Something To Sleep On

In shared accomodation living, you’ll get fellow tenants of all types, even those who remind you of certain comicstrip characters in Dilbert.

WARNING: POTTY MOUTH AHEAD

I’ve often lamented in my social media presence about an essential need — shelter — being marketed like a luxury item. While it’s a position I’ll keep going on about, I’m not going to do so in this post. Instead, I’m going to address the impact hyperinflation has had on the way we seek affordable housing.

Gone are the days where apartment rental was an affordable alternative to owning a home or at least serving as a temporary step until one’s mortgage was approved. Even in cities that comprise the Region of Waterloo — hardly megalopolis status when compared to Vancouver or Toronto — the cost of renting a self-contained apartment is about the same as a home mortgage payment.

Because of this, and also because shelter is something that we simply cannot do without, many have resorted to alternative living arrangements to get by. They include but are not limited to:

• multiple families living in/owning a single-family home
• motor home parks
• refurbishing the back seat of the car to be a bed while said vehicle is parked overnight somewhere
• couch-surfing (something I’ve done frequently in the past)
• not moving out of (or being forced to return to) the parental home
• outdoor encampments run by the city
• living in a hostel
• shared accommodations

The last choice is something I’ve had nearly 10 years of experience with (as of this writing). I’ve lived in two homes repurposed as rental properties. Some of you might think shared accommodations would be the easiest option, but that’s not true. Living in that environment isn’t easy.

Shared accommodations literally means you’re sharing with others the accommodations in the house: kitchen, living room, laundry, washrooms and perhaps the outside if a patio or front porch exists. This means you’ll need to be comfortable being around others in common areas while doing your thing and — very important — making sure you do not interfere with others doing their thing while doing your thing. You will need to make adjustments on when you usually eat, when you have your morning (or in my case, evening) shower, when you do your laundry, when you watch television, when you can have friends over, and so on. You need to be very good at personal diplomacy when routines don’t mesh nicely and trust me that’s going to happen.

At my current shared accommodations there have been past and current tenants who cook and for some it’s all in and balls out when it’s cooking time. Counter space is gobbled up, there’s increased personal traffic you have to be careful about in case you accidentally slam into someone. There was one time a tenant was carrying a boiling hot pot of perogies and he was paying too much attention on the pot and not enough on what was around him so he nearly slammed into me from the rear. If that collision actually happened, I’d be reminded of that moment every time I sat down for a while.

Some people are not great at sharing, particularly those who haven’t lived in sharing accommodation before. There’s no such thing as “homesteading” in the bathroom when sharing space, particularly if there’s only one bathroom. During the morning crunch to get ready for work or school, it’s to everyone’s best interest to keep bathroom usage to a minimum: get in, get out, don’t dawdle. Having said this, I still remember one tenant who was a real metro-sexual. He would spend tons of time in the bathroom every morning: pumice scrubs, facial creams, personal trimming on the hair, face, chest and (shudder) pubic zone. Look, I admit things were different back then when men got ready for work in the morning and I get it that men today are taking more of an interest in their appearance. In fact, I wrote a blog post related to this when it came to appearance in terms of age as part of employment consideration. I just don’t think that it shouldn’t take a man over a fucking hour in the bathroom to get ready. Not even women are this bad.

Most shared accomodations will have allocated space for each tenant. This is either defined by the owner of the house, or agreed-upon by the tenants in a discussion. It’s better the former is the case because tenants come and go and “territorial borders” will need to be clearly spelled out for each new arrival. For those who are used to living in self-contained apartments or owning a home, that amount of space will never be enough.

Some landlords will supply toilet paper, dish washing soap, laundry detergent, and other consumables, while others will tell the tenant are responsible for that. For the consumables like water and hydro, unless there’s proof a tenant is the primary cause of excessive wasteful usage, there’s no additional cost.

The biggest challenge when living in shared accommodations isn’t necessarily the personality of the landlord (thought it can be if the landlord is a difficult person to deal with and lives there) but the personalities of the tenants themselves. Most of the tenants I’ve dealt with over the past 10 years and in two different residences have been great but I’ve had to live with a few freaks.

One that comes to mind was the crazy woman and her even crazier boyfriend who I called the police on. Another was the tenant who did not want to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and while I respect the right of others to decide what medical care they want to take or refuse to take, it still says in the lease all tenants must get the jab in order to live here. As a result of that conflict, his belongings were put on the front lawn and the locks were changed. A third was the Alex Jones fanboy who lost his shit and not only threatened my landlord and threw his drywall down the stairs but also cut the wire to the stove and the fridge and submerged the router for our Internet access under water.

I want to make it clear that it’s rare for everyone living under one room to always get along. After all, people come and go often and differences in personalities are as numerous as sands on a beach. As a result, expect cycles of quiet co-existence and heated conflicts to alternate randomly and continue for unknown durations. During conflicts, diplomacy remains important but so also does knowing when to deal with them. Know your rights as tenants as outlined in your lease. Do not deliberately escalate tension through heated arguments, hurling insults or making threats of any kind you are not prepared to follow through on. Do inform the landlord immediately to seek his or her advice. Do not let any issue fester. My landlord once told me of a time a tenant threatened to move out because of the repugnant smells of dinner being cooked by another in the kitchen. When asked by the landlord how long this has been going on, the tenant replied, “two weeks”. Clearly this was an easily resolved issue that escalated into a near departure.

It’s very important not to leave valuables of any kind in the common areas like the kitchen, living room, or bathroom for long. There’s generally no security cameras or surveillance systems of any kind indoors, though outdoors might exist, but more for the sake of protecting the home itself and not the occupants. While the police can be called to investigate a theft, if the stolen item is small the chances are zero it will ever be seen again.

It is just as important to ensure your bedroom door has a lock to prevent anyone save the landlord from gaining access to your bedroom while you are out. If there is no lock there, you can ask the landlord to install a lock for you (usually at your cost) or you buy the lock itself. I recommend a deadbolt since they are harder to pick than a regular lock. Important: the landlord will insist on getting (and should have) a key to your bedroom in case of emergency if not a maintenance request to fix something.

