chores, those types of circumstances. Family Vacations are a treat, not a necessity.”

Finn tossed his head back and groaned.

“Ok.  Other money items. If you break something around the house, you replace it.  If I have to pay for it, you will work off the cost. I don’t cover your cell phone payments. If you want me to cover your cell phone payment, your cell phone will be a one of those inexpensive little phones you buy and then buy cards to put minutes on it or we will do a monitored family plan.  Do not rent movies on the TV.  If you do you will pay for them.  You may ask and IF I agree I will do the renting of it.  Do not add channels, do not order pay-per-view games. DO NOT ADD to the TV BILL.  If you do, you will be paying the whole of the next month’s TV bill yourself.”

“But..” Finn started.

“No. If you seriously want to watch a game we don’t get, you come and ask.  IF you haven’t asked for a while, I might think about it and say yes. IF you make a habit of asking, I will even get rid of the sports channels I have added.”

Finn nodded.

“We cover all school class fees under 30 bucks, over 30 you cover half your fee.  So, we cover your class fees if you have them for all classes except…what class was that Kurt?”

“Photography had a 35 dollar fee and a 20 dollar rental if you didn’t have your own digital camera. All the other classes are under 30. Oh, except driver’s ed.”

“We will be discussing driver’s ed. in a little bit.” Burt said. “The family account will pay your basic student fee. You pay your sports fees.  I’ll cover your yearbook if you haven’t purchased it already.  The family account covers field trips and bus fees for those.  You pay your own parking fee. Next year for senior year we will cover your senior portraits, cap and gown, 100 graduation announcements, and 75 bucks worth of other graduation stuff. You cover the rest.  You cover dances. The family account covers school pictures, including the spring ones, but only the 30 buck and under packages.  Oh, and the family account will cover 100 dollars of hobby purchases every three months, although I can be talked into upping that amount around Christmas if you sell me a good enough reason and around county fair time if you sell me a good enough reason.  Anything else?  No? If someone thinks about something we can talk about it then.”

“I think we ought to do something the Hudson way.” Carole stated.

“Chores were next on my list,” Burt said.  “Did you want to do chores the Hudson way?”

“Yes!” shouted Finn.

“Not really.” Said Carole. “I’ve been trying to get Finn to do chores for years.”

Burt smiled.  “I do need suggestions on how to split them up and if we want to rotate chores or stick with chores that are just ours.”

“Rotate.” Kurt said.

“Have chores that are just ours,” said Finn. “I will have ‘take out the garbage’ and I’ll only have to do the kitchen when it is full.  That is it.”

“Yeah, no.” Burt said.

“What do you mean, we?” Carole said.

“I mean we.  I realized that I have to do more daily chores around the place or I’ll be screwed when Kurt goes off to college. ALL of us will be getting some chores.”

“But Burt, we work.” Carole said.

“So does Kurt.”

“But…”

“Carole, who did chores at the Hudsons?” Burt asked.

“I did.”

“And you did so while working.”

“Yes.”

“So you can do so here. I am serious about this.  When Kurt was off at Dalton, no one did anything until it was shameful around here.  I was used to it being done. I don’t know what you two’s excuse was. That won’t happen again.  We all get chores.  So Kurt start making some lists.”

Kurt pulled a sheet out of his notebook he was writing in and started a list.

“I figure who ever cooks wipes down the stove and counters when done cooking.  Pots and pans go in with the dishes. Someone needs to set and clear and wash the table.  Someone needs to sweep and vacuum the living areas.  We need the main floor bathroom kept clean, trash picked up, things dusted. Trash taken out and sidewalks kept clear.  Bedrooms and bathrooms kept clean.”

“Hmm….”Kurt said. “When are you checking chores are done, Dad?”

“I always checked at about 10pm before.”

Kurt nodded.

“Should we go back to baskets on the stairwells?”

Burt thought for a moment and nodded.

