Housing - Tumblr Posts
I've been thinking off and on about how our modern styles of home construction are badly suited to the environment everywhere (except probably England and New England) and really rely on central air in order to be livable during various seasons. And I've been thinking about that video of the woman talking about the advantages of thatched roof construction in the heat, and the fact that native building construction in Southern Florida has been palm-thatched since before colonial contact. You'd have open lengths at the tops of the walls to let air flow through, and a raised platform inside to keep your stuff dry.
(look at this by the way it's really cool)
and I've been wondering what, besides the obvious cultural supremacy coolaide, would stop us from pivoting back to regionally appropriate home construction. Here are the concerns a person raised on suburban housing might have:
keeping out pests, such as scavengers and spiders and snakes
the labor of upkeep. Thatched roofs do have to be changed out periodically, and we have limited hours in the day to do this in a capitalist hellscape
inaccessibility of skills and knowhow. At the present time, learning how to do this properly might be difficult.
there might be some concerns about wildlife in the rafters
So we probably wouldn't want to go back to the EXACT designs of the past, but certainly this could be the blueprint in the same way that older New England houses are the blueprint for modern houses? There must be a mix of modern and traditional solutions that are more sustainable than what we have right now.
For example, say we put screening along the inside of the crossbreeze gaps to keep out mosquitos and such. We can even put netting up along the underside of the thatched roof, like they have done in India in the past. Then you get the airflow, without the pests. And that's just off the top of my head, I know that there must be more innovative solutions out there too. We'd have to come up with new ways of storing perishables and wiring electricity, but it's not at all insurmountable...
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Hi, I'm Morgan, or Lux, and I'm an 18 year old nonbinary bisexual currently living with my physically disabled mother. We both have currently been brought into a very scary situation where we may be evicted. We try to keep the house as clean as possible, and it is relatively clean, but not clean enough. We barely have enough money to make it through month to month but currently in a situation where we need to splurge it on cleaning supplies, a house cleaner, or in worse case, eviction. If we get kicked out we will have no place to go or a way to get away. My c*shapp is $luxinthenight. If you're not able to send some money, please reblog this.
Our current landlady is the very image of one of those landlords who’d be spared the guillotine.
She’s an older, polite, maternal (white, middle class) woman who just happened to have enough money to buy a spare house, and is renting it to top up her pension. She reads The Guardian and asks after my family and does the occasional repair when necessary. She’s not one of those evil landlords.
She also just repeatedly lied to our faces about our contracts to try to get us to forfeit most of the rights we have as tenants. She also visits frequently, criticising how we live and reminding us that our home belongs to her. She also condescendingly and unnecessarily explains to us how boilers and washing machines and carpets work.
She explains to us how renting works.
She explains it with an indulgent smile, like a grandmother talking to a child, as if she’s being terribly patient about correcting our misunderstandings.
And she lies.
She lies because as much as she wants to convince us, everyone else, and even herself that she’s a good person, our entire relationship is based on the power she holds over us. She uses her wealth and position in society to extort payment from us, who have nowhere to live. We sacrifice to her the majority of the income we spend our lives earning, just so we can have a roof over our heads. But any time we don’t show proper deference to her, she could have us out on the street in weeks or months. We’d lose our home, because to her it is merely an asset which in no way belongs to us, the people who live there.
Today she repeatedly lied to us about our contract, and about the law, because she wanted us to have the minimum legal power possible. If I didn’t organise with a local tenants’ union, I wouldn’t have known my rights. And if I didn’t have the security of being a member of that union behind me, I never would have had the guts to challenge her. My housemate had no idea she was lying, and would have trusted her, signing away what few rights we had under the law.
As part of this tenants’ union, I’m always fighting with the worst landlords - the ones who keep people living in squalor, the ones with a dozen properties, the ones who are violent and abusive. But today has reminded me that even the “nice” landlords are still scum.
A genuinely good person who has enough spare money to buy a spare house (which is a lot of money! they wouldn’t need more!) would just let people who need a home live there, not bleed them of their income for the privilege of a warm place to sleep.
Never trust a landlord.
But more importantly, join a tenants’ union, and take back the power they hold over you. It was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done.