Most shared accommodations have a weekly or monthly inspection of your bedroom to check for damage beyond regular wear and tear usage, and also to repair something neither you nor the landlord are aware of like a poorly insulated window or a faulty lightswitch.

There may be a one-time damage deposit required at the time of move-in, to cover any expenses caused from damage by you during your stay. Not all shared accommodations require it, but I’ve been in two that do.

You will be subject to follow a list of house rules drawn up by the landlord and amended yearly at every lease signing. The rules are applicable to all tenants equally, and without exceptions. You cannot negotiate changes to these rules. Examples of such house rules are but not limited to:

• quiet hours, usually during sleeping hours but could also include a few hours before and after as well. Tenants will be asked to minimize noise through the use of headphones and moderating the volume of your voice to whisper levels.
• cleaning up after yourself when finished with the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry areas. My current shared accommodations residency requires each tenant to take turns thoroughly cleaning the shared bathroom.
• The landlord will expect inquiries sent through Email, text, or voice mail to be answered prompty, especially if it is an emergency. You will always need to be in regular contact with the landlord.

A final point I want to mention about shared accomodations as a rental option is that your tenancy won’t be as stable as other rental models when your landlord is a corporation. In shared accomodations, the landlord/landlady offers rooms-to-rent for the purpose of using their residence as a form of income generation, and usually on a personal whim. Because of this, there is a big chance you will be told you won’t have a place to stay from out of the blue. While the reasons for that decision are many, the top two that come to mind are negative revenue and the hassles of having other people living in the house. I’ve already mentioned how one landlord shut down the rental operation I was in for those reasons. Other reasons the landlord/landlady might decide to hang up the renting hat are marriage, old age, illness, depression, a new job in another city, downsizing one’s personal space and other significant life changes that make renting out the home no longer possible. With regards to my current landlord (who is an awesome guy and I’ve been really lucky to have him as my landlord), I’ve come across signs he is going through one of the life changes mentioned that might end my current tenancy in shared accomodations. I’ll keep you posted on that here as it develops.

I hope this blog post helped you get a better idea of what shared accomodations are about as a shelter option. If you have further questions about shared accomodations, please do not hesitate to drop me a line here.

Thanks for reading!

David

Unplugged: The Digital Wall Built By Hyperinflation.

My transit app, which is vital for getting around, but this information is only accessible through the Internet and a modern smartphone.

WARNING: POTTY LANGUAGE AHEAD.

By now, most of you are aware of hyperinflation’s impact on the purchasing choices we make at the grocery and department stores, and how that in turn reduces what’s left over for paying the bills, investing in needed retirement plans for that day when one is too old to work, and so on. These points I’ve mentioned have been discussed often and in great detail on the daily news, radio talk shows, and content creation streamers on sites like YouTube.

What has not been discussed — at least as far as I know — is the socioeconomic impact hyperinflation has on access to technology. You might respond by asking why that needs any discussion. After all, it’s so obvious that if the cost of groceries and gas have gone up, so have things like consumer electronics and Internet access. You may also add that not being able to afford such things isn’t a serious cause for concern, and we can live without both.

Really? Can we?

That might have been the case during the 1980s and even the 1990s when consumer-level access to the Internet was introduced as a computer nerd’s playground (and speaking as a computer nerd, oh, what a fun playground that was!). That’s all changed: the Internet has not only become a vast source of information but an essential pubic service utility. Let’s walk through some examples of the impact this ultimate “Gimme Machine” has had on society.

Banks are now moving away from lineups at teller booths and encouraging their customers to use their web portals for their banking needs. In fact, customers can now do most things tellers were only able to do.

Transit services like Grand River Transit here in the Region of Waterloo have taken down paper schedules once conveniently posted at most bus stops. That information can now only be found online in the form of downloadable PDFs or through apps like Google Maps and Transit. The preview image I’ve provided in this post is one example.

It’s hard to find a newspaper to read anymore. News is now online too — if it’s not being blocked by Facebook and Instagram because Meta wants meta-amounts of money. You can still watch the news on television, but the amount of useful news coverage has shrunk to twenty minutes and you’re invited by television stations to (you guessed it) “go online for more details on the stories we’ve covering/working on”.

For low-income earners like myself, it’s a way to get a message out there that they need help and to air their concerns in the form of social activism. I keep reminding myself how most of my victories in my war against chronic homelessness and unemployment that I’ve fought for over a decade have come from my blog, my online ads on Craigslist and Kijiji, and my YouTube videos. Where would I be if my situation happened during the 1980s? Definitely not in a good place and very likely gone before my time.

The list goes on. Corporate landlords insist you use their tenant portal online to place a maintenance request for anything broken in your apartment. Your local City Hall encourages you to fill out an interactive form online to express a municipal concern in your area. There are online tools to help you do your taxes or write a grammar-perfect letter. Your children can now learn remotely. If you are looking for work, you do not mail in your resume or even show up at the employer’s business to attach it to an application form: that’s what “career portals” are for.

We can’t live without the Internet, at least not without some difficulty — and derision — from that attempt.

To get access to the Internet, you need to pay for it. Internet services providers are not cheap if you want good speed and reliability. You could go cheap with the local Internet service provider but you “get’s what you’s pays for” in terms of the aforementioned reliability and speed. You could use the free Wi-Fi hotspots offered at libraries, coffee shops, and municipal buildings but that’s bloody inconvenient.

What you cannot get for free at libraries and coffee shops are the required devices to go on the Internet: smartphones, laptops, and desktops. They are also no longer affordable, as the prices for them have shot up not just because of hyperinflation but also because of global supply issues and product chain disruptions.

For example, the cost of an entry level laptop is now the same price of a middle-of-the-road workhorse that can handle some gaming two years ago. You could get a used laptop or desktop through the buy-and-sell (ahem, which requires access to Internet and a device so Catch-22), but obsolescence becomes a factor. Windows 11 for example requires more memory and modern hardware just for being, well, fucking Windows 11. Replacing that operating system with a free Linux distribution can help but requires some computer expertise, a willingness to learn a different operating system, and sacrificing some software applications that only runs on Micro$oft.

