Once the rain lets up, I'll get more pics of the area. Entire sections of my city are literal ghost towns. My city isn't exactly remarkable in this regard either.
electric_nz said:
Love it! Bleak post industrial vibes are great. Where I am most of the old abandoned warehouses have been demolished and rebuilt for high density housing, trendy coffee roasters etc. I kind of miss them…
Where I'm at, abandoned buildings are ubiquitous. If I had the money and resources, I could film a post apocalyptic movie here! Even so, even the most basic house that is in livable shape but located in a ghetto where shootings are a semi-regular occurrence, costs $1XX,XXX USD. My standards for "livable" are quite low compared to most people, this being said, meaning, will pass inspection and doesn't leak when it rains.
CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING said:
I know that not all buildings can be saved, but it always frustrated me that so many companies would rather spend the phenomenal resources to waste and rebuild concrete structures rather than turn it over to people just to see what they can do with it. I know part of it is America is so adverse to ideals like Communes and the like, but there are so many old structures that only exist on tax forms that sit like carcasses of yesteryear.
In this country, doing something that will lower the cost of housing is taboo. The mantra of the current paradigm is endless growth forever on a finite planet, damned be the costs! Available single-family homes are being consolidated by multi-billion dollar investment firms and purposely kept off the market to drive prices of available units higher. Shelter is treated as an investment, rather than the survival necessity it is. Can't afford it? Then just take out as big of a loan as necessary! This in turn has the benefit of driving the costs of housing even higher. This forces average working people into either "voluntary" debt for decades of their lives where they hope they never have a job loss or medical emergency or other unfortunate event for the duration(lest they lose everything) or to rent from the ownership class forever and "own nothing and be happy." None of this is accidental, as it is the result of deliberate policy decisions made without voter input. Access to shelter has been rendered into a decades-long pyramid scheme. Prices must never go down, or the bureaucrats will have less property tax revenue, and the ownership class who bought the politicians will request and get more endless taxpayer-funded bailouts as the money printer goes *WHIRRRRRRRRR* to avoid losses while nearly everyone who took out a mortgage ends up owing more than the property is worth, only for these same bailed-out investment firms to swoop in and buy everything up for a fraction of the price using the taxpayer funds they were bailed out with. Rinse and repeat. After all, that's politically a better "solution" than the alternative of prices collapsing, boomers losing most of their "wealth", and the younger generations as well as the indebted getting a chance at getting affordable but modest shelter that they can buy outright without debt.
And then so many wonder why there's so many homeless people out there, most of whom actually have jobs... Our generation is priced out of owning or doing anything without being in debt for decades, even someone like me who makes an engineer's wage and still opts to live in a parent's basement and save the majority of take-home pay. It will still take decades, assuming the currency never hyperinflates for the duration while all of this screwery is going on(not a safe assumption; I've been making preparations to be homeless if it ever comes to it).
The strategy I'm aiming for is to buy some land somewhere unincorporated, pay for it in full, and live out of a bicycle camper trailer towed by one of the velos while I build a permanent shelter. Dig a well for water, solar panels and home-build windmills for electricity, grow as much of my own food as I can, set up an outhouse for sewage, and have no bills or as few bills as possible. It's the most realistic way I will ever have time to pursue the things I'm interested in rather than having to constantly labor to make someone who is already rich even richer off of my work.