“Ok.  How does this sound?  One chore list would be pick-up the living room and TV room down stairs and vacuum. The next would be pick-up and vacuum the dining room and set and clear the table.  The third would be keep the bathroom down here tidy and fresh and take out the trash throughout the house except the bedrooms, we take out our own bedroom trash…including taking the bin to the road on pick-up days, this person could also shovel the sidewalk on snowy days or water in summer.  The final list is washing the dishes and put them away and sweep and pick-up the kitchen.  Everyone keeps their bedroom and the other bathrooms clean and if we can’t manage to do that without one person taking the brunt, Finn and I can switch off bathroom days and you and Carole can switch off bathroom days. Everyone makes their own breakfast or you could pay 50 cents if someone wakes up and makes a full breakfast for everyone. You wash your own breakfast and lunch dishes. We can look at other chores like weeding and such come summer to see if they can become weekend chores and maybe have a different pay for those less heavy weekend chores that I’d been doing daily but didn’t necessarily need done daily.”

Finn looked at Kurt. “Like, that doesn’t seem to have too much on any one list.”

“It doesn’t.  IF you keep things picked-up to start with and do things daily it’s not that hard to keep things up.  We’ll go back to baskets, too.  We’ll get laundry baskets and I’ll put our names on them and when you are cleaning your area and you come across someone’s stuff, you put it in the basket.  Then when you go to your room, you pick-up your basket and take it with you, put your stuff away, and then bring back your basket so it can be filled again.”

“You said laundry baskets. What about laundry?”  Finn asked.

“We do our own.” Kurt said firmly.  “I will NOT do your laundry; in fact I prefer only ever seeing MY unmentionables, thank you very much. I do my laundry on Saturdays.  Dad does his on Tuesdays when he had his off hours.  You can pick any other day.  I will teach you how to do this.  This is an important life skill, Finn.  Do you want to go around with pink underwear for half your first year of college because you never learned how to do laundry?”

“Pink underwear?” Finn asked.

“Yes.  Read any blog out there about guys’ first year living without their mom…PINK UNDERWEAR.  Imagine trying to get somewhere with your girlfriend and having to explain that.” Kurt said.

“Is Friday nights good? Like late, so I won’t be having to get home too early? Or would that like be too little time?” Finn asked in a fearful voice.

Kurt looked disdainfully at Finn’s clothing.  “I think we can get your wash done in one evening.  Friday night sounds great.  I’ll buy you a clothing hamper…all your own…for the room.  No charge for teaching you to do laundry or the hamper.”

Burt smiled and Carole looked shocked.

“I’ll take Thursdays,” Carole said quietly.

Kurt smiled and made note in his notebook.  “Did we decide to rotate chores?” Kurt asked.

“I think we will rotate, how does for a whole week sound?”  Burt asked.

Carole nodded and Finn agreed.  “I think I can do most of those without it being too hard.”

Kurt smiled condescendingly at Finn.  “I’m glad.”

“Wait, like…do we have a dishwasher here?”  Finn asked.

Kurt rolled his eyes and wrote more down.  

“Yes, Finn,” Burt said. “We have a dishwasher and I will teach you how to run it.”

[beaconstreets]

How To Keep Beacon Real Estate Affordable

Perhaps 'Granny Flats' are the answer.

A Granny Flat - source: San Diego Times

In Beacon, NY: No Ceilings, Brian PJ Cronin and David MacIntyre manage to condense the 100-year history and the past 10 years of explosive real estate growth of Beacon into a single article in Upstate House.

I'll leave aside the obligatory Revolutionary War mentions about Mount Beacon -- 'At 1,611 feet, it’s not the tallest mountain in the state by a longshot, but as the site where George Washington’s troops would set signal fires during the Revolutionary War, it was the most culturally significant mountain for Colonial-era New Yorkers' -- and also the authors' nod to the art and music scenes in Beacon, and instead let's jump right to real estate.

“Beacon’s a really cool city and it just keeps getting cooler,” says Charlotte Guernsey, a Beacon resident who opened Gate House Realty in 2001.

The unparalleled growth has not been without its consequences. With the attention has come gentrification, with many long-time residents, senior citizens, and marginalized groups being priced out of town. New housing is being built at a furious clip, but much of it has ended up driving real estate prices up while also angering locals who feel that the taller buildings and questionable architectural decisions detract from the small-town feel that made the city so livable in the first place.

[...]

Beacon’s real estate market had been booming for 10 years, and the pandemic has shifted it into overdrive. Guernsey remembers the first time, in 2005, when the city’s inventory of detached, single-family homes, dropped from its usual level of around a 100 or so to around 50. “We were beside ourselves,” she recalls. As of press time it was 23, and every agent in her office is working with between six and 12 buyers. “ Lots of buyers and not much to sell,” Guernsey says. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

[...]

