Changes are Coming

Palisades in the morning light

 

While waiting for the "new normal" to reveal itself, it occurred to me that the new normal may be within me. And enough people who have changes within themselves after our year of isolation and that will create the new normal in our society. As I wrote that I immediately thought: If we can get rid of enough old farts. No not those that died from Covid but those that allowed us to die of covid. But I digress. The subject was to be changes in me.

In the year of my sojourn or isolation I granted myself permission to make changes or to give myself permission to embrace changes which have been dancing around the edges of my existence. The big one was doing away with my long term rental. This has been taking up room in my mind for twenty years. But it was part of my "retirement" plan. When occupied it paid the mortgage. When vacant it ate up all my spare cash to get it ready for the next tenant. I came to resent that. My first tenants stayed for nine years and basically left it a better place. Well, except for the total destruction of the back door by their Rottweiler, and its shallow grave too close to the house.

Both of those would pop into my head every time I prepared a "For Rent" listing. And tax time when I totaled what was spent vs what was made off the rental I hesitated. Then Trump and his tax bill eliminated all the benefits of owning a rental property. As stated before I was lucky in that my last tenant bought a house and moved out just before we were locked down. Due to Covid policies I decided to at last remove it from long term rental and set out to fix it up for a vacation rental. Being alone in fixing up my hideaway gave me time to realized the damage done by even well meaning tenants just moving furniture in and out. 

And that, since the first tenants and now, people had changed. I was raised by the leave it better than you found it generation of campers. Somewhere along the way we moved into the It's not mine age. With a vacation rental at least they would not have that much time to destroy things. I have been pleasantly surprised at how well guests take care of my creation. Though I have heard some horror tales about spring break skiers. 

There is a lot of blame being spread about landlords who remove their property from long term rental. I think those casting aspersions need to look at tenants. And tenant protections that abuse landlords and their property. I once saw myself as the savior of the working class by providing housing at reasonable prices. No more. And I am not the only property owner expressing these opinions. Maybe businesses who need employees at low wages need to provide housing again. Like the old mines did:

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store 

And if not the businesses that then the towns. Especially tourist towns.

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