Shit to Quit: Property Values

Shit to Quit #3 and 4

People (OK, me) keep saying “It’S cAlLeD bIg QuIt EnErGy! WhAt ExAcTlY aRe YoU qUiTtInG?!?”

We continue a series of shit we should quit to enjoy a post-work, joyful existence.

Previous shit to quit

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#3 Property Values

To see the market’s totalizing urge to flatten everything for mass consumption, one need not look further than American neighborhoods.

Courtesy of people’s obsession with treating their homes as financial instruments–instead of, you know, spaces to live–entire swaths of this country live in fear of a bad lawn. God forbid a dandelion shows up, or someone’s driveway houses a car that has seen better days.

A friend recently asked me why my landlord doesn’t cut the bushes out front, to which I answered maybe he likes seeing something alive when he looks out the window. When he asked if I considered my neighbor’s property value and I told him I don’t give a shit, he looked at me as if I’d just endorsed 9/11.

But honestly, why should I give a shit? Why is it my problem that our economy is so absurd that signs of life make a home less valuable? You mean to tell me we have to keep all of our lived spaces retail-ready, a permanent Zillow listing?

By the way, houses aren’t even necessarily that great as financial investments, historically speaking. As Pete Saunders (great urbanism read, check him out) points out, housing prices were basically flat for a century and a half before WWII. The “property-generating-wealth” law may very well be a (historically speaking) short post-war fever dream.

But, either way, we suffer from terminal market brain. And every delusion needs an equally preposterous enforcement mechanism. Which brings me to…

#4 HOAs

Look, I’m reasonable. I’ll play along with private property (unlike a lot of my fully anarchist readers–love you all) and pretend it makes sense that someone can “own” a piece of Earth they didn’t create. Fine.

But explain this: how did the country that champions FREEDOM™ mass-adopt Homeowners Associations, these tiny unelected totalitarian politburos that police what color mailbox you buy and what you’re allowed to hang out your window? Under penalty of potentially LOSING YOUR HOME, no less!

You don’t trust the federal government, but you’re OK with letting your nosy neighbor all up in your business? Quit that shit. After ICE, abolish HOAs.

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This has been today’s installment of “Shit to Quit.” If you have shit you think people should quit, shoot me a note and we’ll try to get everyone to quit that shit.