You need a fairly decent processor in some smartphones to run even a food ordering app. A four-year old tablet I once had took over two minutes to start Tim Horton’s newest release of their food app. The app is mostly text with some embedded graphics and icons. We’re not talking playing Raid: Shadow Legends here! I was royally pissed too, pissed enough to share my thoughts on Reddit about just how much I thought that app stunk. To be fair, some mobile services like Virgin Plus Canada and Fido offer very good phones at an affordable price — but only if you sign up for SPECIFIC data plans that are hardly affordable. Canadians really do get raped through the pocketbook by cellular service companies.

A final note on smartphones: they are also not just for communication, but also for security. 2SV (two-step verification) is becoming mandatory in order to access your banking information, your bills, even your Email. Not all phones support it so going cheap or running old technology could cause you to find yourself getting locked out of services you need to keep the lights on and a roof over your head.

Take a moment to mentally digest (and re-read if necessary) what I just typed, then ask yourself how can any low-income person or family hope to survive in an age where the Internet has become as vital as food and water. It is for this reason why UBI, the creation of a national publicly-funded Internet access point, and allowing greater competition in the cellular device market are necessary to ensure the improved quality of life this Age of Information has given us is universally accessible for everyone.

Thanks for reading!

David.

The True Cost Of Affordability.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new measures aimed at rising housing and grocery prices.

I would not consider a thirty-minute walk from where I live to the nearest Tim Horton’s a long walk.

My landlord chuckled with a mild look of surprise on his face after I said this this while preparing my dinner in the kitchen one evening.

The English language offers both precision to describe the world around us yet allows flexibility of meaning in certain words and “long” is one of them. One meaning of “long” as an adjective is used for measurement: for example, you could have a long chain, a long road, a long dress, a long river, even things not physically seen but perceived like a long time, a long wait, a long moment of silence.

However, unlike specific units of measurement under the metric and imperial systems, what is “long” for some might not be “long” at all. How do we have people agree on what “long” is? Well, we can’t.

Let’s explore this a little further.

Using myself and my landlord in another example, travelling to Kamloops, BC or even to my hometown Toronto from Waterloo would be a long trip. My landlord on the other hand might disagree. He regularly travels to BC and other places across Canada for contract work and visits friends and family within Ontario very easily and without much effort on his part.

So with the two examples listed, our positions reverse. My landlord considers a 30 minute walk to Tim Horton’s “long”, but a drive to a nearby city “short”. My personal take is the opposite. Why?

There are many reasons why, but here are a few:

• Context
• Individual Perception
• Cultural Factors
• Personal Experiences
• Subjectivity
• Scale

I’m going to focus on two that best relates to the point of this blog post today: individual perception and personal experience. Because I’m low-income, I only have access to walking and transit and will make it work for me. My landlord on the other hand is not low-income, so he has other choices that offer greater convenience through comfort and time saved: driving, air travel, and train. Because he is more likely to take these choices, his perception of what is a long walk or a long drive would be shaped by that.

All of what I’ve written so far really doesn’t deserve explanation, and some of you are wondering where I’m going with this and why I’m even writing about this on a blog that is about my past struggles with employment, income and housing.

The reason why is because such a diverse interpretation of adjectives like “long” can also be applied to another adjective: “affordable”.

What is affordable for some isn’t for others. I spent under half an hour to find out how much a new compact car would cost, and got a ballpark range of between $20,000 to $30,000 Canadian for a 2021 model. I would imagine the models for the following years would cost more, as well as if I were to include mid-size and luxury. There’s also the random variables like mileage, insurance, and maintenance that I deliberately left out.

Sticking with just the ballpark range, is that affordable? Well, for low-income individuals like myself, no, but the middle- and upper-class probably might. Again, a matter of perspective that is shaped by personal experience and individual interpretation based on the life lived.

It is for this reason why I roll my eyes when I hear Prime Minister Trudeau and the rest of the Canadian government talk about making things more affordable for the rest of us struggling with high costs when they came from affluent backgrounds. What is affordable for them is out of reach for most of us.

How much that connect shows can be seen in what they’ve done so far and what they plan to do in the future. Their one-time grocery rebate was just a drop in the bucket. They introduced CERB rather than create a UBI program that not only would have made rent and groceries more affordable but also eliminate the wasteful duplication that exists in the social programs by combining disability, welfare, and old-age pension into one system. They only created a dental program for children of low-income parents that also need work done on their teeth. Their plan to remove the GST on construction costs for new apartment buildings does not mean the property managers of those buildings will offer lower rents in equal proportion to that reduction. Planning to sit down the major grocery chains in Canada to talk about food prices won’t ensure your next trip to the grocery store will be cheaper, but putting a cap on food price hikes like what we do in rent control certainly will.

Having those in charge who have never lived a financially challenging life like most Canadians does not put them in a position to define what is affordable. In fact, it could come at a great cost to this country and the citizens living in it.

Unlike affordability, cost is something that can be easily measured.

Thanks for reading!

David.

Working It Out

WARNING: POTTY LANGUAGE AHEAD

Yard work, before I started

Yard work, after I finished several hours later.

You’ve all heard how employers are having trouble finding people to fill job openings within their business. You’ve also heard how some of these same employers blame it on laziness and the government (the latter in the form of our so-called generous social safety net and previous pandemic funding).

In very few cases they are correct: some individuals are in fact lazy and don’t want to work. What they are incorrect about is that’s the main reason.

Before I continue, I want to say something to those who assume I’m white-knighting laziness. If you are capable of working, you should be working. I do gigs that are within my abilities (mentally and physically). For most of the spring and summer of last year (2022) I transformed someone’s lawn into something that didn’t look like it was abandoned years ago. It was difficult work and required many visits, but the end result was something I was very proud of, perhaps even more proud than most of my accomplishments in the I.T. field. I mean, look at the before-and-after photos I’ve added to this post. I think I did a great job.

I’ve also delivered flyers, shovelled snow, done voice work and other things over the last 10+ years because I was able to do them and it gave me a reason to get outside. We all need a purpose after all. If any of you reading this have turned down work in the past simply because of the “I don’t wanna” mentality, that’s being lazy. If you have children or a sick parent that relies on the bills being paid and food on the table, that laziness borders on criminal neglect.

