Tom Kertes

Let the “home hunt” begin.

Ron and I sat down today to start planning how, when and where we’ll purchase (or rent) our next home. �Our hope is to find a place to settle down in, with our sights on a place to retire in and (if lucky enough) to eventually die in. If we end up buying, we’ll be “first time buyers”.

I’d like to have a sense of being settled, and know that I have a place for living out the rest of my life that’s comfortable and secure. �I am fortunate to be able to consider having such a home, and realize how privileged I am because I know many who live on the street, under bridges, in shelters and without any option. It is sometimes difficult to look at how unfair and unhelpful the system is to everyone – including us – when fortunate enough to have something available in a system that denies all options to many others. �But starting down this path, and knowing what will likely be ahead, I just think we can do better as a society. �The game is rigged against us, tuned to values that make no sense to people’s needs being met, and we are all in this together.

Today’s exercise was to list our goals for the home, and to lay out parameters for what kind of place we’d like. �We started with the ideal, so we can move back from it as constraints (like cost, availability, reality) enter the process. �Here’s what we came up with, which I think reflects a reasonable quality of life to which anyone should be entitled, myself included:

• We want a place where we can retire and not have to move again (we don’t want to be forced out because rent outpaces income)
• We don’t want to be trapped in a home in case we decide to move, or an emergency of some sort requires us to move (we want a home, not to make a killing on a high yield investment fund)
• We want to live in a place that is part of a community – including the community where we work and where we take part in civic life, and we want that community to be stable enough so we can reasonably expect its essential character to remain intact (to change and be dynamic, but not too quickly and not too drastically as to make it unrecognizable)
• We want to be part of a community that is diverse in many ways – by age, health and ability, kind of work, type of education, family type, level of income, family culture and language, religious beliefs and political views – diversity for the sake of a dynamic character, rich cultural life and expressed inclusiveness – we moved to Canada and Vancouver to be part of a rich multi-cultural life,
• We want our housing and neighbourhood to be grounded in equity – to reflect the values of fairness and respect for others
• We want a home that is peaceful and calm (not too noisy from neighbours or street), has two “sonic spaces” where each of us can make our own noise, has a reasonable kitchen for cooking at home, is at least 700 square feet and has adequate natural lighting and air flow, is within 5 minutes walk to rapid transit, and within 30 minutes to the urban jobs core (so that we spend no more than a total 5 to 6 hours per week commuting, and do not have to drive to and from work), and is a short walk to fresh and healthy vegetables and other whole foods, and has many nearby parks and shops

Looking at this list, and realizing how hard it will be to have our ideal home, has me realizing how poorly served we are by the politicians, banks and developers when it comes to providing people with places to live, work, play and die. The process is presented as a lonely one, one person (or one family) on their own, in a “housing market” – when in fact we are not alone. �Housing is a core part of community fabric – in our times, and for almost everyone, housing is inherently social. �Housing options available are the result of political processes, and right now I think most people are poorly served by these processes.

Our list of housing wants – stable, peaceful, healthy, near work, connected to diverse community, large enough for each of us to have some privacy – should be met with abundant options, because while not everyone defines “stable” in the same way, most everyone wants their own version of stable. �But for most people any kind of stable is as scarce as a winning lottery ticket.

In a country as rich as Canada, we should at least be aiming to provide people with housing and community that reflects a wide range of what people want. �If there are too many people who want to live in urban neighbourhoods, then we should be building more. �The fact is that these spaces are constructed – created – by design. �If built before, we can build more. �There is no reason for any reasonable desired kinds of housing to be scarce, as the range of what most people want can be constructed, so long as inherent constraints are accepted (urban cores will be city-like and dense; suburban communities will be far from jobs, less dense and more isolated, but have more space for things like gardens and yards). �People should be making these kinds of trade offs – but we are instead forced into housing based on other people’s trade offs, based on what the few who are in charge of land use, housing construction and urban planning want or care about.

What’s crazy about the “housing market” is that a few people’s values are driving the system away from what most people value – time at home, time with family, place in a community, a place to be, having stable and secure shelter. �Greedy and short sighted developers, land investment flippers and status hogs drive the market in directions that make little sense to most people, who get forced into risky investments, onto long bus rides, and into isolated spaces.

When I want a home to live in, I don’t want to be bidding against people looking to out perform a high yield stock investment. I just want a home to live in. � The fact that non-housing-need factors are driving the market is hidden. We are told that the “housing market” is driving the process, rather than deliberate political processes based on competing values against those of us who want a home for the sake of having a place to live, of being part of a community.

If having a home involved going to a “Housing Office” and applying to a committee based on some criteria, and if the neighbourhood itself was run by a “Community Council” that decided when and how food was purchased, who lived in the neighbourhood, how many people could live in the neighbourhood, then we’d know who to blame for things not being our way. �It would be the fault of the Housing Office if only rich people were allowed in a certain community, or if middle income people living in such a community were required to work an extra 20 hours a week for the privilege. � We’d blame the Community Councils when some neighbourhoods traded sidewalks for payouts to the builders, or if they made it difficult for people in a community to know each other. �We’d be more than just upset if we found out that the kind of place that most people wanted to live in was easily made available, but just not to most people, as we’d also know who to blame.

As I wrote up my list of what I wanted in terms of a home I realized that we do have a Housing Office and a Community Council because the laws and structures in place that make this system are political choices made by the government. �While they have passed the administration of this process to the banks, developers and real estate agents, the process itself is actually political and the blames rests with politicians. That’s because while the agent and the banker administer the housing system, it’s the politicians who are ultimately responsible for the options available to us.

There should be no scarcity of housing in communities, no scarcity�of thirty-minute commutes to and from work for those who want to or are willing to live in a city, no scarcity of places where people can feel connected, be part of a place. �If you are willing to trade off �having lots of space (such as living in a big house with a yard) and can deal in reality (such as living thirty minutes by public transit from work will put you in a city, and not a country cottage), then it seems that we should all be able to make these trade offs and still be able to walk to a market with healthy food, walk to a park with space for reflection and live in your own place with some decent lighting and a sense of ownership, or at least of the stability and control that ownership provides.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Equity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.