for now, the 45% increase in my odsp income since 2022 combined with the 45% decrease in rent over that same period has actually opened up some startlingly appealing rental units at the top of my price range. i'm going to see an 800 square foot 2-bedroom condo tomorrow night that is actually bigger than the basement apartment i had when i first moved here, with the difference being that this place looks almost brand new and full of people that bought the condos and that other place was 100 years old and full of smokers on welfare.

on saturday morning, i'm going to see a basement that's almost as big, but doesn't have a stove and might not have a cable running into it for internet.

i'm also going to see dirty, rotting basements in the same price range as i was previously paying, which would allow me to put close to $800/month in a savings account on a monthly basis. the idea in signing that sort of lease would be to save up to buy as fast as i can, and the unintentional result would be that i might find myself accidentally getting close to the $40,000 odsp asset limit, at $10,000/yr in savings, plus what i'm able to win via tort law for negligence from recent landlords.

this is a reflection of the present absurdity of the housing market. you still couldn't afford the rotting basement on literal welfare or osap, but the convergence around odsp is working as intended, if you can get landlords to listen. it'd be nice to find a 600-700 square foot apartment in a normal apartment building for somewhere in between, but that doesn't exist.

if you can use the irrationality of capitalism to your benefit, you have to do it, and i set my life up so i could. on some level, i'm morally opposed to this, but i have to maximize my self-interest, regardless.

you can be exploited by the system, or you can exploit the system. there's no middle point. it's eat or be eaten, and you can get it or not get it; you can be enslaved by society via the market, or you can enslave the society in return. i'm not naive about this. i don't watch tv, so they can't brainwash me, nyah nyah.

i wouldn't imagine i'd want to move out of an 800 square foot two bedroom condo in a nice part of town any time soon, so i could realistically find myself with a substantive down payment in a few years that i could utilize for a functionally useful endpoint, after the court cases are done.