It's going
But to where I do not know.
Over the past few months, a seeming perfect storm has been brewing and boiling over this place where we live. Again in the news this morning, tales of the difficulties to get affordable shelter ... note: I do mean shelter because 333 sq. ft. hardly qualifies as housing ... you want a close approximation, try a little over 18 feet by 18 feet, I think some jail cells are larger. Add to it the compounding traffic problems that I see each morning on the news, the high gas prices that are covered daily, and all these stories about STRESS
I don't mean the poofy kind about how people should get some coping skills, exercise, etc. I mean the kind about violence ... and dammit, stop throwing lit cigarettes out of your car
This place is changing a lot, and a lot of the PTB think that we can GROW our way out of the problems that we face as a society. So here's a few questions, can we grow more fresh water for all of our drink flush wash
How about this one, I had a weird dream last week about DH erupting ... besides the point, but can we grow more land, so we can have more open space, so we can fill it up again
At what point does this become a banana republic, I know that for many years while growing up we made jokes about or looked down our nose at immigrants who had to live 2-3-4-5 families in a house ... and we wondered about how they managed to do it ... well, wonder no more, because very soon that could be you or I ... and for that matter, everyone else
There is this heated debate now in the city about allowing the development of vacation rentals or BnBs ... because everyone really wants to wake up in the morning in their beachhouse, walk out on the beach, fry their skin to a bacony crisp ... or apple red, take a nap, and REPEAT
Tourism ... this implies the creation of transient accommodations. This is the straw that stirs the drink here. Well, what if you let people from other places that had a ton of cashish BUY space here that they lived in maybe a week or two out of the year ... oh and geared most development towards that aim
Well, to put it simply, you can't incentivize (my term) these same developers to build low profit margin affordable housing now, can you? Oh no, not when they are allowed to build high margin $1M+ condos and vacation homes
In many ways, I realize that the state and local governments have a TON of power here still. So what will the bloated, paralyzed Legislature do, or the bickering city council, or the Governor who promised change but instead increased the speed of the downward spiral?
Like I said, it's going somewhere ... but for a lot of us, we may not be here when it arrives