All You Have to Do is to Listen. Louis Shalako.

Returned a suit, told a funny little story...#psychology

Louis Shalako

I returned my brother's suit, which I had borrowed.

And I know he’s been kind of suffering lately.

All you have to do is to listen—

I set up a lead-in, asking if the one boy has been laid off...yes. The other one still doesn't have a job, apparently staying up all night on the computer. I told my brother that he was suffering from depression. 

"All the signs are there," I told him. 

I went on to tell him the story. Big Frank was in the union. He knew what a layoff is. Yet when I was laid off from Fibreglas Canada, he was fucking fit to be tied. To him, it was a cop-out of some sort on my part--Frank wasn't a bad father, merely typical. He didn't have a real high opinion of his oldest son, who was, quite frankly, eighteen years old. He'd also co-signed a loan so I could buy an MGB for $1,500.00. That must have been a factor as well. So, after a couple of weeks or so, I started at Holmes Insulation. And it was terrible. It was a thousand times worse than Fibreglas, with the soft, sticky white wool floating in the air. Supposedly a twelve-hour shift, I walked out after four hours, or about the time when, (literally), for break-time, guys walked twenty feet to a picnic table right beside the effing production line. To eat a simple ham sandwich was to crunch on rock wool, ladies and gentlemen.

I cleaned myself up and went downtown to the federal building and talked to a recruiter for the Canadian Armed Forces. I told the man all about Big Frank. I told him the army would teach me some discipline--I told him it would 'make a man out of me', feeding him all the same bullshit that well-meaning folks dish out all the time. I told him I would get my teeth fixed in the army...I told the man they'd buy my clothes, my boots and feed me, give me a bed. Get my Grade 12, all of that sort of thing. The man suggested I come back in a week. If I still felt the same way, they'd sign me up. I got home about two-thirty p.m., within a few minutes, the phone rings. Fibreglas wants me back, for seven a.m. the next day. 

Big Frank usually arrived home a little after three. I played him real good--I told him I had to quit at Holmes, of course his face starts to redden and the mouth starts to open...I told him I had gone down to the recruiter, and they wouldn't have me...some kind of maturity problem, I told Frank frankly...poor old Frank was working himself into a fine lather by this point, and then I told him I was going back to work the next morning. And it was just a routine layoff, Big Frank: get over it, it happens, as he should damned well have known. But my old man was never so scared as when contract time rolled around, there was talk of a strike and he had all those useless mouths and a mortgage to feed. It's not that we didn't understand--it's not like he hadn't lectured us enough on the subject.

When my brother was 17, he and Big Frank were at such loggerheads, he threw a few things into the ’67 VW Beetle and took off for Windsor to live with our mother for a while. Even then, I had patience—I could sort of sit there and take it, (what with having an actual job, not to mention that fucking MGB), but The Duke was cast in a slightly different mold. It’s not like I didn’t leave home a few times—and come back, too. Quite frankly, I didn’t really grow up until some time in my late thirties, possibly early forties. I told him that too—my brother, I mean.

This is about when you look around you and realize that some of your friends aren’t even trying, while you, try as you might, seem to fail miserably about as often as you succeed at anything of any great import. There are clearly some lessons to be learned here. And some of those old friends still haven't really tried, anything at all.

The problem, is that you have three stubborn males, money is tight, and Dad is on a small disability pension. They’re also in affordable, geared-to-income housing, and subject to some rules…no matter where you are, or what you are paying, there’s going to be some rules, but one would think the three of them could figure a way to keep a roof over their heads and quite frankly, no one person has to do all the work and provide all the money for their sustenance. And neither nephew seems to be trying all that hard, but they’re young and they have their whole lives ahead of them.

They will get tired of having the old man all over their back. It's just a question of time.

As for myself, I may be practising psychiatry without a license, but it’s family after all.

Let’s hope we can plant a few seeds here and there.

 

#Louis

END

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Not In My Back Yard: the Cure for NIMBYism. Louis Shalako.

Affordable housing in Vienna.

 

Louis Shalako

One of the greatest challenges to building affordable, geared-to-income housing is NIMBYism.

People are all for it, of course, they agree on the need for it. With one proviso—‘not in my backyard’. They fear it will affect the character of a neighbourhood. Even though that neighbourhood might not have much character to begin with. They fear it will bring down the value of their own property, and as it turns out, family values turn out to be mostly about property values. If you tried to put such a thing in the south end of this town, right beside the railroad tracks, people on fucking Campbell Street would object to it for all the usual reasons. Most of which have more to do with ignorance and prejudice than any great regard for the facts. As far as the south Christina St. neighbourhood, it would actually tend to raise the tone of the neighbourhood, and they would still object to it. In their mind, it’s better for the county to pay $60,000.00 per year to house an unhoused person in a motel out on London Line. Where there are no services for all the #mental_health_addictions you folks keep on ranting and raving about.

