First House
In memories of yesteryear
I see that house - large and austere
that we so yearned for, long we sought
house of our own before we bought.
Our first meal there I'll not forget -
we didn't have a table yet -
but pizza picnic on the floor
was heaven; who could ask for more?
The wallpaper just didn't suit,
I tackled it, quite resolute
to older owners' taste erase
and put my own stamp on my place.
Six years we lived within those walls,
our lively voices filled the halls,
and when at last that home we left
tears freely fell - we were bereft.
Sharon Flood Kasenberg, Nov 2, 2020
When my husband decided to run for mayor of our municipality he decided that affordable housing would be one of his key issues. It was a subject that hit very close to home. When we decided to move to a more rural setting, our grown son decided he would come with us, his hope being that he would find employment here and be able to buy his own home nearby "a few years down the road".
He quickly found a full time position at one of the local factories nearby, and immediately began saving. None of us anticipated the quick, steep rise in real estate prices in the area. Within a year prices had risen by 50%, and within two years homes were selling for about 90% more than they were when we had purchased. This was great news for sellers and real estate agents, but a horrible situation for young people such as our son, who were hoping to buy their first home.
Sam has been banking most of his pay cheque for more than four years now, and has a pretty impressive down payment accumulated. In fact, he has 80% of the total cost of the first house Todd and I bought sitting in his bank account! Sadly, given his current wage he couldn't qualify for a mortgage on a shack - not even if he put a third of the total cost on the table as a down payment!
He isn't alone in his inability to gain a foothold on the local housing ladder. North Perth is a community with an abundance of low paying jobs available. At any given time, two or three of the factories will be actively recruiting workers, and in order to remain fully staffed, local industry buses people in from nearby communities. Stores and restaurants always have signs in windows. This is a community with a job surplus - sounds like paradise, right?
Wrong. The workers that are bused into our town take the pay they earn here and spend it elsewhere. If they could afford to live here, they would be contributing to the community and the local economy, but like my son, they can't find affordable housing.
Houses are being built here all the time, but they tend to be large, expensive family homes that are appealing to wealthy retirees and big city folk who view the town as a "bedroom community" for Kitchener/Waterloo. They are used to the amenities in larger centers, and are willing to drive an hour for shopping and entertainment. They don't tend to shop locally, or get involved in local affairs. Other than tax dollars, they contribute little to the town they live in. However, in the not-distant future, a lot of these people will be older and less inclined to trek back and forth to the city; they will suddenly want to shop and dine here, but without adequate housing for waitresses, retail workers and others who would gladly live, work, and actively contribute to the economy, it seems likely that a decade from now, when our recent McMansion purchasers want to utilize amenities and services, we will have fewer to offer them.
If, on the other hand, we were to find developers who were willing to build small, affordable houses that factory workers, waitresses and retail employees could afford, our town would be in a position to expand its current amenities and services. These are people who would work here, shop here and play here. If we continue to build, and market, homes that will be purchased by retirees willing to pay more than homes are worth - simply because they are selling their current homes for an even more inflated value - we deprive ourselves of the very citizens that will keep our town vital for years to come.
Allow me to switch gears for a bit and tell you the story of how my husband and I purchased our first home...
When we married, Todd was a graduate student and I worked retail. We were very much "working class poor" - especially after I proved to be a fertile Myrtle who had two surprise pregnancies in the first two years of our marriage! With a toddler and infant to look after, it was no longer feasible for me to work retail, and I wasn't really qualified to do anything else. There was no government-sponsored daycare then, and my parents and mother-in-law lived in other cities. If I had gone back to work, 75% of my pay would've gone to the babysitter, and the other 25% would've been eaten up by transportation costs and a new "work wardrobe" (trust me - you don't have two babies in two years without moving up a size or two.) We didn't have money for me to re-train for a more lucrative career, and furthermore, I wanted to stay home with my sons. We lived like paupers in a housing co-op, dreaming of the day when home ownership would become a possibility.
I get very frustrated when people brag about "earning their own way" and being "self made". The truth of the matter is that getting ahead financially depends on a whole raft of factors that we often have no control over. There is a lot of "poor shaming" that goes on when people struggle financially. It seems that some who are financially lucky (and yes, lucky IS the word) find comfort in believing that those who are less fortunate are "lazy" or "made bad choices". Let me set you straight if you have been guilty of applying those labels. My husband has worked hard our entire marriage. We budget carefully and don't make extravagant purchases. We live in a big house because it was a bargain, costing us considerably less than the home we sold in Kitchener. We struggled for years, and are still far from rich. But I digress...
We thought, in those early years of marriage and parenthood, that a house of our own was a very distant dream. And then one day I got a call from my husband's grandmother, and that staunch prairie woman told me in her blunt way that she was dying of cancer and intended to give us a one-time cash gift while she was still alive so none of us would have the hassle of paying inheritance taxes. By today's standards this gift was a pittance but because we had lived so frugally, it allowed us to wipe out what debts we had and still have enough for a down payment on a modest home.
So I have to ask this question to all of those "self made" individuals - did you really achieve all of your success by yourself, or did you have some help along the way? I'm not ashamed to be honest; we were able to purchase when we did - six years into our marriage - because Todd's no-nonsense Grandma helped us out.
We shopped for months before we found the house we wanted, and I can tell you that stepping into our first house felt like Christmas Day, the best birthday ever, and the excitement I'd felt about becoming a parent all rolled up in one big bundle! We had furniture for half the rooms in the house, and our kids slept on mattresses on the floor until my parents bought them twin beds as a housewarming gift. We scrimped and saved to buy paint and a bit of wallpaper. We took out carpeting and refinished floors. We both knew full well when we walked through those doors that we had a lot of hard work and sacrifice ahead of us. We didn't care - we finally had a home of our own, and a mortgage payment that was less expensive than the rent we had been paying.
I want you to let that last sentence sink in. My son Sam could get an apartment in the North Perth area that would cost him $1600.00 per month. The landlord wouldn't care if he ate KD every day of the week to make the rental payment, and would simply evict him if he couldn't. On the other hand, no bank would give him approval for a mortgage payment that costs half as much, because "he wouldn't be able to afford it".
That friends, is why we need to find reasonable housing solutions! Why should landlords get rich while tenants get caught in a cycle of paying rents that are so outrageous that they will never be able to invest in a home? Why should we cater only to the affluent in terms of the housing options we offer as a community? Where are the "angels" who will invest in housing the "working class poor" the way Grandma K. invested in us? Where are the innovators who will consider "out of the box" solutions to housing. (I mean that literally - have you looked at some of the amazing factory-built and modular housing options that are available - out there....somewhere...?)
Why can't they become available here? Our community needs the kind of citizens who would buy them.
My son is actually quite fortunate. Our large home has an undeveloped attic that he is now thinking of having finished for himself. Furthermore, the three of us get along really well, and we have agreed that if the attic is his option, we will enter into an agreement with him that makes him a co-owner of our home. Not every single, working class Joe or Joan has parents with a gigantic attic that they can convert, or parents that they get along well enough with to even consider that sort of arrangement an option.
The wealthy among us buy and buy. Most lose that sense of profound gratitude and wonder for their home by the time they've moved three or four rungs up the property ladder... on which so many of our kids currently struggle to get a toe hold.
I can't speak for the rest of you, but I want my sons to experience that. We can do better. We need to do better. Our hardworking kids deserve better.
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