Organic pet food? There goes the neighborhood!
October 24, 2016 1:47 PM   Subscribe

 
Right on! I am acquainted with him and I'm glad that the mefi community is getting a taste of his work! Yay, Kenny!
posted by janey47 at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2016


So, Season 2 Lillian, but less animated?
posted by sparklemotion at 2:19 PM on October 24, 2016


Not everything has to be snidely dismissed.
posted by Etrigan at 3:55 PM on October 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


Rent control is great until you need or want to move, especially in markets that aren't building enough housing to keep up with demand. And now Los Angeles (which includes North Hollywood) is going to face a couple of elections with measures on the ballot to put the brakes on housing development.

I believe that a big driver of development in that neighborhood is the nearby Metro Red line station. It has actually taken a long time to happen, but it seemed inevitable when I lived in the neighborhood 15 years ago.
posted by jimw at 10:45 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seems bizarre to me that anyone stays in a rental for more than a couple years. The longest I've been in one was 3. You just have to move a lot, for various reasons. Never got to live in a place long enough to get that emotionally attached. Sounds tough.
posted by keep_evolving at 3:05 AM on October 25, 2016


Seems bizarre to me that anyone stays in a rental for more than a couple years

Let me blow your mind: I've been in my rental for 12 years.
posted by thivaia at 5:31 AM on October 25, 2016


Seems bizarre to me that anyone stays in a rental for more than a couple years. The longest I've been in one was 3. You just have to move a lot, for various reasons. Never got to live in a place long enough to get that emotionally attached. Sounds tough.

The problem with this mentality is that it's great for students and people without kids, but if you're a family that wants to settle into a neighborhood because it has a good school (for instance), moving becomes a much bigger deal. Where I live (Toronto), renting is a long-term reality if I want to keep living anywhere less than an hour from my work, and might end up being a permanent condition for me.

The worst part is that even if you find a great building that's rent controlled, a lot of developers are renovating vacant units to cater to a more upscale demographic. So if you have to give up your apartment for whatever reason, you can end up being priced out of not only your neighborhood, but out of your own building. At that point, your choices involve either majorly uprooting your children's lives or committing them to a long school commute.

The idea that renting is just a temporary condition until you become more established is simply not a reality for a lot of people unless you plan on moving waaay outside the city and committing to a multiple hour commute on the (gd, mf-ing) busiest highway in the world.
posted by TeaEarlGreyHot at 7:38 AM on October 25, 2016


if you're a family that wants to settle into a neighborhood because it has a good school (for instance), moving becomes a much bigger deal.

I feel like this is part of the what bugs me about unnuanced Evils of Gentrification portrayals like this. It's the idea that "settling" into a neighborhood gives you some kind of ownership right to it, even if one isn't putting up an actual ownership stake.

In a just world, "good schools" shouldn't be neighborhood specific, and I'm all aboard with efforts to fix that problem. But in the world we live in now, it seems like kids shouldn't be doomed to the crappy schools just because they had the misfortune of being born when their parents happened to be living in an area with crappy schools. So a certain amount of mobility seems like something society should be encouraging.

Ditto the anti-development stance that the artist seems to have. Higher density housing seems like a good thing, from an environmental and efficiency point of view, and I think it's good to privilege building it over maintaining single family, non-owner occupied homes. And yes, most new development is not "affordable." But this is one of those situations where I feel like a freer market can help. There are only so many people who can afford crazy high rents, so if a landlord is holding at a vacant unit, it makes sense to lower the asking rate (unless a rent control scheme means that the landlord could be stuck with that level of rent for 20 years.) If you know that making a deal now could cost you indefinitely, the incentive structure discourages you from making a deal. And so people can't find places to move into.

I kind of feel like tweaking the system to discourage renting in the same place for 20 years would be a better solution, long term, than doing anything to slow development. Especially when those tweaks (like the Ellis Act that is complained about in this piece) are pretty renter-friendly. 16 months notice + moving expenses paid for the price of a jumping through a few hoops seems really generous.

Obviously, the good of the many shouldn't be allowed to trample on the needs of the few willy-nilly, which is why it makes sense to respect (and encourage) home ownership. I mean, obviously home ownership in lots of very popular places to live is out of reach for many people. But there's no reason why anyone *has* to live in Los Angeles or Toronto. (for what it's worth, Toronto is my home town, and one of the things that's keeping me from moving back is the insane housing market, so it's not like I don't know what it's like to be priced out of the place I grew up -- I just also know that it's entirely possible to live in other places.)
posted by sparklemotion at 8:26 AM on October 25, 2016


I think there is a bright shiny dividing line between two ways of thinking about this. On the one hand there is the idea that a renter has no right to remain where they have been living no matter how long and on the other hand is the idea that if you have lived somewhere for 10 years you have a greater right to keep living there than someone from somewhere else regardless of who has more money.

I personally believe that where people live should be one area of life that is sheltered from the excesses of capitalism. Unfortunately for me the zeitgeist prefers free market solutions and considers personal attachment to place and stability to be fine as long as you can afford it but certainly not a right and definitely not as important as a "reasonable" profit.
posted by Pembquist at 4:00 PM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Or, on the one hand there is this idea that if you can luck your way into a sweet deal, you should never be expected to pay the true costs of your living choices, and on the other hand is the idea that access to "good" places to live shouldn't be restricted to those who won a lottery that most people didn't even get to play in.

That being said, I don't think that the line is as bright and shiny as may be believed. For example, it's possible to both think that where people live should be one area of life that is sheltered from the excesses of capitalism, and that "shelter" can stop somewhere short of stripping owners of their property rights because they were good enough landlords that the tenants were willing to stay for a while.
posted by sparklemotion at 5:18 PM on October 25, 2016


Sparklemotion in the instance of this comic I don't think that the tennants should have to move even though it means that the landlord can't realize the appreciation that their property has accumulated. I don't believe that the owners of residential rental property should have unencumbered property rights, nor do I think it is healthy for peoples homes to be speculative investments. That puts me on the other side of the bright shiny line from you. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, there isn't a Truth to this problem.
posted by Pembquist at 9:18 PM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


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