Having said this, there are many reasons why some individuals might not want to work and for those, those reasons are valid.

First of all, earning a paycheque is (amazingly) not going to be enough reason in some cases. As human beings, we need to be challenged and engaged by the things we do. It’s good for the mind in both neurological stimulation and improving the psychological well-being. Standing in front of an assembly line, cleaning offices, or dealing with asshole customers over the phone might not be ideal places to work for some people, despite how good the pay is.

Speaking of asshole customers, that’s a perfect example of the next reason why some won’t take certain jobs. The job not just sucks, it fucking sucks. Fucking sucks because it puts a terrible toil on the body in terms of wear and tear, or it involves working the nighttime so you don’t see your family, friends, or loved ones, or that the environment is too filthy, too hot or cold, or very dangerous, or that the employer (if not the entire workplace or the customers and vendors) is so toxic it makes food poisoning look benign in comparison. I’ve done jobs like these before my IT career took off, and while it’s an example of something you have to do to get your foot in the door, it’s not worth a permanent stay no matter the great wages and the benefits packages offered.

And in many cases, the wages and the benefits are not great, or even there. The positions not being filled are mostly low-paying with zero benefits that are not enough to pay the bills and put food on the table in this time of hyperinflation. These positions also offer little career advancement within the workplace so anyone who works there is basically a replaceable cog in a big machine. In some cases, government support payments pay far better than these jobs. If given the choice and without any chance of public shaming, I ask you: which route would you go? Be honest.

Working at a job that is high stress and very toxic can lead to burnout and the lasting effects from that are not just health-related but it impacts the desire to go through that all over again. It sucks motivation and personal ambition the same way a vacuum sucks dirt out of a carpet. Don’t confuse this with procrastination or laziness: suffering major burnout means even trying to do the simplest thing feels like running a marathon or repeatedly smashing a boulder to rubble with a mallet. Being in that state takes a long time to bounce back from and addressing that is key to ensure a successful return back to employment. No amount of pushing or bullying will work unless that psychological barrier is removed.

For those of you out there who feel we’ve gotten soft because we used to be willing to toil in the fields, chop down trees, or basically search far and wide for employment but no more, you’re half-right but forgetting a very important historical point. We had to do them because the technological and scientific breakthroughs we take for granted today didn’t exist back then. These advancements gave us mass production, larger cities, and a better standard of living, which in turn made the need to do all that hard work either unnecessary or outright obsolete. I grew up in a time where I had to wait for my news to be heard on the radio or seen on television or the newspapers and now I can get the news as it happens. I can now have anything delivered to my home after ordering it online. I can share my opinion with the world (sometimes with *ahem* disastrous results). Medical procedures that used to be very painful or very dangerous to undergo are today more of a cakewalk. In short, everything has now become convenient and comfortable and while I will agree that those advancements have made us less willing to do back-breaking sweaty tiring jobs, I will also counter that the genie’s out of the bottle and Pandora’s box has been opened. This trend of wanting to be comfy and catered to will continue unless you want to be a Luddite and are willing to smash the machinery and outlaw the science that gave us all this and return back to those days. Good luck with that, and get back to me when you’ve actually succeeded.

Since that’s not likely to happen, what motivates some people to work in the modern age is a dream job and for as long as that dream is worth pursuing, the work is worth doing. What happens when the dream job stops being just that? Maybe the bloom fell off the rose and the employee has nothing left but the thorns, and the thorns are being real pricks. Maybe times have changed and that dream job is now obsolete and thus no longer in demand. Maybe every challenge and aspiration offered in this dream job has been met and now that’s that. Maybe the dream job wasn’t what was expected and now it’s time to reformulate a new game plan. Despite the reason, when the dream dies, the next question to be asked is, “what’s next?”.

I mentioned previously that children and caring for elderly parents should be a motivating reason to work but if the position offered has a negative impact on one’s family or marriage, then for some that position is not a fit. The only child of a parent who is now too old or too ill to care for themselves has every right to adjust their employment to address this. It could mean not working as many overtime hours, taking a leave of absence, requesting a transfer within the organisation to a less demanding position, or resigning.

Finding quality time and caring for your family is part of an even bigger picture, known as the work/life balance. That topic is not new. It’s been around since the 80’s when people started noticing how much of their free time was being gobbled up by their employment. When technology made it possible to be on call 24-7 and to work from home (I actually thought this was a great idea but later changed my mind to the point of actually regretting being a part of that), that made things even worse. If companies at least appreciated the sacrifices made by their employees to accommodate this increased workload, maybe such discussions about the work/life balance wouldn’t be a thing. That isn’t the case, and I distinctly remember a guy clearing out his desk with a hound dog look on his face during one of SANYO Canada’s wave of layoffs. This guy would chide me for not coming to office Christmas parties and preached how important devotion to one’s work was, yet his final reward for being the company cheerleader was to be discarded, unwanted and no longer useful. It’s no wonder at this point of my life my attitude is basically “fuck company loyalty, fuck overtime, and oh yes, definitely fuck office Christmas parties”.

And I’m not alone. The pandemic was a horrible event but it also woke up a desire to renegotiate the terms of employment. During the pandemic, working from home made every employee see their workplace in a new way. Each person realised their job or career wasn’t their life, that their co-workers were not their friends or family members, and re-discovered the reason why they were put on Earth: to enjoy a fulfilling and meaningful life.

To those employers who lament about not finding applicants to fill the vacancies, I ask you to re-examine your perspective. Better still, try something beyond using the very dated playbook that once defined the traditional employer/employee paradigm of the past century. Why not consider other alternatives that actually address the points I’ve raised in this blog post? Do this, and you’ll have a stampede of applicants coming to your business who would absolutely love working for you.

Thanks for reading!

David.

Lifting Up Those Put-Down.

I don’t believe in censorship as a way to handle disagreements of opinion, but comments like these paint an unfair picture of the more vulnerable members of society in a time where we should all be trying to help each other out.

We’re truly living in trying times.