In London, I recommend London Renters Union.
In Scotland: Living Rent.
In the rest of the UK: ACORN.
+ there are tenants’ unions all over the world, and housing co-ops where everyone who lives there part-owns their home and there’s no landlord to answer to
When you guys have visited potential apartments, what kind of questions did you ask besides the basics like what rent and utilities include?
the portable heater that was keeping me alive through the most unbearable winter of my life just died 🙃 i can't believe the standards of housing here are some of the worst in the world, i sleep under a mouldy dripping ceiling with no heating and somehow i live in one of the more privileged positions of my peers. i got a whole new set of real estate agents too, going to make this entire building a hell zone until sometime notices me.
Support a young couple while they buy a house in a month!!
Hey, folks! So, it looks like we will finally be forced out of the family home.
This is extremely hard on us as EVERYONE knows you need thousands saved, a job lined up, AND somewhere that will accept three cats.
And this place would need to be under $650 as I don't have a formal job right now.
All this to say that we are going to attempt to buy a VERY cheap house so that our little family can stay together.
If you have a fiver to throw at me, throw it here.
Even if you can only share some of my art or this post, PLEASE do.
The US needs more REAL PEOPLE buying homes.
If you’d like to support a real person making art and photography instead of AI, I’m still here 🫰
Please consider supporting me.
Even a dollar is appreciated while my fiance and I attempt to find a place that will rent to us with three cats on a $16.50 income.
Creating and capturing the little bit of beauty left in this world is one of the only things keeping me from laying down and giving up.
Maybe I should have just given up by now, but I haven't.
So, if anyone has the time to buy a print, a little sticker, or just chuck a dollar at my Ko-Fi, it'd mean an unfathomable amount. Truly.
INPRNT
Help. I’m reaching out to the community.
I can only afford $650/mo in rent. I work 2 part time jobs, and am a youtuber, and introvert, and an honest person. I can supply my own wifi. I don’t need a parking space or special amenities. Just the basics to live (bathroom, kitchen, laundry access, storage.) I will sell/give away most of what I own to accommodate. Please contact me. The stress of not having a home soon is starting to get to me. I need a home for myself and poko (my cat). Please, if you have a room, contact me. I’m trying to move to the west side close to my jobs. Thank you.
Male - 28 - quiet.
Looking for someone to buy/ rent an apartment with, hopefully with similar personalities. Budget: $900 per month or $6,000 deposit for 6 months. Move-in date: ASAP. Serious inquiries only.
Thanks for reading. 🖖
I really need help (to the point I'm revealing my name with this) because my current roommate is kicking me out soon. Anything you can afford to donate would help immensely.
Please reblog and share if you can't donate
Beijing man's $1K sidewalk egg house has a bed, light, water tank, and laptop—genius!
With the change to allow multiple baths allowed within a single house as well as the increase in npcs, I thought I’d slowly change the private estate into an onsen of sorts! Here I am training the staff on the dos and don’ts, each of them personally hand selected after seeing how they handle working with strangers and with each other. I aim to teach them that our clients’ each and every need are our number one priority, regardless of what they might ask for.
When you guys have visited potential apartments, what kind of questions did you ask besides the basics like what rent and utilities include?
I think we are winning. Big leftist creators on TikTok are calling out nimbys and then we have leftist accounts calling nimbys shit libs bc they rightfully associate NIMBYs with rich white moderate liberals. The lead paint caucus might think they represent the left but only on surface level stuff about being mad about developers, not the actual substance that matters now that we have successfully negatively polarized enough leftists against nimbys. I’ve seen this play out in Portland. The left there is very pro housing and Jo Ann Hardesty wanted to turn 82nd into a transited oriented development corridor. Rene Gonzales is supported by the rich boomer cranks who hate transit and housing near them. The left in Minneapolis is also pretty pro housing while the right wingers are against it. AOC and Ilhan Omar are embracing zoning reform and TOD/parking reform. Even in NYC, the guy who was endorsed by Cornel West and was an exonerated member of the Central Park Five and supports criminal Justice reform is big on zoning reform as well. The last hold out for left NIMBYism seems to be SF and LA. Meanwhile, Emeryville is the model for California.