White Privilege and Affordable Housing

A Personal Tale of Oxymorons

Three years ago today, my husband and I spent just one of our many days enjoying the privilege of our whiteness, by cleaning out the rental property we had mistakenly attempted jointly investing in with my youngest brother fifteen years earlier.

My journey of privilege began 57 years ago when I was born the second of seven children in a nine member family living in a three bedroom, one bathroom apartment built over what eventually became the failing family deli business; struggling to pay the bills by remaining open for 14 hours a day 365 days a year for 10 years. (My Father’s second job.)

With my abundant $0 paycheck rolling in, I took on other work (2 jobs: casheir and office clerk) and student loans, as I leasurely coasted through a small Brooklyn college which I commuted to by subway, to get my B.S. in Acconting.

While at the same time my mother, after the youngest of her seven children went off to kindergarden, was finishing up putting herself through nursing school, just in time for my father to pass away suddenly and leave her a widow with 3 still young school aged children whom she raised on her nightshift nursing salary and my father’s hard earned social security benefits. No public assistance.

When my youngest brother was in his mid 20’s, after having put himself through college, he suggested we purchase a rental property together as an investment that we could maintain and pay off during our working years and perhaps have some income for retirement.

We purchased a home with two apartments in a minority populated area. To date of the events in the story, the home had depreciated in value by approximately $100K.

The then most recent oppressed occupant of the one bedroom apartment moved out after failing to pay approximately 5 of the previous 12 months’ rent, in spite of the fact that Social Services had paid 4 of the previous months’ on her behalf.

For the privilege of living rent free for almost 5 months on and off, partially because she kept promising the rent, but mostly because we were too financially stressed paying the mortgage and utilities to also hire a lawyer to have her evicted…

The poor persecuted tenant left for us:

An oversized bed bug infested bedroom set
A frying pan under the bed with burnt food in it
A maggot infested refrigerator
A flea infested mangy cat
A 3 day old box of a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts untouched except for the roaches that were devouring them
A ton of festering garbage laying strewn throughout the apartment ravaged by so many species of insects that we couldn’t enter the apartment to clean it until a full week of extermination was administered
Two broken sinks and a broken tub
A grease ravaged stove
20 full bags of garbage and another 20 bags worth including a relatively new TV (and the box from an even newer one which was apparently worth the effort to take with her), a computer, new children’s toys, shoes and countless other items the woman who couldn’t afford to pay her rent could afford to leave behind on her way to another bode of “oppression”.

We’d been to the apartment several times over the previous two months attempting to return it to a rentable condition. This particular week my husband was on his knees fixing the kitchen sink. The previous week I was on my knees scraping two dozen wads of gum and a large bloodstain off of the hardwood floor in the bedroom in the front of the house. The following week I was on my knees cleaning out the vermin waste filled kitchen cabinets and scrubbing the filth covered kitchen floor tiles…….all the while listening to the upstairs tenants going about their business.

They hadn’t paid rent in 2 months because they too had “fallen on hard times”.

Apparently the four seemingly able bodied young adults were only able to muster enough money for food and pot. My brother, my husband and I meanwhile, living the high life working multiple jobs between us to pay our own mortgages, support our own families and carry the mortgage and expenses where other people live free.

We’ve hit the brick wall of laugh or cry moments on countless occasions including one of the days pictured in the slides here:

My husband and I unpacked our car & carried the buckets of tools & cleaning supplies into the vestibule to get started on one more day of disgustingness; and just inside the doorway we found a pile of sheetrock rubble from a huge hole in the ceiling above our heads…..apparently created because a screw had come loose in the upstairs bathtub and the 4 adults who lived there couldn’t between them figure out that that’s what was causing the leak in the hallway that ultimately caused the ceiling to crash to the floor beneath. Or sweep up the huge pile of rubbish that they were stepping over for who knows how long each time they entered or left the building.

We went inside and put down the supplies and my husband got the broom & shovel & cleaned up the pile of sheetrock and plaster & we went to work…I, scrubbing the filthy cabinets, and he, dealing with the upstairs tub and then getting to work on the downstairs sink, where upon, he realized he’d bought the wrong repair part with him.

I offered to run to Home Depot and get the part he needed; and that’s when we realized….he’d dropped the keys to our car in the commotion of the fallen ceiling. We searched everywhere. The apartment we were working in was empty so there was nowhere they could have been except somewhere between the curb, the vestibule and the empty apartment.

They were gone.

We couldn’t even leave.

We waited for my sons who were coming up from the city to help us clean, to instead drive to my house for the title of the car and bring it to us so we could take their car to the dealer and get a new car key cut, back to the apartment to get the car and drive home to change the cylinder in the car and our house because someone now had the keys to both.

I wanted to cry. My husband wanted to scream. We couldn’t bring ourselves to laugh, but we managed a tight hug. A desperately needed moment of grace. My husband is my hero. A truly amazing man.

Yes, I am privileged. It has nothing to do with my skin pigment.

It is the blessing of a wonderful husband, a beautiful family, and the knowledge of the grace that comes from God and sacrifice, perseverance, personal reflection and integrity.

Back to reality….

My brother, husband and I were earning “so much” money from our multiple jobs and personal livelyhoods (no consideration of the debt we’d incurred nor the personal expenses we carry supporting or own families…after taxes) that we were “too rich” to claim a loss on the property that we were supposed to have been able to afford after the government used our own tax dollars to pay a fraction of the rent back to us on behalf of the oppressed tenants.

For years, we couldn’t afford to get out because we couldn’t afford to pay off the debt we’d owe to the mortgage company. We finaly established the financial leverage it took to borrow enough money to pay off the mortgage company and get out of the “investment” with only $100,000 in losses behind us and $15,000 each of debt ahead of us.

So, now that we know what white privlege looks like, let’s consider what “affordable housing” looks like:

Apartments that the government will suppliment rent for, but only for tenants who earn a limited amount of money.

Apparently, just enough not to pay the difference between the government assistance, and the actual cost of maintaining the housing.

So, who can afford “affordable housing”?

My brother and husband and I obviously couldn’t afford it.
The tenants apparently can’t afford it.
But the government keeps telling us we need to build it because, you know,

Black Lives Matter.

Or something.