We’re experiencing yet another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war is driving up the cost of gasoline, and breakdowns throughout the supply chain have resulted in either mostly empty shelves or sky-high prices at Canadian pharmacies and department stores.

These times don’t discriminate either. No matter what tax bracket your income puts you in, everyone is feeling the pinch in the pocketbook. The one difference is the working poor and the homeless, already teetering on the edge of calamity during better days, are at greater peril from the effects of these events.

You would think since everyone is feeling the pain, it would make people willing to help out each other.

Not so, as I found out after posting this Facebook reply to an article about basic income:

The post received 12 reactions, 7 laughs and 5 likes. The replies the article received further underscored the belief that those less fortunate should go to blazes:

I was disappointed but not surprised to encounter such viewpoints.

I wrote an article a while back where certain groups of people were blamed for social problems. The blaming continues even today, but the one difference here is the targeting is not about religion or race, but the economic stratum the targeted occupied.

The above images are examples of a backlash towards the more vulnerable members of society because of the difficult times we find ourselves in, an unfair and inaccurate categorisation that they are the cause of today’s problems despite not having neither the wealth nor the power to accomplish this.

Not only unfair and inaccurate, but also an unhelpful opinion to hold that could backfire later on.

You see, the working poor and the homeless have been at the receiving end of this diatribe for a long time.

They had to put up with right-wing media pundits like Tucker Carlson accusing them of being symptoms of all the drugs, crime, and poverty in New York and San Francisco.

They had to put up with being regarded by those better off as invaders of their sparkly clean neighbourhoods who cry for protection as though they’re the real victims here, not those suffering from substance abuse, domestic assault, child abuse, generational poverty, mental and physical disability, or being unable to access post-secondary education and housing because it’s no longer affordable.

They had to put up with television shows and movies that portray them as lying freeloaders too lazy to work, murderous subhumans, or something to laugh at and mock.

Ask yourself these questions: how would you feel if others thought of you the same way and how would you feel if that’s the way you were treated EVERY single day?

You’d be angry, and growing angrier over time. Which is exactly what is happening right now with those having to put up with comments like the above.

Those who look down at others less fortunate might make themselves feel better, but it won’t make things in general better. In fact, it might make things a lot worse.

Those without hope and with a belief that society has a bone to grind with them might turn to crime as a solution to their problem. They might become pawns of non-elected organisations bent on using violence and other illegal means as a catalyst for making social reform happen, which I wrote about in a previous blog post.

Having these individuals not considered a part of society and shunted to the sidelines will eventually bite us in our collective backsides down the road.

As our population grows, the infrastructure costs needed to continue supporting it — for example, sanitation, power, roads and highways, hospitals, and education — also increase. Those are covered by taxes but the working poor and the homeless pay little to no taxes for obvious reasons. They instead receive social assistance and tax credits.

Reversing this flow of tax dollars will go towards the above mentioned, as well as promote healthy consumerism.

Simply stated, it is in the best interests of society not to put the homeless and the poor down but do what’s possible to give them a lift out of their sorry situation.

Thanks for reading!

David.

The Ethics Of Morality

It’s possible to agree there’s a problem but differ on what solution would be the best approach.

It’s no secret our society is a very divided one, and sociologists have spent an enormous amount of time conducting studies on where these fractures originate from.

Some of these experts claim it’s all about political leaning and there is some truth to that. Ask those on the right what the cause of, say homelessness for example, is and they’ll say it’s the fault of the individual: don’t be lazy, get a job, they are everywhere like leaves on the ground in the fall. Ask the same question to those on the left and it’s politicians and capitalism that’s at fault: governments won’t raise the minimum wage while gutting social assistance programs and employers lay off low-income earners during bad times.

In other words, it’s the same problem viewed through a different lens. It’s also a faulty approach to take to try to solve the social issues that not only hurt the most vulnerable but pit the rest of us against each other while the problem remains, festering like an untreated wound.

Yet such divisions are not only political: take a look at the screen shot of a discussion I had with another Twitter user regarding the ethics of addressing social injustices. The individual (Matthew Cook AKA “anarchistfish”) believes breaking laws in the name of social change is unconditionally justified. My position in this discussion is in this is that two wrongs do not make a right: there’s a risk of a well-meaning social change being reversed in response to social outrage. We’ve already seen many examples of this, such as the death of George Floyd at the hands (or should I say the knee) of a police officer. Everyone agrees that police brutality is wrong, yet when those who proudly carry Antifa and Black Lives Matter banners resort to arson, assault, looting and other forms of crime that border on domestic terrorism in order to spur on social reform, the message is lost in the violence that ensues. Meanwhile, police brutality continues to remain an unsolved problem well after the fires are put out and the looted stores get their windows fixed.

Replace political ideology with what is considered morally and ethically right, and we’re back to my point from before about viewing a problem through different lenses. It’s still just as faulty an approach to take: ethics and morality are not absolute constants like the speed of light or that 2+2 will always add up to 4. They are social constructs that have been shown to change as society itself changes, and not everyone agrees on a uniform code of conduct as a standard.

This is why we have laws to draw clearly understood lines. Laws that work come from a democratic government elected by the will of the people, not every person. Yes, there is a difference between the two points.

Laws can also be amended to change as society change, plus those changes are put on parchment for all to read. It may take time for that change to occur, but history has shown it’s a proven fact. We’ve addressed racism, women’s rights, and the recognition of same-sex marriages in Canada through this approach.

I am convinced if we were to do the same by stating lack of affordable housing, chronic unemployment, and other examples of poverty as legally unacceptable, they would cease to exist in only a few generations.

Thanks for reading!

David.

The Cure For The Next Pandemic

In this video, a younger me stated being unemployed is not a crime. That does not mean I believe we should leave them that way. Now more than ever, we need people to work.

Back in 2013, I recorded a video about unemployment, stating it was not a crime.

In 2021, the year that certainly will be regarded as the first year of the Era Of The New Normal, I have not changed my position on that opinion. Just because someone cannot find work does not mean they’re lazy. The work they used to do might have been automated out or rendered obsolete due to technological unemployment. They might have been a victim of constructive dismissal, a situation where they had no choice but to quit their job without having another job waiting in the wings. They may have suffered a severe illness, or either a physical or a mental disability that makes it impossible to work as a former able-bodied individual.

