| Housing Revolucion
by Great Orion Voyager © 2009 thorkorps LIVE IN COMMUNAL HOUSES: JUST SAY NO TO LANDLORDS. DON'T RENT FROM ANY LANDLORD CAPITALIST. SHARE COMMUNAL HOUSES WITH HOUSEMATES. Suburban mansions should be converted into multiple tenant rooms cheap enough for any minimum wage worker to afford. Everyone should have his own bedroom. If you can afford it, have your own bathroom. But share a kitchen with housemates. Communal houses should be owned and shared by owners and renters who share our goals for Healthy Sustainable Community and Social Democracy. LANDLORDS DEVASTATE COMMUNITY: Scientists, doctors, engineers, professors, scholars work to benefit society and deserve respect. But a landlord is an entirely different species: a Vampire Parasite. What does the landlord do to justify getting rich without working, sipping champagne by his pool growing fat on tenant rent? A LANDLORD IS A CAPITALIST WITHOUT TALENT FOR PRODUCING ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE. FOREIGN REAL ESTATE SPECULATORS ARE DESTROYING YOUR HOUSING MARKET: Carpetbagger foreigners drive up your real estate prices in an absurd bubble. Your real estate will continue to serve as raw meat in an international feeding frenzy, attracting real estate sharks from across the planet, devastating your community and your quality of life. We will soon be rendered homeless, sleeping in tents in sprawling shanty favelas surrounding every American city, like favelas surrounding Manila, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Mexico City. FOREIGN REAL ESTATE SPECULATION MUST BE MADE ILLEGAL. Real estate belongs to those who live on it. Foreign Carpetbaggers must be driven into the sea. DON'T RENT FROM ANY LANDLORD CAPITALIST. SHARE COMMUNAL HOUSES WITH HOUSEMATES. Communal houses should be owned and shared by owners and renters who share our goals for Healthy Sustainable Community and Social Democracy. HOSTELS, SHELTERS AND COMMUNAL HOUSING IT IS TIME FOR AMERICAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: BE A SOCIAL DEMOCRAT. Don’t wait for your nation. Revolucion in your own life. BREAK THE CHAINS OF LANDLORD AND EMPLOYER. LIVE LIFE WITH PRINCIPLES. BE LA REVOLUCION. Your Quality of Life has been under relentless attack by Neocon Vampire Parasites in a Property Class War to privatize public resources. Real Estate is the frontline battlefield of this Property Class War: Housing is the biggest expense for workers. Housing is also one of the most profitable investments for the Property Class: If you have one million dollars to buy a mansion or apartment building, you can flip it fast and sell it for two million, pocketing a million dollars in profit. The 2000-2008 Real Estate Bubble attracted real estate sharks from across the planet, speculators who bought houses and apartment buildings solely to flip and get rich quick. Renters and homebuyers were priced out of their own neighborhoods. When this unsustainable Bubble burst in 2008, it caused a worldwide recession as mortgages and banks failed. Homeowners were foreclosed and evicted. Renters suddenly found themselves in a grim Social Darwinist Rat Race as the rental market flooded with homeless families in desperate need of rentals. I enjoyed wonderful apartments along the West Coast during the Clinton Era. In my beautiful 13th story one-bedroom I loved my view of downtown at night when skyscrapers glowed with lights shimmering horizon to horizon. Suddenly in the Bush Neocon Dark Age, my apartment building was stolen by Asian real estate speculators who doubled our rent to convert to condo, forcing all tenants to flee. Asian speculators bought just about every apartment building on the coast, and tenants quickly found themselves priced out of their own neighborhoods. I soon found myself living in transient hotel slums in far suburbs. Our lives were turned upside down by Foreign Carpetbaggers. If this is capitalism, we want nothing to do with it. Don't return value to the Investor Class: I now live in cheap rooms in group houses along university campus. I own no car, no computer, no internet, no TV, no cable, no phone. I wash my laundry by hand and hang it on a line. I have driven no car in two decades and commute solely on public transit. I own nothing more than I can carry on my back. Total value of all I own is less than $2,000. I own no credit cards and use no credit. I buy nothing. I own no books. I do all my research in university libraries. I do not eat in restaurants or go to the movies. I hike wilderness and listen to nonprofit radio. I already had mi Revolucion de