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| <back | home Gimme Shelter What's a proletarian gotta do to own the roof over her head? by Katie Renz A kitchen pantry. Numerous tents. A sunlight-starved studio in the upper Haight. The living room of a ramshackle cabin, various rectangles in various houses shared with various stoners, and my personal favorite, a trailer christened Ecotopia. For the past eight years, I have consistently ended up in sub-par and usually over-priced living accommodations. This has been kind of quirky and experiential, but has become tiresome and almost embarrassing. The majority will agree, renting is not a soul satisfying use of one’s hard earned cash. It may be the most legitimated scam out there. Recently, I realized why I’m so viscerally opposed to being a renter. I was worried my disdain was perhaps an unrealistic bratiness stemming from some assumption of princess-like entitlement. But offering tribute for time spent on this blue-green spinning orb makes sense; we should all give something for our tenure. If rent were paid in building the topsoil, constructing windmills, restoring eroded hillsides, planting fruit trees in suburban medians, creating wildlife corridors between the ruins of Wal-Marts, incubating California condor eggs and building bicycles, I’d happily hand over the equivalent of the going rate for an urban flat. But the monthly rent check is not made out to Gaia. What could customarily honor the sacredness of the land instead lines the landlord’s pockets. When my friends and I were in grammar school we played a game called “Mash” to plot our futures--would we live in a Mansion, an Apartment, a Shack, or a House? Almost 20 years later we indulge in a different, though equally pointless, contemplation, the “If I Were a Landlord” game, characterized by promises of basing our fee on a decadently discriminatory sliding scale. If our tenant’s a corporate scoundrel, we’ll eat well that month. A starving artist-type or teacher? Well, a rent check probably wouldn’t be our only income anyway. Among my peers, the solution to the problem of atrocious rents/rent in general is unanimous: Get land! Rock ‘n’ roller Chuck Berry put it this way, “My father told me when I was very young that the first thing a man [sic] must do is to own a piece of land. When you go into a store and you buy something it’s chattel, but when you own a piece of land, that’s real. And that’s where the words real estate originated.” I agree, and thus, the Big Vision: Pay my own mortgage instead of someone else’s. What sort of home to lovingly design for that land--cob castle, retrofitted retro trailer, yurt, tree fort, reclaimed redwood bungalow, strawbale condo, pirate ship, cave, gingerbread house—provides fodder for many a daily fantasy. The question repeatedly disrupting my sunshine daydreams regards how one manages to acquire land in a culture operating on an ignored yet ubiquitous class war. Though not indigenous, I was born in California, am willfully tethered to this bioregion, and hope to stay. None of my childhood chums can afford to live here either--not beyond working too hard to just pay rent while coveting very unREAListic estate. Other kingdoms are more affordable, more feasible and more financially sustainable. Although tempting, I hesitate to be the stereotypical jerk from down south, moving into a neighborhood of Oregonian haters. I once was sure I had internet-searched my way to the perfect answer, and consequently appealed all my best girlfriends to caravan out to Kansas, where I’d heard property was $40/acre due to a mass exodus. We could each purchase several hundred acres, I calculated (ignoring the fact that residents were probably leaving for good reason). Who cared if it was a red state? For that price, we could just make our own town of hot leftist ladies! And isn’t it better to have a prototype permaculture paradise in the Bible Belt than in our native Golden State, where such crunchy, communal endeavors are a dime a dozen? They all did the email equivalent of laughing, wished me fun, and said they’d visit (maybe). Median home prices encourage emigration: San Francisco, $750,000; Santa Cruz, $599,000; And our very own San Luis Obispo/Atascadero/Paso Robles? $475,000, almost $100,000 more than 2003’s $388,000, when the Tribune reported the county had the fourth least affordable housing market in the nation. Leave the waves and save some bucks—Bakersfield’s median is $195,000. Leave the state, and one could maybe even have a life outside of working to scrape together the mortgage: Indianapolis, $113,000; San Antonio, $123,000; Salt Lake City, $155,000; Warren, Ohio, $90,000. Based on the market, my refusal to become a Cali ex-pat seems absurd, like self-sabotage. Is the lack of harsh winters and easy access to like-minded fools really worth the energy? Nonetheless, I am stubborn--in love and irrational. Yet amidst the paradox of affordable living in California, I recognize significant inconsistencies with my obsessive desire to own land. According to my politics, I should scoff at the mere idea of the validity of private property. When the realities of peak oil and global warming kick in in the next decade or so, it could be a blessing to be a renter—especially one inland—for what’s the point of pissing away one’s life toiling to buy land if migrating disease vectors spread pestilence, any remaining redwoods are underwater, and fiending fossil fuelers ravage the countryside? Though well aware the American Dream has warped into a nightmare, I still succumb to that patriotic instinct to homestead. The back 40 beckons, even if it is less elitist and more ecological to live stacked in cities. Such complications fail to reverse the facts. We remain literally dirt poor. We have no plot of earth upon which to grow food, a home, ourselves. This constant habitational insecurity is making me nauseous. Barring a revolutionary upheaval that annihilates the American caste system and redistributes the wealth, I am bereft of solutions. Though I think they have to do with long-term shifts like a hugely reduced human presence and a more reciprocal relationship with the natural world, maybe it’s actually just accepting the dominant culture, with its credit reports, “real” jobs, spouses, and cell phones. Like everything I am dissatisfied with in this society and not sure how to alleviate, I wonder if the only effective solution will require above and beyond a critical mass of Americans refusing to participate anymore. In the “I’m not gonna hold my breath” meantime, I’m considering buying stock in U-Haul. Ohhhhh! Children! It’s just a shout away! It’s just a k8ylizzie@hotmail.com away! Feel free to send word of solutions, caretaking gigs, sugar daddies, vintage Airstreams, or turbo diesel Vanagons/Mercedes. <back | top^
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