Someone, after all, is getting something for free, even though the same people will tell you there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I have the solution, which of course no politician would ever care to acknowledge, let alone adopt as a serious policy proposal. That’s because they need folks like you to vote for them, and you are afraid of everything that looks like a solution.

I have the cure, ladies and gentlemen.

When a property developer applies for approval for some big new housing development, say a hundred and fifty-four detached homes on London Line here in the Sarnia area for example, ten percent of the land should be designated for affordable, geared-to-income housing. You could put that at the back to block out highway noises, or you can put it along the front to block out highway noises. But. You’re not going to get approval unless the developer agrees to this proviso.

It gets better—and I know some of you are already raising objections, even though what was once farm fields or a golf course and is just off a busy commercial and light industrial roadway, somehow, magically, has character, even though you haven’t actually built it yet.

Proviso number two is oh, so simple, and oh, so effective. Proviso number two is that the affordable, geared-to-income housing must be built first. You are, after all, asking the municipality, and the taxpayers, to pay up front, in order to provide services, including roads, water, sewers, electricity and gas lines in order to heat and light those new homes…homes which haven’t been built yet, and the taxpayers are supposed to accept that this will bring further economic development. Which somehow trickles down, even though it really doesn’t, and somehow, somewhere, somewhere else, somebody else will finally get around to building affordable, geared-to-income housing. Which the provincial government has no interest in doing. County council talks big, but when the chips come down, they will just dedicate another five-year study, even though the last one brought exactly zero conclusions, made no recommendations, and wasn’t even reported in the local media because everyone in local media knew it was bullshit from the get-go, and some of them, at least, may still have a conscience. Even though I rather doubt that, what with living in Twin Lakes and in Bright’s Grove and in the north end of this town. These are the folks that love stories about going down to the riverbank and burning a candle, in order to raise awareness of the need to reduce stigma...

#fuck_off

An unhoused person.

Just think of it: you’ve built your three-floor walk-up, with thirty to fifty units, on a piece of land that might have taken five or six buildings which they call bungalows but are basically monstrosities, with two or three residents, several dogs, a garage full of Harleys, a driveway full of pickup trucks and boats and house trailers. That is what they call character, even though there isn’t a tree or a sidewalk for miles. (Don’t forget, the bougies hate sidewalks even though municipal services need a strip of land beside every street in order to provide such services.)

And when that’s up, and when you’ve built your first detached home, your first townhouse, your first condo development, you get to do what all the big builders do.

They like to put up a big sign out by the road. It says, ‘Starting at $479,000.00’ or whatever the price is.

Here’s where it gets good. When the realtor shows that to a prospect, in order to make full disclosure, they have to tell potential buyers that there is, in fact, an affordable, geared-to-income building not too far away—they might even be able to see it from hundreds of metres away, what with no trees and the fact that it takes a while to fill in such a subdivision.

And if they object, and if they say, “But—but—doesn’t that bring down the price of my property, which I haven’t even bought yet..???

And the answer, of course, is yes, because it actually does bring down the value of the homes. I have always wanted to ask such a person just how much such an affordable, geared-to-income building nearby would actually bring down the value of an existing home—I doubt if they can even do it. I doubt if a Canadian realtor, still more focused on blowing more hot air into what is clearly a bubble, could even do it. A certain kind of person lives in a world where facts don’t matter, for example Sarnia City Councilor Bill Dennis, who quotes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and who spends an inordinate amount of time suck-holing around Donald Trump and Ben Shapiro, and yes, a bunch of other creeps on Twitter…well, it’s a free country, or so they say.

***

But, if you feel that strongly about it, you can walk away. You can go down the road to another municipality, one perhaps not quite so committed to equity and social development. One without much character, one without much foresight. One without some kind of a conscience…

The exact same house might cost fifty thousand dollars more—a good chunk of money, almost enough for his and hers matching Harleys, although it don’t buy much of a speedboat these days. So, ladies and gentlemen, you’re saving fifty grand right off the top. Your mortgage payments will be consequently lower. Due to slightly higher density, there is in fact a greater chance that the municipality will be encouraged to plant those trees, create those community amenities, those parks, and yes, those sidewalks. Hell, they might even put in a nice new school or something.

Interestingly, the affordable, geared-to-income housing would be professionally managed, and would provide rents (subsidized based on need), for the life of the building. Detached homes are sold, not rented. Once you’ve made your money, that’s it—it’s time to move on and grab some more farmland, buy up some old golf course that wasn’t making money anyways, and do it all over again.

As for the building I live in, the one where I pay rent-controlled but otherwise market rates, the building has been re-mortgaged ten or twelve times in the seventy-five years it has been around. It does provide a stable, predictable to some degree, monthly and yearly income to its owners. 

