a lifetime ago, before the global financial crisis when I was a young man with an OK job and I remember seeing some newly constructed housing for rent.

it was a few miles from where I lived, in a formerly blighted/dead area that had been completely renovated into this little pseudo walkable area of shops, upstairs apartments, a nice movie theater, and some restaurants.

the apartments were like 90% vacant so I looked at the prices. i was currently splitting a 3 bedroom house as a group of 4 people in a pretty chill area and it cost me 30% of my monthly takehome, as I had the best job. my roommates were more like 40% of their monthly takehome.

so these new places were 1 bedroom, very small, and they wanted 200% of my monthly takehome, did not include utilities and I would have to pay 10% on top of that for a single parking spot. no guests.

that was when I began to learn that the future was being built by and for people who do not statistically exist.

the way we can have a housing crisis and this overabundance of mostly vacant luxury housing should be instructive as hell, but the ideological frame we have been conditioned to normalize refuses to see the most obvious and easy solutions.