Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Beautiful day, today!
Well, it’s spring here, officially. My cherry bushes have bloomed overnight, and my rose is starting to grow. I have a garden full of strawberry plants that seem not to have noticed that we had a winter, and all sorts of little plantlings are growing. The Tiny Car is back on the road. Whoo!!
I have noticed a strange phenomenon, one that I had kind of seen in previous years, but today it is strikingly apparent. Once it gets nice out, everyone forgets that we had inclement weather last week. I happen to remember it quite well, because it caused all sorts of problems. And I also tend to remember, from year to year, when we had bad, cold weather over the winter. When it gets nice out, everyone starts to say things like “well, our winter was pretty easy this year”, or “I don’t recall any really cold snaps this winter…” These people all have terrible memories. I understand the reasoning behind forgetting bad things, but that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t that nice for us in April. We had an occasional good day, when it was slightly warm. We did not have the typical April weather we usually do, here. But now that it’s nice, everyone is wondering why projects aren’t finished. You can’t put siding up when it’s cold out… which is why it wasn’t up last week!! Sure, the workers could get to it now, but I have a list about as long as my arm of various repair and replacement projects that all need to be done, like, instantly.
Yes, it’s nice out, but let’s all try to be realistic about our expectations, shall we? We have a whole summer ahead of us in which we can waste time working on things.
Anyway, I got a wedding dress last month. It’s very nice. It’s simple, but pretty fancy at the same time. I’m looking forward to losing a few more pounds so it isn’t quite as tight, and won’t cut off the circulation to most of my body when I have to wear it for eight hours or so. Heh.
Rob and I have so many projects to do in order to be able to have our wedding at the house, like we are planning. It seems kind of daunting right now, actually. We have to finish the floor in the basement, remove a bunch of trees and hedge shrubs along the side of the front yard, extend the fence down to the front to increase our usable yard area, Rob has to finish his truck and get the shell truck out of the yard, we have to re-sod the back yard for sure and maybe do a bunch of work in the front… and we only have a certain number of weekends to do it all in. Plus, my sister is getting married in June, and of course there is the camping… every long weekend. Man. It’s a little much, actually. I had been kind of hoping for a relaxing summer. Those socks full of oranges are starting to look pretty good, again.
Work is, of course, more work. The other condo manager here has quit and gone to another company. That same company had been trying to get me to go over there, and I just finally decided this weekend that I would really NOT go. I’m going to pursue my business deal with the independent broker. I think it’s probably the best time for me to try it, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always get another job in the industry… it’s not like they’re going to stop building condominiums in Calgary anytime soon, after all. I swear, more pop up every single day here. With the lack of available affordable housing, the government should be supporting the home-building industry, rather than wasting time talking about rent controls, which are a ridiculous idea. Before our little boom here in the past couple of years, rents hadn’t increased in, well, I have no idea how long. A long time, anyway. And that year before the boom, when we had a 10-20% vacancy rate, rents had gone down. No one complains about that, do they? “Oh, no, the rents are going down!! We should have rent controls in place so they don’t drop.” Idiots. Poor landlords – I mean, it’s not cheap trying to run a building. All you get when you put rent controls in place is deferred maintenance, slums, and shitty places to live, which bring everyone else’s property values down.
No, the government should be trying to build their own affordable housing, and should be relaxing approvals on projects that would provide affordable housing, such as mobile home parks. We have a mobile home park quite close to where we live (right across Blackfoot – a big busy road, so it’s kind of far away, but really not), and the owner of the park just informed all the residents about a month ago that the property was being sold. Now, all these people (about 60 families, I think, if not more) have to pull up stakes and find somewhere else to live. Except there are only two other mobile home parks in Calgary, from what I can tell, and they’re all full-up. One of the ones I know of is in jeopardy, as well, of losing their land lease. It is very sad to see these hard-working, mostly older people pulling the porches they built themselves off their mobile homes, scrapping everything they did to make their little yards look nice, and then ripping skirting off so the units can be relocated. And they don’t quite know where to, either. If the government (oh, and the friggin’ whiny liberal factions pushing the authorities in that direction) really cared about affordable housing, they would try a little harder to provide some incentives for land owners to create mobile home parks, they’d relax approvals on re-zoning, they’d make services easier to run. But no, because that might cause some discomfort for other people having a mobile home park move in closer.
