There's nowhere to live
or, if the parasite kills the host then the parasite dies too
My landlord is selling the house I’m living in. Which is fine- these things happen on occasion, when you’re a renter- but being thrust back into the rental market to look for another place in Anchorage has made me realize, once again, how bad it is out there- and how it’s even worse than the last time I was looking, a year ago. A two-bedroom house in Anchorage (I can’t afford to live alone) is currently $2,400, and not only that, there aren’t any. A friend of mine who has been looking for a two bedroom house just for herself and her dog, and has a budget of $2,800, has been searching for months with no luck. The population of Anchorage is shrinking- working-age people are leaving, and the city just can’t seem to figure out why. I mean, aside from the usual difficulties of long, dark winters with icy roads and no sidewalks and being on a frozen island isolated from everyone else on earth, a bag of potato chips, post-inflation, costs $7 and there’s no possible way to live indoors- I can’t imagine why anyone would leave?
It's not just Anchorage. It’s the city you live in, and the city your friends live in- every city in the US right now, and Canada, and many cities internationally too. There are no regulations on rent prices (with a few rare exceptions) and property owners, both individual and corporate, have realized that if they all raise their rates together, renters simply won’t be able to say no- because shelter is one of the basic requirements for human life, and without housing you die.
Many of my friends in Anchorage own their houses- they’re doctors, lawyers etc and/or they have inheritances/family money to help them- and several of these friends, concerned about my own housing instability as a renter in this bonkers market, have good-naturedly asked me- why don’t I go to school and get a job that pays better, so that I can buy a house too? This is a weird blind spot that wealthy people within capitalism seem to have about the system as a whole- they figured out how to make it, can’t everyone else as well? So let’s talk through this scenario and see where we end up. Rental prices in Anchorage (and most cities) are so high right now that you need to be wealthy to live indoors- so let’s say that everyone in Anchorage becomes doctors and lawyers, in order to be housed. Now there are no hospitals (because there’s no staff except for doctors). There are no schools (no teachers). There are no stores or restaurants. There’s no-one to deliver mail or plow the roads or fix potholes. There’s no electricity or trash pickup or running water. There are no car mechanics, and there are no gas stations to get gas. The doctors and lawyers have no way to get clean water, or food, or heat their houses, or to buy gas. They must leave Anchorage, or die.
Now the city is abandoned.
Wealth comes from workers. The structure of society comes from workers. Shelter is one of the basic requirements for human life. Without housing for workers, workers leave, and the entire economy, and the city, collapses.
Capitalism consists of a parasite (the wealthy) and a host (the workers). If the parasite kills its host, the parasite dies too.
Under capitalism, humans are greedy and exploitative unless there are specific laws preventing them from being that way. I believe that in the future (if humans have a future) we’ll look back on this time with horror, the same way we look back on the time before labor laws in the US, when children worked in factories and people attempting to organize unions were shot. Just because slave labor was legal (and is still legal in prisons, and in the countries where much of our goods are produced) doesn’t make it ethical, and the same is true of the current rental market. Capitalism has always been a pyramid scheme with extreme wealth at the top and an exploited working class, with just one golden rule- the parasite cannot kill its host. Capitalism is breaking that rule, and as a result, cities are suiciding themselves.
The fact that every city economy in the US will collapse and all the rich people will lose their money if they don’t allow workers to live indoors really soon is cold comfort, I suppose. I’m not wealthy, I have no skin in the game, it’s at least interesting to watch as things start to fall apart. And unless cities ban short-term rentals (like NYC recently did, making exceptions just for those where the owner lives in the house that’s being rented) and regulate rent prices, making sure that they stay in line with wages, total economic collapse is exactly what will happen.
Why is capitalism killing itself, though? I’d argue that it’s because many of the richest people/people with the most power think they’ll be spirited away by the rapture soon anyway, so why not run things into the ground? Zionism, for example- most zionists are christian, and christian zionists believe that all Jews must move to israel to bring about christian end times, during which the christians will be raptured away, and all the Jews must convert to christianity or be left behind or killed. Christian evangelicals and mormons who aren’t zionists also believe in the rapture- they and their families will be schlorped up to heaven right at the last second, before everything collapses. Maybe it’s not faith in the rapture, but I can’t think of any other reasons that the billionaires would go so gleefully towards a future in which they, along with everyone else, lose everything.
Ok, this got dark. I have one more prediction though. Five years ago, in Anchorage, a room in a house cost $500. A room in a house at the current market rate costs $1200. Rent prices don’t exist in a vacuum- they exist in relation to all other costs, and I believe that inflation- the cost of literally everything else- will increase until $1200 is the new $500, and only then will it stop. In this fucked-up way, the market will self-correct- workers still won’t be able to afford housing, and will be even worse off, because wages won’t increase- but at least bonkers-level inflation will take some of the rich people’s money too.