Socialista. HOSTELS Hostels have shared bunkbed rooms, kitchens and showers. Hostels cater to tourists, mostly foreign trust fund kids, college students and graduates, backpackers who want to see the world before they get chained to professional careers. Trust fund kids got big bucks, credit cards, family and friends to wire funds in case of emergency. They are the Jet Set: Joven, Echt und Schonheit: Young, rich and beautiful. Many trust fund backpackers never had a real job, never flipped burgers to pay rent, never endured an abusive boss to support their family. For these young backpackers: !LA VIDA BUENO! Joven, Echt und Schonheit backpackers make excellent company, as happy tourists on vacation up for anything. I lived in hostels from Buenos Aires to Seattle and enjoyed the company of young backpackers on all kinds of weird adventures. A few still email me. Amazing how many places these kids visit: I talked to dozens of backpackers: Many had visited a dozen nations and toured the entire planet by age 25. Some 30-year-olds told me they had been to 50 or 60 countries. O to be Joven, Echt und Schonheit with nothing to do but spend your inheritance to see the world! Hostel staff smile and welcome young backpackers, even college kids who sign the registration while holding open bottles of Corona. Staff beware of only one kind of person: The local staying in a hostel because he is in between apartments. Staff questioned me and other guests about our destination, return ticket and travel plans: "You cannot stay longer than two weeks! We don't rent to locals!" Yet hostels frequently lodge locals: I met plenty of locals in these hostels. In Buenos Aires almost half the hostel clients were young locals in between apartments, because Buenos Aires suffers bad shelters and almost no social services. For many locals, hostels are their only option to sleeping on sidewalks. In 2008 I lived for months in Buenos Aires hostel and met Germans, Australians, British, French, Brazilians and Chileans. One bunkmate stayed for months and she drove me nuts. She was a local Porteno stripper who smoked in bed and had a smokin hot bangin body. Each night she would disappear until dawn, work some stripper pole, come home and fill our room with smoke. She claimed she couldn't understand my Spanish, but she damn well understood NO FUMAR PORFAVOR! I asked staff why she was allowed to break rules, smoke in bed and stay for months, but was told she was a "friend" of the owner. My German bunkmate laughed about our constant drama: "Such iz zee case in zee hostels!" There is huge UNMET NEED in every city for hostels that accept locals: Countless locals of every age and class, employed and unemployed, college grads and dropouts, young backpackers and old drifters, need hostels when their landlords double their rent. Many locals would never sleep in a homeless shelter. Many have enough money to pay for a bunk, but not enough money to pay for an expensive hotel room. WE NEED AFFORDABLE HOSTELS THAT WELCOME LOCALS AND TOURISTS TO STAY WITHOUT TIME LIMITS SO LONG AS THEY OBSERVE RULES OF COMMUNAL LIVING. Such hostels should be owned and shared by owners and guests who share our goals for Healthy Sustainable Community and Social Democracy. Friedrich Nietzsche, THE DAWN, 1881 "I would not know what to say to workers of factory slavery, provided they do not consider it altogether shameful to be used up as they are, as gears of a machine. Phew! To believe that higher pay could abolish your misery, to be talked into thinking that such an increase could transform the Shame of Slavery into a Virtue! Phew! To have a price upon which you become a gear! Are you co-conspirators in the current folly of nations who want to produce as much as possible and be rich as possible? What vast sums of Inner Worth are thrown away. Better to emigrate, and in savage fresh regions seek to be Master of the World and master of myself! Keep changing locations so long as slavery beckons: Never avoid adventure. Be prepared for death. What began at home as dangerous discontent will once outside gain a wild beauty and be called Heroism." SHELTERS Many cities have a "Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness" designed to fail due to flaws inherent within grant funding: Most grant funding is focused on drunks, psychos and unemployable parolees who will always be homeless no matter how much funding their programs receive. Grant funds go to treating a crisis, with almost no funds for PREVENTION. As clients, drunk meth-tweaker crackhead parolees get everything for free. Sober hardworking