Especially when looking at real estate ads in Boston.
It's hard not to think that all landlords are selfish, price-gouging carpetbaggers, when looking at real estate ads in Boston.
It's not that everyone wants to live in a few good neighborhoods, or wants specific amenities, like dishwasher or screen porch or covered parking. It's that people want a place to live.
And landlords weep that it's not their fault rents are obscene. Their houses were expensive. Their property taxes are expensive. Their mortgages are expensive. Labor is expensive to fix things. Materials are expensive to build things.
Yeah, right. You know why things are expensive? One day, many years ago, some asshole price gouging evil motherfucker decided "Hey! All these fucking college students don't know shit! And they can't help but need a place to live! They can't move! Approximatel 73% of all colleges in the world are in the immediate Boston Area. I'll charge $2000 for a two bedroom!"
And all his friends did it, too. And the goverment caught on. And they decided that if rents were higher, even though the housing stock was the same unimproved crap that it always was, they'd value the property higher, and charge higher taxes. And all the assholes who sold their houses and bought new ones sold for as high a price as they could, and took the biggest mortgage they could...all to gouge people some more. And all the rents got higher. And the houses more expensive. So things became more expensive, because things are made by people who live in houses.
I'm going to be fucking homeless, because I've picked a law school in an expensive urban area. I'll be in roommate hell for the rest of my life. With loud televisions and strangers fucking. For the rest of my life. Because people are fucking selfish. And want the most money they can get. And because my roommate is selfish. I can't fucking go to law school and live here- I can barely get enough quiet to do my studying for undergrad.
"Are you going to use that computer all night?"
Yeah, I'll use MY computer all night. Are you going to keep bringing men home in the middle of the night, and watching TV at extreme volume, and filling the fridge with such a bulk of items you won't eat that the door doesn't close properly and my milk goes sour?
Landlords should be publicly humiliated for what they've done. Flippers and condoizers and snob zoners and fucking real estate speculators should be hung. Anyone who puts a 200 dollar appliance into an apartment and expects to get 750 extra in rent for it, for the rest of their lives, should be fucking trash compacted into a tight little ball.
Fuck it. Fuck life. You just think that things will be O.K, and then you realize nothing ever will. Because people want so much to grab as much as possible of anything they could even possibly have a right to, that the whole world is fucked up.
All I want is evidence that I can live somewhere within five miles of school, without four strangers.
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It's just simple supply and demand. There's only so much space within the city limits of Boston, and no shortage of people who will pay $2,500 a month for a two bedroom apartment with a single parking space. Considering the property taxes these landlords get hit up for, I'm amazed any of them make any money at all.
Back in the "good old days" of rent control, you had landlords losing money hand over fist on property taxes (after all - the cities of Boston and Cambridge never set a cap on how much they'd assess property values at - just how much landlords could hope to recoup in rent) while rich - genuinely rich! - tenants paid 1/4 of the market value to live in prime real estate. Something had to give.
In short - it's not all a Marxist scenario of ruthless landlords exploiting the proletariat. If you want the best locales, you've got to be ready to pay for them.
As for the roommate ... doesn't she ever read this?
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