There’s always two sides to the story.

There’s also always two sides to any opinion, including my own.

The fact that I do not feel being unemployed is not a crime does not mean the unemployed should remain so in that state. We live in a capitalist society where everything —- including the sin of being forced to pay big bucks for shelter, a basic need —- costs money. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Here in Canada, the things we take for granted and assume as free (such as roads, hospitals, shelters, and other services) are actually paid for by the taxes taken off the paycheques of those still working. Nobody loves paying taxes, but we begrudgingly do so anyways because if there were no taxes, the services I’ve mentioned would have to be paid for directly by everyone. This includes the working poor. Those who don’t have any money at all would not be able to access them.

So, while I feel being unemployed is not a crime, remaining unemployed — especially in large numbers — is not a good thing and it would be criminal to allow that situation to continue.

Especially since Canada’s operating deficit went from $40 billion to $400 billion in 2020. To allow the deficit to remain that high by not taking the necessary steps to get Canada’s fiscal house in order is a recipe for national self-destruction.

As with any financial entity powered by fiscal needs, there are two ways to address this:

• cut expenses.
• raise revenues.

Clearly cutting services is not the option. Cuts have already been made in the past, resulting in lengthy wait times to see a medical specialist, our roads, sewage, and electrical systems in a state of disrepair; and the reductions and cancellations of services from social programs designed to help the less fortunate and most vulnerable members of society.

Nor is raising taxes, a form of revenue raising, an acceptable option. More people will refuse to pay their taxes and the underground economy will grow larger while public services suffer funding shortfalls. Disposable income will shrink which in turn will affect the economy. Businesses will simply shutter and either move out of city, out of province, or even out of the country to an economic climate that is less oppressive to the aforementioned fiscal needs.

A third option — often not mentioned except as something impossible to do or that it is not the government’s job to fix — is to treat unemployment as the next pandemic to tackle, a pandemic not composed of RNA and DNA sequences, but of dollars and cents.

Every person capable to work with a useful skillset, no matter how small that skillset is, should be immediately matched through a partnership formed by the government, business, and education to work suited to their abilities. It must become THE priority one goal to have every citizen tax-revenue-positive through employment, not struggling to find a job and thus remaining in a tax-revenue-negative state.

How do we make this possible? While this is something too big for any single individual, including myself, to figure out, I like to offer some suggestions.

Labour demands need to be identified and the qualifications for employment categorized and taught beginning at the junior high level and throughout the post-secondary education system. Co-op training, job mentorship, and entry level employment positions that were once outsourced or eliminated in the name of austerity need to be created in greater numbers.

In addition, most secondary education and career retraining must become more affordable. They must also be pertinent to the skillsets employers are looking for. This means no women’s gender studies, or interpretive music and art studies. Those should go to a private vocational school and not receive one dime of government funding. They are personal pursuits that do not encourage a tax-revenue-positive flow.

Finally, the foundation of ensuring stable employment — affordable housing — must become a reality. Those unable to obtain stable means of shelter will not be able find work or hold down an existing job. It’s not a stretch to see the connection between housing and employment. Whether this is made possible through a Universal Basic Income program or a cap on rent and housing prices is open to discussion, but finding a solution to affordable housing is paramount.

COVID19 will one day disappear, but the economic pandemic that will follow will make what we’ve all gone through feel a Sunday picnic in comparison. Governments must turn their focus on ensuring every citizen is working in some capacity to that tax dollars return to the coiffures, thereby getting the government books back in order.

Thanks for reading!

David.

Knowledge Is Not Power

There’s nothing wrong with reading books to give you more information about a subject, but all the knowledge in the world about a subject does not guarantee experience.Source: Wikicommons.

“Some things cannot be taught; they must be experienced. You never learn the most valuable lessons in life until you go through your own journey.” ― Roy T. Bennett

Say what you like about those we elect to power, but the one thing I would consider an unfair label to slap on politicians is “stupid”.

If you take the time to go through the personal biography of every president, prime minister, premier, governor, etc., elected to power by a repeatedly hopeful and later disillusioned voting populace, you’ll discover one common theme: they’re not dumb.

Some are university graduates in political science, socio-economics, law, or finance. Others are those gifted with business acumen or rogue scholars. Still, all of them have a pretty good chance of being sharper than the average knife in the drawer, or in more realistic terms the typical armchair quarterback who THINKS he or she understands how the government should run the country.

Yet despite being fairly intelligent, it’s clear our leaders do not have all the answers. They may use vibrant feel-good speeches to inspire hope in those looking for such, but facts are like the 43.0913 kilogram dog who still thinks he is a puppy yet the ominous snapping noise your body is making as he lies across you says otherwise.

To intone the character V from “V For Vendetta”, “…the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?”.

Yes there is. We have poverty, homelessness, lack of affordable housing, lack of affordable post-secondary education, job instability, a fluctuating consumer confidence level, high taxes that seem to go nowhere except perhaps in the back pockets of some unseen lobbyist, the list goes on.

In response to questions raised by the concerns I’ve listed, these politicians I’ve mentioned will respond, “Yes, we feel your pain. We’re listening. We hear you. “

Some of them even claim they’ve talked to the more vulnerable members of society to get their take, or participated in activities like serving dinner at a homeless shelter or helping out at a food bank.

That’s noble, if the sincerity is there and the compassion is real and not practiced like a choreographic dance. I find it honorable to selflessly give one’s free time to help others less fortunate.

Having said that, it’s not enough, and right there is the reason why politicians, as smart and as well-meaning as they might be, haven’t put in policies to make the lives of the more vulnerable members of society any better.

Knowledge is not experience. There’s a difference.

I can have a conversation with a nuclear reactor technician for example about reactors. He or she could tell me everything about what a reactor is, how uranium rods heat water into a steam to drive turbines that produce hydroelectric power, but that does not make me a nuclear reactor technician.