In that sense, it is more of an asset than a liability.

END

Image (Vienna). By Thomas Ledl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49305377

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Systemic Change Comes Through Political Action. Louis Shalako.

The loneliness must be intense...

Louis Shalako

I saw this guy at the gas bar. Black Chrysler van, loaded with bags, boxes and crates. The exhaust system is shot. The van is dented, dinged and rusting through. A metal shield on the exhaust system is hanging down, scraping the road on every bump. I've seen him before, grabbing ten or twelve black bins at the Beer Store, which he takes out into the parking lot and fills up from other bins and bags, of empties he's collected over his travels.

He may stop in at the food bank, or the soup kitchen, but that driver's seat is where he lives. That is his bed, ladies and gentlemen, that is where he sleeps. With a 27-year waiting list, (only a slight exaggeration – ed.), for geared-to-income housing, and this guy's an older man, one wonders where he parks at night—I have been reliably informed that the Tim Horton's on south Indian Road is locking its doors at night. No walk-ins, only drive-through after ten or eleven at night. This is due to homeless people, getting in from the cold, it's also due to drug overdoses in the bathroom. How long can he keep that thing on the road, and after that, then what?

One wonders where he goes to take a shit, or to take a shower once in a while. And I rather doubt this one has been counted among the local statistics. One wonders how he deals with the hopelessness, the sheer loneliness of his position.

#statistics

Shortly after the 2018 municipal election, county council called for a five-year study of housing affordability. I wonder what sort of nonsense report the Bill Dennis types (an extremely conservative person in his own words) think they can get away with, or are we just supposed to forget.

#fuck_off

The report will focus in on 'leveraging paradigms' and stupid shit like that. Only fools talk like that, and this is a serious problem. 

They are, in the words of Karl Marx, ‘useful fools’, and they do know what is expected of them…they even get paid to do it.

According to news sources, something like 1,300 volunteers had been through the Inn of the Good Shepherd in a recent year, and they were serving 1,700 or more families and individuals per month, in a whole plethora of services. At some point I had to realize, that any asshole can go down there and make soup for the people. I know that sounds cruel. But it really doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to make soup, nor a doctor, a lawyer, or any skilled person. It is mostly church groups, service clubs and some of the union locals. The food bank serves some need in them as well, or they wouldn’t do it, would they. Some people make cash donations. Surely there is a surplus of cash out there, somewhere…perhaps it’s a problem of distribution. Maybe it's just a 'supply-chain disruption'.

But the only way to tackle systemic issues is by political means. It is a challenge of communication, not one of handing out food baskets, which are never enough and it doesn't solve the root problem anyways.

Making 'political statements' is something the food bank operators are loathe to do, as is the local news media, for related but different reasons. Non-profits are barred from political activity, although that has never stopped the conservative think-tanks. I recall one conservative government went after some left-wing think-tanks, claiming they were violating their mandate, which some might argue includes a bit of criticism of the social order—and the government stands at the top of that heap, don't they. The food banks don't want to scare off donors, some of whom are very conservative, and the media don't want to lose advertising dollars or have to deal with an inundation of angry letters to the editor. Oddly enough, the government does a fair bit of advertising in local media…

#analysis #Louis

This is why the never-ending food drive is a 'good-news' story about a 'sharing and caring community'. All propaganda, in order to be truly effective, must be based on some truths...and once it is swallowed, and accepted, it becomes 'truth', which is also a bit of a problem around here.

There is no surplus of truth, not in this town, ladies and gentlemen.

After more than forty years of, quite frankly, thoughtless media indoctrination, no one really questions it anymore. 

That, is the challenge of communication.

They have grown up with such stories for their entire lives. It takes great courage to question such an ‘unquestionable’ narrative, and that’s why no one ever does it.

If the local food bank can get 55,000 lbs. of food a month to distribute, the problem is not food. There is clearly surplus food. The problem is one of income. People don't have enough money to buy their own food. Many of those people are working.

Where does the Chamber of Commerce stand on this issue?

Take a wild guess…

More food drives, more charity, more mental-health outreach programs, more free Nalaxone kits handed out in clumps of bushes down on the riverbank...please, please, please, don't do anything that would actually solve this problem, for example raising the minimum wage...or business taxes, or property taxes, or meddling with any other funding stream.

The current welfare and disability regime in this province and this country are ludicrously underfunded. Always have been, always will be.

Nothing is ever going to change until we change.

And change, my friend, is hard.

 

END

Image: Morguefile.

Note. The passages highlighted in blue are from Facebook comments. The main text was pieced together in Fb posts. I tried saving as a .txt document, which will often strip out unwanted formatting, but it clearly did not work. - Louis

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