college graduates are not qualified for most shelters and offered no help until they sleep on sidewalks. Call shelters and ask: "What services do you offer the working poor to PREVENT becoming homeless?" Answer: "NOTHING: We help only the homeless. Call us back once you are homeless!" Typically the shelter bureaucrat has a Masters Degree in Social Work and cannot identify with the clients he serves, no more than a prison guard can identify with convicts. Shelter bureaucrats benefit from a steady base of CLIENTS, so their goal is to turn you into a CLIENT. Homeless shelters are designed for parolees, drunks, junkies, crackheads, meth-tweakers, glue-sniffers and belligerent bums. Society hates them so they hate society. They have no self esteem and deserve none. Many are addicted to booze and drugs. Virtually all chain-smoke cigarettes. They stink of cigarettes, beer and hobo stench. They are angry, ugly, filthy, nasty and vile. Poor Folk have no Grace: Many never learn Conflict Resolution or Anger Management. Shelter bunk rooms suffer constant stress, threats, curses, accusations and brawls. Shelter clients snore incredibly loud because they are chain-smoking drunks. Many shelters are communal rooms of cots, bunks and bedrolls where loud drunks and shrieking psychos keep you awake all night. Many shelters kick everyone out at 6AM, preventing adequate sleep, so you spend the day lying on park grass to finish sleeping. Many shelters lack phones and internet computers. Toilets are filthy. Shaving and showering is a nasty hassle. Shelters lack adequate storage lockers, forcing you to carry all your possessions. Constant loud snoring is enough to drive you out of your mind. Then your backpack gets stolen. Then some meth-tweaker thinks you cut in front of him in the food bank line and now he wants to fight you. So you both wind up in jail for fighting. And you insist, "Hey that meth-tweaker started it so it was self-defense!" And the jail guard just laughs, "Yeah right buddy tell it to the judge!" Just one month as a "client" in such a homeless shelter nightmare can turn any sane college graduate into a raving paranoid violent psychotic. We all have our breaking point. And you quickly find your breaking point in these intolerable shelter nightmares. Belligerent bums, drunks, junkies, crackheads, meth-tweakers, glue-sniffers, shrieking psychos and parolee gangbangers have no place in our Healthy Sustainable Community. Living in the ghetto among the Superfluous Population you arrive at one nasty conclusion: It is time for Einsatzgruppen Death Squads to CULL THE HERD. Friedrich Nietzsche, TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, 1888 "Nothing is ugly except the degenerating man. Everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it deprives him of strength. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his Will to Power, his courage, his pride, all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. Every suggestion of exhaustion, heaviness, old age, weariness, disease, lack of freedom, the smell of dissolution, all evoke the same reaction: the value judgment Ugly. A hatred is aroused—but whom does man hate then? There can be no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of his species." EFFECTIVE SHELTERS SEGREGATE SLEEPING CELLS: Eliminate communal rooms and replace them with solitary sleeping cells, at least 5’ x 10’, with a clean cot, ceiling security camera, CD/radio with headphones. Drunks, smokers, junkies, psychos, belligerent bums and those who snore loud must be located faraway from cells for quiet nonsmokers and degreed professionals. SHUT DOWN NO EARLIER THAN 8AM. ENSURE SOLITARY SHOWERS. ENSURE STORAGE LOCKERS at least 3'x4'x5' to store possessions. CENTRALIZE SUPPORT SERVICES: Worksource internet computers should be walking distance. Food Bank should be walking distance. Shelter should be served by transit routes. Assisted Housing, Job Training, Conflict Resolution and Anger Management should be free and available to everyone. COMMUNITY VOICEMAIL must be free to everyone: A free phone number with voicemail is essential to give employers: No phone, no interview, no job. Community Voicemail is a crucial resource. TENT CITY FUTURE SHARE/WHEEL Tent City is Revolutionary Socialism: Tent City is run not by degreed professional shelter bureaucrats, but by your fellow homeless comrades. Tent City offers a tent and sleeping bag to anyone without time limits. You don't have to be a drunk crackhead to qualify. If you are a sober hardworking college graduate fed up with American Capitalism, Tent City