No one provides for bread price caps, or leisure activity gear price caps, or vehicle price caps. I see that the cost of public transportation, slow though it may be, has increased over the years (and it’s still not where it needs to be to fund the system, of course). I see that the cost of gas keeps going up, and the cost of utilities goes up. I don’t see any other industry where the people who work hard for providing the service are prevented from turning a profit – again, when rent controls are put in place, it causes landlords to shy away from investing in the industry. Fewer large-scale landlords buy rental places – why risk it? You can build new and sell. And we see many more independent, private landlords – those who can afford to buy an extra house or condominium do, and rent them out. There’s less control over these independent landlords, and you can’t force housing standards to be maintained as strictly.
The government and social charity organizations should supplement the individuals requiring affordable housing, if they actually care about the people. I think mostly they are jealous they didn’t have rental properties themselves, when the vacancy rate hits less than 1%, though, and want to even the playing field, as it were. Why should a landlord be supplementing his tenants? Is his work and investment any less valuable? No. And will the social organizations and the government supplement the landlords when the vacancy rate goes up, and they “lose” money on their properties? No. But then again, the taxpayers don’t really want to support and supplement the poorer sectors of our society, either. Not for zero return… There has to be a better way.
IF humanitarian needs were actually a concern, the Provincial or municipal governments might legislate that each rental building larger than 20 units would have to dedicate a certain percentage of their units to an “affordable housing pool”, which the authority could rent at market value. Units from this pool could then be rented to needy families by the government. It would suck for everyone a little bit, but it wouldn’t victimize anyone exclusively. Landlords with large buildings could trade affordable housing credits from property to property, or with smaller, more independent landlords. Having a guaranteed renter, too, would be a bonus to them. There might be some drawback in that neighbors don’t like to share with poorer individuals, but they’d have to suck it up. The government would have to come up with the funds to rent the housing, but the new residents who would be able to live and work in the province and city would be paying taxes and contributing to industry. Yes, it’s a little left, it’s a little right, but everyone is inconvenienced equally and benefits equally. I can’t believe no one is talking about this sort of an arrangement, but is rather wasting time on “rent control”. Yeesh.
That’s my rant for the day. I have work to do, in the Property Management industry. I should note, however, that I have no interest in rental properties whatsoever. I manage condominiums, those properties where folks with disposable income buy units, because they are easy to maintain, and rent them out to idiots who apparently can’t read and don’t care about living within the rules. The only benefit to having condo units rented out is that I can evict bad tenants out of them, and it’s much harder to evict bad owners than bad tenants. The tenants in the condos I manage tend to be a little better than the owners, because they learn quickly that if they break the by-laws, they’ll be sent packing, and good luck finding places to rent in a less-than-one-percent vacancy rate market.
Yo. Peace out.
I have noticed a strange phenomenon, one that I had kind of seen in previous years, but today it is strikingly apparent. Once it gets nice out, everyone forgets that we had inclement weather last week. I happen to remember it quite well, because it caused all sorts of problems. And I also tend to remember, from year to year, when we had bad, cold weather over the winter. When it gets nice out, everyone starts to say things like “well, our winter was pretty easy this year”, or “I don’t recall any really cold snaps this winter…” These people all have terrible memories. I understand the reasoning behind forgetting bad things, but that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t that nice for us in April. We had an occasional good day, when it was slightly warm. We did not have the typical April weather we usually do, here. But now that it’s nice, everyone is wondering why projects aren’t finished. You can’t put siding up when it’s cold out… which is why it wasn’t up last week!! Sure, the workers could get to it now, but I have a list about as long as my arm of various repair and replacement projects that all need to be done, like, instantly.
Yes, it’s nice out, but let’s all try to be realistic about our expectations, shall we? We have a whole summer ahead of us in which we can waste time working on things.
Anyway, I got a wedding dress last month. It’s very nice. It’s simple, but pretty fancy at the same time. I’m looking forward to losing a few more pounds so it isn’t quite as tight, and won’t cut off the circulation to most of my body when I have to wear it for eight hours or so. Heh.
Rob and I have so many projects to do in order to be able to have our wedding at the house, like we are planning. It seems kind of daunting right now, actually. We have to finish the floor in the basement, remove a bunch of trees and hedge shrubs along the side of the front yard, extend the fence down to the front to increase our usable yard area, Rob has to finish his truck and get the shell truck out of the yard, we have to re-sod the back yard for sure and maybe do a bunch of work in the front… and we only have a certain number of weekends to do it all in. Plus, my sister is getting married in June, and of course there is the camping… every long weekend. Man. It’s a little much, actually. I had been kind of hoping for a relaxing summer. Those socks full of oranges are starting to look pretty good, again.
