#now I'm just incensed and i want to yell a lor

[mephestopheles]

Y'all I am so fucking angry today. I am fuming. I am looking at apartments around me because my mother is trying to downsize, I can't afford nor do I particularly wish to move in with her, transit would become more obnoxious and I like my space. So she wants a space that is on one level and has similar amenities but someone already there to fix things if they fuck up.

Look, she's never lived in an apartment. She has no clue what the realities of living in an apartment are, and she's insulated enough she might be able to avoid some of the shit, but not all of it.

I know where I live is not the only place suffering a housing crisis. I know there are places that have insane rents. Nova Scotia and especially cape Breton has a very big issue, rather, a few.

One, we're mostly rural with spots of town/city and the rural is enough that the government considers the whole island rural. Which is hilarious depending on where you actually live. I'm 5-10 minutes from most amenities, and there are places that are an hour or two from similar amenities depending on which part of the island you're coming from. But that makes transportation entirely on cars, with little access to buses if you're out of the main routes.

This also means large apartment complexes are few and far between. There are some places with two or three units, and most are converted houses if that.

Two, there is a big racism issue here, and a pretty substantial classism issue. And the two make things worse. So much worse. From a systemic perspective, they both play into each other a lot but I'm an outside observer for a lot of things and I'm doing my best to unpack my own inherent biases.

In 2016/2017 there was a bit of a boom to the university here where they accepted a lot of overseas students. This is a good thing. the university did not have adequate housing established for all of the students that came. This is not good. This hurt the students, put them at risk for being taken advantage of, far away from home, and potentially homeless because they couldn't move into residence.

Landlords around here got fucking greedy. Average rents around here in 2016 was around $650-700, 800$ for a two bedroom apartment, and that was pushing it and generally that was all inclusive. My first apartment was $650 utilities included, I only had to pay for wifi.

But these landlords were starting to charge that for rooms. They started buying up houses as they could get them, for relatively cheap and turn them into "student" housing, unofficially. Jack the rents up and charge a fortune to these students who came over here to get a "recognized education" which is another shitty part of the racism equation*. So rental prices across the board started to increase and folks started to get ideas about the apartment side hustle business that sprouted.

*Before anyone gets the idea that I'm against immigration, my issue is not the influx of students. My issue is with severe lack of accountability and planning on behalf of the university for how many students they were accepting vs how much housing they had available on and off campus. Much like those who currently live here, I want those who come here not to be placed in a vulnerable position and exploited by housing or by institutions that will not or cannot help them due to other systemic issues also brought on or influenced by systemic racism.

This also disproportionately affected those on social assistance, as really shitty landlords would renovict places or let them turn to shit so they would get compensated by the government to fix the property.

Some of the places that remain cheaper, are so far outside of the transit sections that it becomes dangerous. Like walk on the shoulder of the highway and hope you're not going to get hit, dangerous.

Prior to this, the job market around here was absolute shit, and a lot of folks were working out west, so the industries were slowly dying out. And even this is a weird mix of classism because most jobs available are call centres or retail. Anyone working a trade left to go out west, because the ones operating the trades around here weren't yet willing or ready to retire.

The combination of isolation, a lot of money, fast paced work with very few social outlets, brought a lot of drugs here and opened a lot of folks up to medicating to deal with the very real social isolation and the need to stay awake to earn more overtime, or prove yourself to the crew. Couple that with making more money than you've ever seen before and access only to lose it because the jobs started drying up and then covid started closing things. Plenty of folks lost their homes due to sudden loss of income, opioid and other drug dependency issues, and suddenly the issues surrounding houselessness around here skyrocketed. Becoming terrifyingly high after 2022.

Fast forward to 2020 and beyond, you have a housing market now influenced by our of towners (note, I am specifically not mentioning persons of colour as the vast majority of our of towners are those who have moved here from Ontario because their buying power goes so much further here, it's mostly white middle class suburban boomers) buying up properties sight unseen and creating a buying war on the otherside of this terrible equation.

Now it's 2023, and the government and the banks are doing the same fucking thing it did the last times house prices and inflation started and hiked interest rates up. It's not addressing the issues because the issue is fixed costs and and profiteering not extraneous spending

I got my place on 2021, and lucked into a really nice place with a really good rate. But the average two bedroom is almost double my current rent. In three years. Less than.

When searching for a place for mom, I found one that is 2000sq feet, two car garage, no utilities included, and unfurnished. Lawn care and snow removal were included but it's $3000 a month for a place I can't ever afford.

You can't tell me that someone isn't just pawning off the mortgage for both sides of the duplex. I was looking at duplexes for sale and most are $420,000.00 at the lowest I've seen.

Folks were selling their homes around here for 200k plus above what they would normally even consider. When I was first deciding to move to my current apartment I was looking at houses near where my new office was going to be, and there was a gorgeous little house 3 bedroom, full backyard for 64k. I showed it to @striving-artist and yeah that kind of price was a little low for around here but not "hey what's hiding in the basement" low.

All of this to say that there are not nearly enough places to rent, let alone rent safely. The prices are obscene for where some of these places are located.

And now we're dealing with climate weather a fuck tonne which is affecting everything that covid didn't outright punish.

I am so angry.