is just about your only option. In 2006 I worked with Seattle SHARE/WHEEL Tent City, giving them my computer and several sleeping bags. We erected Tent City on church back lots. Almost anyone could live here. Sole price for staying: Do you share of chores. Such freedom infuriated police who insisted Tent City provide social security numbers so cops could screen for outstanding warrants. Tent City refused and was soon chased out of Seattle. Police then chased Tent City out of Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Woodinville and across Puget Sound. American Indians thrived in Tent Cities for 12,000 years. During the 1930’s Republican Great Depression, Hooverville Tent Cities were erected outside every city to house millions locked out of their apartments by landlords. Billions of peasants live in sprawling shanty favelas surrounding Manila, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Mexico City. As capitalism fails, we shall see progressively more Tent Cities surrounding every American city. Friedrich Nietzsche, DER ANTICHRIST, 1888 "What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the Will to Power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is being overcome.... Formula of my happiness: A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal.... Out of life's school of war: What does not kill me makes me stronger." JUST SAY NO TO MORTGAGE Home mortgage is a form of Indentured Servitude that renders you immobile as an illiterate Mississippi Negro sharecropper chained to his landlord's fields. Security of home ownership is an illusion until the mortgage is paid in full, and even then, you still must pay property tax, insurance and expenses. The value of your house is zero, until you sell it. As we saw in the Real Estate Bubble, unrealized property value is an illusion. Security is always an illusion. We all belong to one community, and share its fate regardless of any iron gates, stone walls or private security patrols. JUST SAY NO TO APARTMENTS Apartments are just rooms in a cardboard box: These are not Back Bay red brick townhomes or brownstones or sturdy old Victorians. New apartment buildings are plasterboard boxes built by speculators who care only about profit. Through cheap plasterboard you can hear your neighbor snoring, flushing his toilet, blasting his TV and bass boom stereo. Knock on his door and ask him to turn it down. He tells you to go to hell and cranks it louder. An apartment costs as much as a mortgage, over $1,000 per month, yet this fortune is not your asset, but lost to the jaws of an insatiable landlord parasite. A communal house is better: Housemates understand they must be Good Neighbors and Good Citizens. Quality of Life in a communal house is much higher than life in a typical apartment today. LANDLORD PARASITE EXTERMINATION Landlords are vampire parasites that must be exterminated to restore community health. Communal Housing is the solution: Suburban mansions should be converted into multiple tenant rooms cheap enough for any minimum wage worker to afford. Share communal housing with housemates. I lived in various communal houses across the American West. For six months I rented a $500 room in a 14-bedroom old Victorian along university campus. The landlord drove a big black Ford Escalade SUV that got 10mpg, one of the most wasteful vehicles ever made. He spent over $500 per month just to fill his gas tank. I moved out because it drove me nuts that every dollar I gave this fat white neocon republican turd was burned in his SUV. I soon discovered that most group houses along university campus are owned by landlord parasites who drive big gas-guzzling SUV's: They drive up in Ford SUV's, Buick SUV's, Lexis SUV's, Mercedes SUV's. I turn my back as the puzzled parasite asks: "Hey aren't you here to see the room?" I just walk away mumbling: "Go to hell ya piece of crap." Most of these parasites are Asian: A 50-year-old Asian man driving a Lexis SUV has no other reason to be driving slowing down residential streets in college town. Most of the group houses along university campus seem to be owned by Asian real estate speculators who barely speak English. These parasites screw the public, charging $600 for tiny 10'x10' $300 rooms. Asian parasites let their houses fall apart, refusing to put one dollar into any repair. Broken windows, broken refrigerators, broken plumbing, broken heaters simply stay broken. Landlord parasites get rich off naive students as they lie: "No worry we fix yo heata weal soon!" Do the math: Mortgage for one of these big old houses is maybe $3,000, plus property tax, insurance and expenses totalling another $1,000. So for $4,000 in expenses, landlords carve Victorians into 20 tiny bedrooms and charge $600 per room, grossing up to $12,000 at full occupancy, yielding up to $8,000 in net profit per month. Many landlords paid off their mortgage decades ago, and now pay only property tax, insurance and "repairs" which never get repaired. Many landlords own several group houses, accumulating even bigger fortunes. None of these landlords or their families work for a living. They simply drive around college town showing rooms, reeling in more naive students to exploit. Clever? No. These parasites are dumb. Many barely speak English. They are illiterate in two languages. They vote republican suffering the delusion that republicans keep property taxes low, even as bridges and infrastructure collapse from lack of tax funding. Landlord parasites couldn't make it in any job requiring critical thought. In this upside-down Bizarro World of Laissez Faire Capitalism, if you have no intellect, no literacy, no skills for producing any product or service, you become a landlord and get rich by screwing those who actually work for a living. Landlords do not deserve their wealth. In a more sane economy, these SUV-driving turds would be taxi drivers, janitors, dishwashers. FAIR HOUSING PRICES Landlord parasites constantly try to raise your rent to maximize profit, calling their price a "Local Market Rate." Local Market Rates in most cities are absurdly overpriced far above the stagnant wages of workers. Such a Bubble is caused by real estate speculators, foreign carpetbaggers who devastate your community and price you out of your own neighborhood. Removing speculator profit motive would cut prices in half: A one million dollar house is really worth half a million, a $400,000 house is really worth $200,000, a $2,000 two-bedroom apartment is really worth $1,000 per month, a $1,000 one-bedroom is really worth $500 per month, and a $600 room in a house is really worth $300 per month. Globalization and technology have rendered billions superfluous. WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA did nothing but render workers underemployed desesperados. Real estate prices must reflect how much workers can afford to pay. The era of living on credit is over. Workers must now pay rent with their own modest paychecks. Reject speculators. Take back our real estate. Real estate belongs to those who live on it. COMMUNAL HOUSING We need a Craigslist for socialists, a list of rooms for rent in communal houses owned and shared by owners and renters who share our goals for Healthy Sustainable Community and Social Democracy. Anti-discrimination laws permit landlords to refuse applicants for poor credit history, for being unemployed, for just about any reason except skin color. If Christians can reserve their house for Christians, socialists can reserve their house for socialists. Tenants should run background checks to screen owners: Is the owner a Good Citizen? Does he drive a fuel-efficient compact sportscar or a gas-guzzling Hummer? Does he have a history of helping his tenants and his community, or a history of screwing his tenants and his community? Visit your local Property Tax Assessor website and look up the true owner of your house by typing your house address. The address will reveal a parcel number, which will reveal the true owner of the parcel. The owner may actually live in Seoul or Shanghai and may have never visited his own house. In a group house, all rooms should rent month-to-month. No one should be chained to a year-long lease with a dozen housemates they despise. House owners should live on site with tenants to ensure competent management. An owner who lives in this house will rarely let it devolve into a dump. It is practically impossible for tenants to own the house and share the mortgage: Turnover is constant as housemates move to new cities to pursue careers, college education, or wanderlust adventure. Perhaps the most you can ask of housemates is that they act as Good Citizens and agree to a few core ideals of Social Democracy and Healthy Sustainable Community. HOUSEMATE TURDS Many residential neighborhoods discourage group houses through strict zoning laws. Communal housing is usually found along university campus. Many graduate students live in group houses. Workers in their 20's rely upon group houses as they establish careers. In coastal cities, group houses are housing progressively more economic refugees of all ages fleeing absurdly overpriced rental markets. Age brings