Work is, of course, more work. The other condo manager here has quit and gone to another company. That same company had been trying to get me to go over there, and I just finally decided this weekend that I would really NOT go. I’m going to pursue my business deal with the independent broker. I think it’s probably the best time for me to try it, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always get another job in the industry… it’s not like they’re going to stop building condominiums in Calgary anytime soon, after all. I swear, more pop up every single day here. With the lack of available affordable housing, the government should be supporting the home-building industry, rather than wasting time talking about rent controls, which are a ridiculous idea. Before our little boom here in the past couple of years, rents hadn’t increased in, well, I have no idea how long. A long time, anyway. And that year before the boom, when we had a 10-20% vacancy rate, rents had gone down. No one complains about that, do they? “Oh, no, the rents are going down!! We should have rent controls in place so they don’t drop.” Idiots. Poor landlords – I mean, it’s not cheap trying to run a building. All you get when you put rent controls in place is deferred maintenance, slums, and shitty places to live, which bring everyone else’s property values down.
No, the government should be trying to build their own affordable housing, and should be relaxing approvals on projects that would provide affordable housing, such as mobile home parks. We have a mobile home park quite close to where we live (right across Blackfoot – a big busy road, so it’s kind of far away, but really not), and the owner of the park just informed all the residents about a month ago that the property was being sold. Now, all these people (about 60 families, I think, if not more) have to pull up stakes and find somewhere else to live. Except there are only two other mobile home parks in Calgary, from what I can tell, and they’re all full-up. One of the ones I know of is in jeopardy, as well, of losing their land lease. It is very sad to see these hard-working, mostly older people pulling the porches they built themselves off their mobile homes, scrapping everything they did to make their little yards look nice, and then ripping skirting off so the units can be relocated. And they don’t quite know where to, either. If the government (oh, and the friggin’ whiny liberal factions pushing the authorities in that direction) really cared about affordable housing, they would try a little harder to provide some incentives for land owners to create mobile home parks, they’d relax approvals on re-zoning, they’d make services easier to run. But no, because that might cause some discomfort for other people having a mobile home park move in closer.
No one provides for bread price caps, or leisure activity gear price caps, or vehicle price caps. I see that the cost of public transportation, slow though it may be, has increased over the years (and it’s still not where it needs to be to fund the system, of course). I see that the cost of gas keeps going up, and the cost of utilities goes up. I don’t see any other industry where the people who work hard for providing the service are prevented from turning a profit – again, when rent controls are put in place, it causes landlords to shy away from investing in the industry. Fewer large-scale landlords buy rental places – why risk it? You can build new and sell. And we see many more independent, private landlords – those who can afford to buy an extra house or condominium do, and rent them out. There’s less control over these independent landlords, and you can’t force housing standards to be maintained as strictly.
The government and social charity organizations should supplement the individuals requiring affordable housing, if they actually care about the people. I think mostly they are jealous they didn’t have rental properties themselves, when the vacancy rate hits less than 1%, though, and want to even the playing field, as it were. Why should a landlord be supplementing his tenants? Is his work and investment any less valuable? No. And will the social organizations and the government supplement the landlords when the vacancy rate goes up, and they “lose” money on their properties? No. But then again, the taxpayers don’t really want to support and supplement the poorer sectors of our society, either. Not for zero return… There has to be a better way.
IF humanitarian needs were actually a concern, the Provincial or municipal governments might legislate that each rental building larger than 20 units would have to dedicate a certain percentage of their units to an “affordable housing pool”, which the authority could rent at market value. Units from this pool could then be rented to needy families by the government. It would suck for everyone a little bit, but it wouldn’t victimize anyone exclusively. Landlords with large buildings could trade affordable housing credits from property to property, or with smaller, more independent landlords. Having a guaranteed renter, too, would be a bonus to them. There might be some drawback in that neighbors don’t like to share with poorer individuals, but they’d have to suck it up. The government would have to come up with the funds to rent the housing, but the new residents who would be able to live and work in the province and city would be paying taxes and contributing to industry. Yes, it’s a little left, it’s a little right, but everyone is inconvenienced equally and benefits equally. I can’t believe no one is talking about this sort of an arrangement, but is rather wasting time on “rent control”. Yeesh.
That’s my rant for the day. I have work to do, in the Property Management industry. I should note, however, that I have no interest in rental properties whatsoever. I manage condominiums, those properties where folks with disposable income buy units, because they are easy to maintain, and rent them out to idiots who apparently can’t read and don’t care about living within the rules. The only benefit to having condo units rented out is that I can evict bad tenants out of them, and it’s much harder to evict bad owners than bad tenants. The tenants in the condos I manage tend to be a little better than the owners, because they learn quickly that if they break the by-laws, they’ll be sent packing, and good luck finding places to rent in a less-than-one-percent vacancy rate market.
Yo. Peace out.