I could explain to you what I did during my 20 year IT career in the most minute of details: programming, system administration, Sarbanes-Oxley enforcement, intersystem interfacing, what application layers are, how to create logical access paths in a database. After hearing all of this, would that make you as good an I.T, processional as I was?

Let’s take it to the most basic level. I can tell you I was cold and trying to keep warm on a subway car waiting at a station, or how frightened I was when someone threatened to kill me while at the House of Friendship. Would you truly understand how harsh a men’s shelter or living outdoors can be? No, you’d have to experience it.

Reading a book, or being told a story is not having experience. You’re better educated, more informed, but that’s about it.

Politicians have never spent one night on the streets or slept on buses. They’ve never spent time in a shelter. They’ve never had to decide which to pay for first — food or rent, glasses or teeth —- with the scant amount of money in their possession. Politicians come from a position of comfort granted by their privilege that their wealth gives them.

In short, they have not experienced life low-income earners go through as their daily norm.

It is for that reason why they repeatedly fail in solving that socioeconomic problem. Not because they do not know, but because they do not understand.

Thanks for reading.

David.

UPDATE 11/9/2020: For those of you who still think serving coffee to the homeless or having a short chat with them gives you expertise on the subject of homelessness, take a gander at this video. Contrary to popular belief (lazy! get a job!), homelessness happens when life happens. All it took for this woman to become homeless was a mental breakdown.

Okay.

This wasn’t the worse a fellow tenant did to the house I rent a room at. In addition to the destroyed drywall, and as of this writing, we have no working fridge, stove, wifi, and house phone.

WARNING: POTTY MOUTH AND REALLY BAD MOOD AHEAD!

A soon-to-be ex-tenant apparently did not take kindly to my absolutely wonderful landlord (no sarcasm, he really is a nice guy) withholding his last month’s rent due to numerous violations of his lease agreement.

Actually the more accurate description might be, “he lost his cosmic shit”.

He totalled drywall ordered by my landlord by tossing it down the stairs (see picture), he cut the power cords to the fridge and stove, submerged the Wi-Fi router underwater, and pee’d all over the bathroom floor (which I was the lucky lad to clean up).

Not before he threatened to beat up my landlord first. My landlord escaped that fate by running out of the house and dialing 911 at a neighbour’s house.

For the record, I do hope the day comes where my landlord catches up with this sorry fucker, with police and lawyers in tow. I really hope my landlord sues that ex-tenant’s sorry Infowar loving arse, and throws him into a jail where some hulking jailbrute named Thorne uses him to relieve a carnal need in the most painful and bleedful way.

There. I’ve said it. Don’t hate me for saying it either. You see, this is the life of low-income folk who have to live in shared accommodations, and sometimes even friends and family members of mine don’t seem to get the crap we go through to get through life like this.

In fact, it gets me so fucking mad every time I have to put up with their indifference and holier-than-thou attitude, especially when hearing about it upsets them more than it upsets me.

And I was really fucking upset at first.

Why am I so upset, you ask? This incident has hit me really hard. I won’t get into the details of what it has cost me, what I’ve lost, and what it is making me feel right now, but rest assured, in addition to the damage my landlord has to pay for, I took a financial hit and it was a big one. What I need to replace is going to leave a big hole in my wallet and take up a lot of time. This is a massive fucking setback.

Yet the people I mention think this is more about them than me, so they do not want to hear about it. Worse, they tell me to make sure other people do not hear about it because it will upset THEM too.

Good fucking grief, yet I play their game because, you know, they’re friends and family. When I have to talk about something like, you know, today’s shitfest, over the phone, I have to excuse myself to a private area to make the call so I don’t upset anyone in earshot. 99% of the time it works. No one knows my shameful secret.

Today, the 1% of the time where it does not work happened and someone overheard. You know that old shampoo commercial where they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on and so on? Well, someone overheard and told a member of my family.

Well, FUCK me, did I get an earful. I was told by that one member of my family that in future not to make such a terrible mistake again because it UPSETS them and could make them sick.

Well! How I wanted to say to this person, “EXCUSE FUCKING ME for having a crappy situation in life. PARDON MY FUCKING INCONSIDERATE SELF for being behind the 8-Ball due to COVID-19 where I can’t earn as much money and have a nice shiny house like you!”.

How I just wanted to tear a new hole out of that person for thinking of their discomfort over hearing about MY fricking misfortune instead of offering sympathy or support. You know, like what a normal human being is supposed to feel.

But something else happened. Something unexpected. Something I think is going to happen again and again the next time I have to deal with friends and family members who simply don’t get it.

I simply said to myself, “Okay” and very calmly deleted that person’s contact information off my Email and my web-based texting service. I didn’t swear, or grit my teeth while pounding on the keys on my laptop and the buttons on my mouse to carry out the task. I was unbelievably calm, like what you would feel standing in a farmer’s field on a spring day. Not happy or euphoric, more like your emotions at an even keel. An understanding that sometimes you just shrug your shoulders and accept the things you cannot change and then let it go.

I also felt a massive weight lift from my chest and shoulders. My relationship with that person was something strained to begin with before my misfortunes began during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, but became toxic as time went on. We’ve tried three times to make up, or at least agree to disagree, but each time that failed and we both went back to our separate mad corner of the world, and years pass in silence thereafter.

This time it’s different. I don’t want to do the rodeo ride again with this person, but I’m not walking away mad. I’m walking away with an “Okay” frame of mind. I can’t change this person. I can’t make this person understand my world, and most important, I can’t play anymore their perceived role of villain because my misfortune somehow pisses them and the people they care about off.

It’s just —- okay.

Thanks for reading.

David.

P.S. I’ll admit this is a depature from a previous post where I felt it was important to mend fences in case my situation brings me to an early end. In that post, I stated I hate things being left unsaid but I’m getting to the realization where maybe that doesn’t matter if people simply refuse to listen, or just see things from the comfort of their personal convenience rather than the bare truth.

I Hate Star Trek.

Star Trek has come a long way, but also has changed a great deal since I first watched it. The current incarnations have long lost the message of a bright, hopeful and positive future for everyone, regardless of skin color, faith, or economic class.