wisdom. Experience is the best teacher. Older housemates typically cause fewer problems. The best tenants are older backpackers with a long history of sharing hostel bunkrooms. Youth is ignorance. Inexperience guarantees trouble. Young housemates cause the most problems. The worst housemates are rich kids from big suburban mansions who know nothing about sharing space or living in any community. Rich kids are used to having their Mexican maids clean up their mess. Rich kids blast horrible hip hop pop on bass boom stereos, blast videogames on big-screen HDTV's, invite a half dozen fratboys for an all-night drinking binge. You ask them to quiet down and these drunks just laugh: "Hey dude like we gots a right ta party!" Next day you explain this is not a party house. Fratboy looks right through you, gives a half nod and mumbles: "Ahhh like sorry dude whatever." Amazing how many of these turds we evict for being disrespectful inconsiderate incorrigible sociopaths. Fratboys have no respect for anyone who rents any room. Fratboys are unable to grasp the concept that housemates must wake up at 6AM to commute to jobs. Fratboys never work any job. They live in this group house only until they secure their MBA, then they'll buy a big mansion in the suburbs with their inherited trust fund. Sorority sisters are the worst: Hotter the chick, bigger the hassle. The richer they are, the more sexually attractive they are, the more friends they enjoy, the worse they behave and the more likely they are to host parties that trash our house. Last time I shopped for rooms, one landlord laughed: "Listen, I never rent to hot chicks, because they ALWAYS are a disaster. Ya gotta remember when you rent to a hot chick, you're renting to both the crazy bitch and all her drunk fuktard boyfriends who sleep over!" Young housemates are slobs: Always shocking to walk past their open door and peer into their room: Their floor is a carpet of trash, pizza boxes, old pizza crust, empty beer bottles, energy drink cans, dirty laundry, textbooks, homework, CD's and DVD's scattered everywhere. Young housemates leave dirty dishes in the sink for weeks. They leave food in the refrigerator until it molds into new life forms. They stuff the toilet until it overflows. They fill the bathroom with old toilet paper rolls, wads of used toilet paper, used tampons, empty shampoo bottles, body wash bottles, shaving cans, old razors, toothbrushes, empty toothpaste tubes, bits of soap, filthy stinking towels. The sink, counter and shower stall are black with filth, mold and mildew. Young housemates assume a cleaner housemate such as myself will clean for them. Rich kids from suburban mansions assume some Mexican will magically appear to clean their mess, just like back home. Just one slob can poison housemate relations: Often no one knows who is piling dishes in the sink, trashing the bathroom, tossing half-eaten fruit onto our lawn, leaving our outside security doors propped open all night for burglars. Soon housemates suspect each other and stop greeting each other. Do some detective work and almost always trace our problems to the new kid who has not been properly socialized. This young generation appears to be drinking itself to death: They binge on beer until they fall down, spew chunks in the gutter, pass out on the lawn. Now girls drink as hard as boys, stumbling down the sidewalk clutching each other in blackout stupor. I hear them every night outside my window shrieking, giggling, braying like frenzied chimps. Off-campus sidewalks are a carpet of broken beer bottles. Even after the owner issues a Final Warning of Eviction, you hear these sorority sisters stumbling in the hallway at 3AM Tuesday morning giggling hysterically: "SHHHH we're supposed to be quiet yer gonna get me evicted BAAHAHA OK I need another beer gimme yours BAAAHAHAHA!" In the past few years I lived in group houses along university campus and met dozens of housemates of every race, age and education. I worked with owners to evict or force to move out 27 housemates, all so-called "students," all for hosting drunk parties past midnight in violation of quiet hours. This Lost Generation seems to be a race of worthless drunkards. No hope for the future if this Lost Generation is the best America can produce. This Lost Generation may well be the Last Generation. COMMUNAL HOUSING COMPLIANCE 1. RESPECT QUIET HOURS 10PM-8AM: No loud talking, music, TV or noise should be heard beyond your room. Don't slam doors. Close doors quietly. Walk softly. Footsteps may be too loud if guests are wearing boots or hard-heeled shoes, especially on top stories of houses with hardwood or tile floors. 