i'm going to see an 800 square foot 2-bedroom condo tomorrow night. that's 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 probably almost as big, is laid out well, but doesn't have a stove and might not have a cable hookup.
i'm also going to see rotting basements in the same price range as i was previously paying, which would give me almost $1000/month to dump in a savings account. if i go with the latter option, it will be to save up to buy as fast as i can, and i might find myself actually getting close to the 40k odsp asset limit just via savings, pretty fast, at 12K/yr just savings, plus what comes up in lawsuits.
this is a reflection of the continued absurdity of the market. you still couldn't afford the rotting basement on literal welfare or osap, but the convergence around odsp is actually working out quite well, 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 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 the slave of the society, 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 find myself with a nice down payment in a few years, after the court cases are done.