Closing The Divide, 2

Equity. What does that word conjure in your mind? Here is a succinct definition, courtesy of Uncle Google: "Generally speaking, equity is the value of an asset less the amount of all liabilities on that asset. It can be represented with the accounting equation: Assets -Liabilities = Equity." Ah, yes, the home-owners. I have never owned my own home, nor any kind of property. I have spent my entire life renting. I have no idea what it must be like to be a home-owner, but I do understand that it changes one. I am told that you become a lot more rooted in your neighbourhood, in your community. I understand that the responsibility, and the pride of ownership will weigh on you heavily, because you are going to be basically owned by your creditor, the bank, for at least the next three decades of your life. You are also going to feel that you have somehow arrived, having met the gold standard of citizenship. Property ownership. Now especially, as owning your own home has shifted from a matter of shelter and having a place to live, to having a lovely fat nest egg, we also find among many home owners a particularly egregious abandonment of any sense of civic responsibility. In an exponentially mutating real estate market we find a growing number of home-owners sitting like fat hens on ever fattening eggs, watching and gloating as their home equity doubles, triples and quadruples. When they sell, they will be instant millionaires. Who wouldn`t want their good fortune? This is even better than winning the lottery. It isn't hard to see the irony. By owning your own home you suddenly come into a more vested interest in your community, yet by owning your own home you have also set yourself apart from others as king or queen of your own personal little castle. This is the toxic fruit of the Bourgeoisie. The common man (and woman) can now be every bit as royal as royalty themselves, providing they work hard enough for it, make lots of money, and connect well with the right people in all the right circles. Parvenus are us! But they also become separate from those who have not made it, the renters and the even poorer folk, such as myself, who are stranded living in government-subsidized housing. The value of independence and individualism. The value of opportunity, of rising above the common rabble. The irony of making good of the slavish condition that has you owing your body and soul to your employer, then earning and saving enough to buy your own home and you too can enjoy the illusion of being apart and above the lower orders. I am not lumping all home owners under this category, but it still has relevance. This is the undergirding mentality that feeds into the greed, avarice, and blind selfishness that makes it easy to sell their home to the highest bidder, even if that bidder is going to destroy your home and level your neighbourhood for construction projects that are only going to benefit the wealthy. I place our own well-equitied and avaricious home-owners, whose families have lived here for generations, second in culpability to our governments for selling out and making this city unaffordable. As members of this community, as citizens they have defaulted on their most essential communitarian responsibility, of doing their share and using their assets for the common good. Their greed gets in the way every time, because the lure of wealth swallows all ethical sense, and we are left with a city of comfortable burghers, degenerated into greedy swine, who will sell out to corporate and foreign interests, giving not a damn that they are the ones who are pushing the costs of housing out of the reach of even those who are on the comfortable side of middle incomes.