2. NEVER PLAY LOUD MUSIC: Your music is Noise Pollution to housemates. 3. NEVER PLAY LOUD TV, DVD'S OR VIDEO GAMES: Noise Pollution to housemates. 4. USE HEADPHONES TO ENJOY LOUD MUSIC, TV AND DVD's: TDK headphones with a ten foot cord cost $20 in most drug stores. For guests, use an AUDIO SPLITTER ADAPTER that costs $7 at RadioShack, to allow up to 5 headphones sharing one jack. 5. USE FANS to create white noise. Fan noise does not impact neighbors. 6. WHEN ENTERTAINING GUESTS beware of alcohol: Even if guests intend to be quiet, once drunk they become loud. Ask guests to talk quietly and walk softly. 7. CLEAN BATHROOMS AND KITCHENS. Sweep hallways. Empty garbage. Recycle and curb recycling bins. Keep bathroom clean and free of old toilet paper rolls, shampoo bottles and towels. Scrub counters. Clean your dirty dishes. Don't let dishes sit in sink. Remove rotten food from refrigerators. 8. KEEP SHOWER STALL CLEAR of your soap, shampoo, body wash, body scrubbers and towels. Don't hang scrubbers from shower spout or lever. Don't fill shower stall with your bottles. Hang your scrubbers on chains outside the stall and store your bottles on bathroom floor out of our way. 9. KEEP OUTSIDE DOORS LOCKED AND CLOSED: Group houses along college campus are notorious targets for burglars. Drug addicts steal everything down to your last pair of socks, to pawn for drug money. If you see a stranger in your hallway, he may be a burglar. Introduce yourself to housemates and remember their faces. 10. DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE DONE UNTO YOU: Use Conflict Resolution and Anger Management: Don't yell or escalate conflict. Explain problem and propose solution. Elevate non-compliance to owner. Greet housemates. Friendly housemates make communal living enjoyable. !Salud! COMMUNAL HOUSING NON-COMPLIANCE CONSEQUENCES FIRST VIOLATION: Housemate gives warning, explains problem, proposes solution. SECOND VIOLATION: Housemate gives second warning, elevates to owner. Owner gives warning. THIRD VIOLATION: Owner issues Second Warning of Eviction. FOURTH VIOLATION: Owner issues Final Warning of Eviction. FIFTH VIOLATION: Owner offers offender chance to move out before eviction. If offender refuses to move, issue Notice of Eviction. Police remove offender from premises. Change locks. If offender reappears on premises, call police, arrest for trespassing, issue restraining order. COMMUNAL HOUSING GAME CHEATS USE NO REFRIGERATOR: Store fruit, vegetables, grain, nuts, cheese, orange juice, tea and coffee inside a ten gallon plastic storage bin. A bin with a lid seals in fruit smell and keeps away pests. A 2lb brick of cheese and a 96oz jug of orange juice stay fresh for a full week if shaded from direct sunlight. USE AN ELECTRIC KETTLE: Buy a 2qt Rival Hot Pot Kettle, found in most drug stores for $15. It boils a pint of water in a half minute. I boil water for tea and do all my cooking using this kettle in my room. I use a spray bottle and a dishrag to clean dishes in my room. I never use the kitchen. LEAVE NOTHING IN BATHROOMS: Carry toothbrush, toothpaste, razors, soap in a bag. Carry your towel on a hanger. You don't need shampoo or underarm deodorant or shaving cream. I use only a bar of scented deodorant soap to lather as shaving cream, shampoo and underarm deodorant after shower. USE NO LAUNDRY MACHINES: Wash laundry by hand using liquid dish soap in a plastic tub. I use a five gallon barnyard animal feed trough to wash my laundry by hand in a shower stall: Soak, lather with dish soap, rinse and ring by hand. I hang wet laundry on hangers in my room. USE RUBBING ALCOHOL in a spray bottle as antiseptic disinfectant, as body wash, and to clean mirrors and windows. USE A 96OZ ORANGE JUICE JUG for urine at night. I don't creep through dark hallways to the bathroom at night, waking housemates. I empty this jug in the bathroom each morning. USE SHOWER LINERS AS WINDOW CURTAINS. Liners cost $7, compared to $70 curtains, and work just as well. USE A SMALL PORTABLE SPACE HEATER in a house with inadequate heat. Use packing tape to seal drafty window and door gaps. USE FANS AS WHITE NOISE: I keep two 6" fans against my pillow. I stuff my ears with paper towel wads and sleep wearing headphones plugged into commercial-free classical radio. USE HEADPHONES TO ENJOY LOUD MUSIC, TV AND DVD's: TDK headphones with a ten foot cord cost $20 in most drug stores. For guests, use an AUDIO SPLITTER ADAPTER that costs $7 at RadioShack, to allow up to 5 headphones sharing one jack. !Salud! |