As for me, I’m moving out of Anchorage- at first I was pissed about it, super mad at the housing market, at being pushed out of my hometown, where I spent my childhood sometimes housed, sometimes homeless, sometimes in foster homes, and now that I have financial stability as an adult doing jobs that I love it’s simply not good enough, because I’m not wealthy- but then I started to think about it, and I’m actually really ready for a break from the city. My home base has always been a city, but for my whole adult life I traveled half the year, to nature- first riding freight trains and working seasonal jobs, and then later with long-distance hiking. I don’t travel as much anymore because my mental health is more stable- staying in one place no longer gives me such intense anxiety that I want to claw my skin off- and I’ve been able to cultivate real peace in my life for the first time, as a result. But that also means that I’m just sort of in a city for most of the year, that I don’t get the same break from like, buildings and roads. There’s one other town in Alaska where I have friends, a smallish town deep in the interior, far from the ocean and hours from any big, dramatic mountains. It’s a humble place of low hills covered in boreal forest, with hot, smoky summers and some of the coldest winters in the world. This town has a lot of one-room dry cabins (cabins with electricity but no plumbing) whose prices are still inflated for what they are (650-850, plus utilities) but whose prices are not yet inflated beyond what I can pay (for now at least). I just spent a few days in this town, visiting a good friend and looking at some of these cabins. I didn’t find one that was a perfect fit for me yet, but because so many of them exist, I have faith that I will. And while there’s no giant mountains super close to town, I like the idea of living in the nature as opposed to living in the city and having to drive to the nature. When I close my eyes I see myself in one of these cabins with my dogs, in the boreal forest, the sunlight cutting through the birch trees, making bands of shadow on the clean snow. It’s quiet, so quiet you can feel the forest breathing, and through the trees are my neighbors, other people in their little cabins, with their aging sled dogs and dirty pickup trucks and fat bikes, and nearby are trails where we say hi as we pass each other on walks, me holding my snarling chihuahuas in my arms and laughing as they skijor past. And while the winters there are colder (cold snaps can get down to -50 F), the summers are also warmer- being far from the ocean means more temperature extremes, all around. So in the summer there will be more sunbeams for my dogs to lay in, and I especially want this for Kinnikinnick, in her old age.
I asked my friend Allison why this town has so many dry cabins, and why Anchorage can’t build little hovels with outhouses for the people as well.
“There aren’t any building codes here,” she said, which made me laugh.
I will say though that I freaking love running water, and will be sad not to have it. I’m also lowkey terrified of shitting in an outhouse in -40 F weather but I guess we humans are nothing if not adaptable, right? And the peace of the forest and stable housing will be worth it.
Also, speaking of remote places in Alaska, there are a few spots left in my summer Brooks Range trips! These trips are going to be really, really epic. And sublime. Deets and the application are here.
That’s all for now,
Carrot
This is so complicated....yay for late stage capitalism!
I decided to go back to school at some point since my creative work + trying to find a dayjob wasn't enough (this was during the 2008 recession, lots of people looking for work), was about to be homeless (did not know about vanlife, hiking, etc yet). Got a medical degree that eventually paid me more, now I have $200k+ of student loans and I basically will never be able to afford a house on my own even in a crappy area until the loans are forgiven when I'm 60 (my field doesn't pay enough to pay them off in full). Hope that program still exists!
I am grateful I had the chance to go back to school, it wouldn't have happened if previous college I hadn't gotten scholarships and grants for. I know not everyone would have the patience for the amount of school I did and certainly not everyone would get the same amount of funding for school. There's a lot more programs now helping people out with student loans, I feel the Biden administration doesn't get enough credit for them. Still, it's not enough.
What you said is right on. I live in a MCOL city (well, rather, right outside of it in an under-the-radar blue collar town). I work right in the center of the big city, 1 block from where I lived in a crappy but adequate apartment when I was a student in my creative work 18 years ago. Lots of students and creatives and random blue collar people used to live there. There's no way to afford living there now. The demographic has changed a lot- the few students left come from much more money than they did in that area before, and people otherwise make a lot- 6 figures per each partner the norm. Creative-types have moved further and further out of town. Even communal living isn't enough (there's a neighborhood famous for this but most people are priced out; that's where the middle to upper middle class students live now). The ones who are in their 40s like me only can afford to buy a house if they lucked out with a partner who had a good job, bought a long time ago, or family money. People in the trades can't live anywhere near these areas they work in, they have to live much further away and long commutes. That always was a bit of a thing, but I feel cities used to have at least some tiny, not super fancy, affordable places in most areas, and now they don't. I worry about my 70 year old friend whose house he rented for 20 years got demolished to build a condo that has never rented in the 5 years since. One of these days he won't be able to afford the tiny apartment he lives in now that's in a central area so he can get to gigs easily. Then what?
This also makes people stuck- if you are lucky enough to snag affordable housing- hard to give it up and move to a new city where the odds are low to find another place like that.
Anyway enough sob story from me (I actually feel quite lucky in my situation), I hope you find a superswell place to live. Not just to live- to call home.
Great writing. I have a friend (maybe former?) who owns a home in Bend, OR and she recently bought a condo to turn into an AirB&B. I told her she was part of the problem and who did she think she could hire to clean it?? Anyway, my daughter used to live in Gustavus and in the winter they kept a ring of foam insulation in the cabin and carried it out to the outhouse so they would have something warm to sit on. Granted Gustavus never got to -40....Good luck in your housing hunt.