As of press time, a three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,000-square-foot condo built in 1973 was listed at $259,000. Detached houses were starting around $320,000. Most of the highest-priced listings in town are actually new condos being built in some of those controversial new developments. If you want more than one bedroom, that’s probably going to cost you at least $750,000, topping out at $1.3 million for a two-bedroom, two-bath, 2,641-square-foot.

The pandemic bump in Beacon house prices seems to be around $100,000, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal, rising 21.3% since June 2020.

And, in Dutchess, the average sales price of a single-family detached home increased by nearly $100,000 in the last year, according to Mid-Hudson Multiple Listing Service, which covers most, but not all, of the county's listings.

A lot of the folks in my neighborhood who have lived here longer than the past ten years seem to be cashing in at this local peak. If you bought a place for $140,000 in 2009 and can sell it for over $400,000 today, it certainly looks like a good idea, especially if your dream is to retire in South Carolina or Maine. But the end result is quickening gentrification, making it harder and harder for people working in the local economy to afford Beacon.

Back in January, Jeff Simms wrote Reporter’s Notebook: Does Beacon Have Enough Affordable Housing?, and summarized discussions of the past few years at the Beacon City Council about affordable housing in Beacon:

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the ongoing City Council discussion regarding affordable housing in Beacon. At the time, the first apartments built as part of the city’s workforce housing program were becoming available, but at prices (beginning at around $1,500 per month) some found startling.

Later that year, the council talked about utilizing the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, a state law that allows counties to create boards to enforce rent stabilization. However, some of the steps required, including a citywide housing survey, were pushed to a back burner when the COVID-19 shutdown hit several months later.

In the two years since, the city has heard consistently from residents that what’s been done isn’t enough. The discussion will be revisited again soon, and I expect there will be a significant push to get something done, ongoing pandemic or not.

Council Member Dan Aymar-Blair said during a meeting this month that “we made a lot of progress bringing new development into balance last year, but we haven’t fulfilled our obligation to the public to truly get development under control until we get the prices under control.”

He went on to cite several segments of the city’s population he believes are being priced out: senior citizens who can’t afford to downsize, college students who can’t move home with their degrees and working class, mostly non-white, residents who simply can’t make ends meet.

The numbers back him up.

source: rentcafe.com

Rent has risen only 6% in Beacon on average, but 92% of all rentals are above $1000 per month, and 45% are above $1500 per month.

In the final analysis, Beacon is not an affordable place to rent for households making less than $6000 per month, or $72,000 per year (using the rule of thumb that housing should be no more than 25% of your income). And buying a home is now unaffordable for anyone who is not ready to make an all-cash offer on a $400,000 home, which rules out all but the wealthy.

One approach to solving some aspects of this affordability issue is that provided by Accessory Dwelling Units, or ‘granny flats’. At present — based on interactions with the Beacon Building Department — there seems to be a hiatus on granting building applications for ADUs, although the City code includes a definition of ADUs, that seems to allow them.

However, two New York legislators — Assembly Member Harvey Epstein of Manhattan and state Sen. Pete Harckham of Westchester— have introduced legislation to make ADUs legal statewide, and to limit local municipalities’ restrictions on ADUs, or outlawing them altogether. As Eric Kober reports, this legislation would

legalize accessory dwelling units statewide. These are second units on lots currently occupied by single-family homes -- for example, in a basement or a converted garage. These units can provide housing for relatives, such as a homeowner’s aging parents or their adult children. They can also provide housing for household employees, like home care aides. However, their greatest potential is as investment units, providing income to the homeowner and relatively affordable rental.

The law would overrule local zoning restrictions that often are designed to exclude ADUs and would lay out a standard statewide process to develop and use ADUs.

This legislation is supported by ‘a coalition of housing advocacy groups’, (unnamed) and provides a way to make cities like Beacon more affordable for young people, people on a fixed income, and those who can’t keep up with the steep rise of suburban New York City housing prices.

We’ll have to see what the legislature does, but such a law could open up a lot of lower-cost rentals in Beacon, and across the state.