WARNING: COARSE LANGUAGE.

For those of me who know me very well, and for a long time, this statement could come across as very surprising.

Ditto for some of you who visit this site as followers. I usually write about homelessness and employment issues on my blog.

To understand the title of this blog post —- and why I have a change of heart regarding a franchise that I once adored since my childhood—- I need to give you a peek into my childhood, and then move forward from there.

I got picked on a lot as a little kid for two reasons.

The first was I was a runt, and still am a runt. I’m shorter than most men, I have a slight build, and I lack alpha male tendencies. I’m not someone who believes that might is right. I’m a talker, a supporter, a negotiator when I deal with others. I try to make my stay on this world as painless as possible for those I deal with.

The second was my last name. Gay. You might find it odd reading that it’s an issue but you’re dealing with the context of the present time. During the 1960s and 1970s, homosexuality was on the DSM books (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as a sexual deviancy and a mental disorder.

So combine those two points — a runty kid with a scary sick last name — and I can tell you my school life from Grade 6 to Grade 12 was not a pleasant one. These times had an impact on shaping me as a person growing up, both good and bad. Let’s focus on the good and leave the bad for another day.

These tough times made me more compassionate towards others. It strengthened my support for the police and for good government. It reinforced a belief that violence in society as an agent of change was wrong and I am glad to see that point has been validated in this now much more violent and terrifying world we live in. Most important, it made me a staunch advocate for respecting our differences in a diverse and inclusive society where we don’t leave people behind.

All of this was encapsulated in Star Trek.

Star Trek offered a future where there was no war, no poverty, no hunger, no hatred, no discrimination. Each member of the crew of the Enterprise in the “Original Series” were from different parts of Earth —- except for one particular pointy-eared alien who was from another planet — but were still able to come together as one to take on each challenge and win.

Roddenberry was a sneaky little bugger. He posed social issues like racism, poverty, morality and others in a science fiction framework. In the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, he did not explicitly mention white racism towards blacks but showed how wrong it was to make an issue over cultural or ethnic divisions. “A Private Little War” showcased how easy it was, and how wrong it was, to play the game of global political chess by arming sides in any country.

Spock was my favourite character because, like myself, he was an outsider and a misfit. He stood out. He was kinda geeky and nerdy. The only difference between this fictional alien and myself was that he was wanted, appreciated, and accepted.

How I wanted to be like Spock. How I lost myself in that world. It got me through that tough childhood, because I believed one day things would be just like Star Trek. This was just another hurdle in how imperfect we were as humans. We’ll get better.

By the time I went to college, things did get better. Homosexuality was no longer considered a deviation and society as a whole became more tolerant. My dealings with others was as adults with more mature and open minds. Still, Star Trek remained a part of my life and my development. Through the series run for “The Next Generation”, it showed what we could all become in the future by showing us what was wrong today. It wasn’t just good science fiction fun, but a blueprint of what was to come in the form of a good story told.

Something went wrong, and it happened in the 1990s.

Maybe it was because of the hangover we got from the heady 1980’s but society became more pessimistic. Blame culture was on the rise, on both sides of the political ideologue. We became distrustful of the police and government and less likely to believe that politicians represented the will of the electorate. While it can be argued there’s reason for this, the rot that nibbled away at following the rules and obeying the law was still there.

Star Trek became to change to reflect that time, most notably in “Deep Space Nine”. It was dark, somewhat horrific at times, and fraught with controversial subject matter. Captain Kirk would never consider lying on a galactic scale to achieve the needed means, no matter the cost. Nor would Captain Picard. Captains Janeway and Sisko however had no compunction in doing this, the most notable example being “In the Pale Moonlight” where Sisko, with the assistance of less savory characters and the blessings of a Federation desperately trying to avoid being conquered by the Dominion in a losing war, forges fabricated material to bring a former enemy — the Romulans — into the battle and ultimately saved the good guys. Clearly a far cry from the days of the Original Series.

Star Trek went away after the turn of the century for a bit, and later returned but only in name. The rebooted movies under J.J. Abrams was little more than an Avengers movie set in space. I have no problems with the Avengers, as that franchise never was meant to be social commentary, but the reboot featured a Captain Kirk that whined and naval gazed often and a Spock who kissed Uhura, lost his emotional shit often, and punched.

“Discovery” and “Picard” continued with the bad writing and the peeing on canon, but also featured crew members that fought often among each other, sometimes beyond what would be considered appropriate Starfleet and Federation behaviour.

Add into the mix the aforementioned blame culture in the form of social justice warriors, the same bunch that has ruined Marvel’s previously successful line of comics. In these shows, someone who is racist or sexist — something that should be impossible in Star Trek’s universe by now — is without question a white male. The Federation now not only lacks cohesion as a united body of worlds, it’s also protectionist. Star Trek went from slyly presenting social issues without present world context to explicitly mirroring what was wrong now in what should have been a perfect future. In the Discovery and Picard era of Trek, war, hunger, poverty, hatred, is not only still around, but it had someone to blame it on — and it wasn’t the Klingons, Romulans or Borg this time.

Star Trek went from a blueprint of what an attainable Utopia should be, and must be, to a mirror of what sucks in today’s society. There is no optimism. There is no hope. There is no tolerance. It’s just today’s messed up times but enhanced with CGI graphics and mass marketing.

It’s the marketing part that finally nailed the coffin for my love of Star Trek and replaced it with hate. Star Trek used to be available to all who had access to local broadcasting and later with cable. Even the low income could watch it and like myself find escape into a bright and glorious future from their social hell. Not any more. “Discovery”, “Picard”, and now the upcoming “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” (see above image) can only be accessed behind an expensive paywall.

In short, Trek has now become something only those with money can watch.

I’ve been told that this incarnation of Trek is canon, it’s “real Star Trek”, and that I should get over it.

I can do better. If this is now Star Trek, and the futuristic world where poverty, homelessness, war, racial strife, and hope is no more, where people refuse to get along and work together, and all of this behind a paywall, then I hate it. I hate Star Trek because that’s not what I think the future should be like.

What my own personal fortunes will one day be like.

Thanks for reading.

David.