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Time was, I'd gently correct people when they complimented me for my wisdom and foresight, about how smart I was nearly a decade ago when I held onto an old house in a ramshackle Colorado mountain town.
In 1989, our daughters were turning into teenagers, and we wanted a bigger house. Half the town was for sale then, being as the mines and quarries had shut down, and so we got a good deal on a four-bedroom brick Victorian.
A good deal, but not an easy deal for us. We had to stretch for every nickel to make our move, and we planned to sell the old house and apply the proceeds to our new house.
Thus a rather dilapidated two-bedroom house went on the
market for $30,000. The For Sale
sign stayed there
for two and a half years, without attracting any offers,
even an insulting one.
Without much choice, we rented out the place until we could sell it. When we couldn't sell it, we adjusted to realty reality by taking it off the market and continuing our unplanned career move: landlording.
Back when everybody in town was poor, it was a pleasure. Our tenants took good care of the property, paid the rent promptly and left the place spotless when it was time to move on.
We preferred to rent to young working families at a rate somewhat below the market. We wanted to walk the talk that you hear in any discussion of mountain town economics -- the shortage of affordable housing, the difficulty that employees have finding housing close to their work, that children thrive better with a yard to play in and pets to play with.
Most such discussions have occurred in the more recent past, when towns like this one have been discovered by People of Money, who sometimes compliment me for my prescience and wisdom in hanging onto that old house -- something we never planned to do.
Realtors have called with astonishing offers for that house they couldn't sell back when I desperately needed to sell it, and that rise in demand means a rise in market price, for rental or for sale. And so we did raise the rent a few dollars a month every time a tenant moved on.
But we still kept the rent below market. We rented to people with pets and children and tobacco habits, and we were understanding when a tenant said he might be a few days late.
That made for a pleasant relationship in 1992. But in
1998, after the town got favorable mention in everything
from Outside
and Sunset
to Mountain Bike
Monthly
and The 100 Best Small Art Towns in
America,
it has become an impossible relationship.
I can't put my finger on exactly what's changed, but it's probably related to what I heard from a long-time Aspen resident one night in a Gunnison bar.
He bemoaned the changes, especially how we've
developed an upper class and a servant class. Before the
big money arrived in the 80s, you might sit down and drink
with the waiter after dinner -- he might well have had a
PhD, that sort of thing. But that doesn't happen
now.
This isn't Aspen (not even close, except in the summer when the pass is open), but the dynamics seem to be evolving toward the same end: Class Division.
After spending the better part of a fortnight, and filling a two-yard Dumpster three times, cleaning up after the last tenant, who always seemed to have money for new trucks and the latest in Wal-Mart household junk, but who never seemed able to pay his rent on time -- I find myself less interested in Big Bill Haywood and Mother Jones, and too often sounding like a member of the local Republican Central Committee.
What's with these people?
I mutter to myself.
I tried to be fair here, and the SOB was just taking
advantage of me.
The first time or two this happened,
I felt it was a variety of kharmic justice: what went
around when I was a rowdy young tenant, came around when I
was a landlord.
But that's over. Now I think how much easier my life would be if the next tenants had steady jobs and no pets, especially dogs that dig holes in the lawn and cats that confuse floors with litter boxes. Maybe no children, especially brats that shoot BBs into the walls. And without common habits, since wine stains are impossible to remove from carpets, and cigarette burns are even harder to remove from counter tops.
In other words, I wouldn't rent to myself -- no steady job, but with several pets and children and vices -- and even weirder, this bizarre market allows me to charge a rent that I couldn't afford now.
Hypocrisy? Sloth, because I just want the money every month and don't want to have to labor for it? Am I honorably protecting an investment for the continuing benefit of my family? Or is this class warfare, with me now standing uncomfortably at the capitalist barricades?
No answer appears, except the impossible one of turning the clock back a decade, to when we were all poor here and landlords and tenants weren't automatic enemies.
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