OK, apartments are more energy efficient than houses. I got my first apartment back in 1984. I had a roommate who was so cheap that he refused to get our gas service activated that winter. I think we actually made it through most of the winter without heat. Of course, I found another roommate the following year whose infamous claim to fame was trying to warm up a pizza still in the cardboard box in the oven. I was lucky that I missed the fire department visit.
But apartments are small and limiting and they suck most of the time. Why did so many flee from apartments to homeownership over the past decade?
I've lived in apartments for much of my life and I can see the appeal, but apartment living sucks because of the lack of space and fucking landlordism.
> Politically, ownership of a house is an unending invitation to
> narcissism. Everything about your domestic environment is something that
> you can choose and cultivate. You can burn up an entire life in service
> to a house. I guess that's one of the attractions. At any rate, I notice
> that half the magazine industry is devoted to suggesting yet more ways
> to elaborate your "home." Color schemes, fabrics, stencilling, granite
> countertops, gardens, trellises, reflecting ponds, decks, basements,
> attics, romper rooms, recreation areas. And everybody has to have their
> very own of everything.
Home ownership does involve alot of upkeep. I make some of my living doing lawncare for people who don't have the time to do that aspect of owning a house. Home ownership costs lots of time and money. This suck of one's personal time is one of the things that makes apartments attractive to me.
At the same time, people in apartments spend huge amounts of cash fixing up their spaces. At least with home ownership you build up some equity out of your investments.
Another advantage home owners have over apartment renters is that they have more freedom to make changes to their environment. They can completely re-do rooms and fix up the house. This isn't just about narcissism or home values. Some of us really enjoy the physical labor of remodeling and so on. Home owners can also plant gardens and futz around with the landscape. Of course, the big drawback is mowing and my least favorite activity: Fall leaf control.
> And of course, this all costs money. So much
> money that you can't afford to work a job that pays less but offers more
> enjoyable work; so much money that you can't afford to tell your boss to
> go to hell; so much money that you can't afford to take any kind of a risk.
Home ownership does make people more conservative about their job situation. If you have money tied up with a house and kids in a certain school, you don't want the uncertainty of job loss or changes.
On the other hand, living in apartments can be very expensive. When I hear people complaining about how much money they have to spend on housing expenses and how that affects their job situation, it's always people who live in big cities on the coasts. Nobody around here in KC suburbia complains about house payments breaking their backs. I know that there are lots of people out here who are living on the edge and losing their homes, but the most vocal complaints I hear about housing expenses come from friends who live (or who have lived) in New York City or San Francisco.
> An entire life spent in the service of comfort and security proposed as
> the highest ideals. An entire life building your own coffin. That is a
> "dream" worthy of a zoo animal, not a human being. Well, hold it. I'm
> being unfair. Zoo animals still dream of being free.
I doubt that many homeowners in the burbs would see their situation as "building your own coffin." Serial apartment living can suck more. Would you rather owe money to the bank or pay insane rents to some asshole landlord?
> We men dream of home ownership. We used to dream of justice, of finding
> work that we loved, of achieving great and wonderous things, of
> exploration, of invention, of love. But now we are content to decorate a
> cage. This is not a dream; it's a sentence. And it is not a betrayal of
> the working class to call it so.
Right, but how are you going to sell your vision to the suburbanite? They think that their lives are pretty good. There jobs may suck, but they assume that all jobs suck. They can buy anything they want at local
chain stores and they have lots of electronic gadgets to play with.
I drive around the burbs constantly and think about how tough it is to sell our radical ideas to these people. We can't even talk to them in obvious ways to agitate them. We can't articulate how our alternative would be any better. Why would any of these people care about "justice" when they see their lives as being pretty good?
> One could fritter one's life away in an apartment as well; but it really
> doesn't invite us to do so. An apartment is a temporary thing. Here
> today; gone tomorrow. Like our ephemeral selves. An apartment is just a
> resting place; you go home, you rest, so that you can do something the
> next day -- something that has nothing to do with the apartment. An
> apartment doesn't really invite identifications. Hundreds of people have
> passed through; hundreds more will follow. You will not leave it to your
> kids; you think of other things you might leave your kids: a story, a
> picture, a better world. An apartment invites fellowship. You watch out
> for your neighbors. You have a Xmas party. You collect someone's mail
> while they're out of town. You water their plants. You dream.
Right. But at the same time, the transitory nature of apartment-living means that you don't put roots down anywhere for very long. That's desireable for some people, anathema to the rest of us. I really don't miss the alienation, isolation and lack of community that I felt constantly while living for 9 years in the Washington, D.C. area.
I'd really like to see more housing options. Right now I'd prefer to live in urban KC in a loft or a cooperative apartment building. Apartments would be great if you could get rid of the landlords, make the living spaces bigger, and have a garden plot nearby.
Chuck