as of today, my income is $1215 and my expenses are $970. so, i have $245/month spending money. that made it easy to get to detroit and have fun, and also made it easy to save money - that will be $750 saved by just staying in this summer. but, i never budgeted for discretionary income anywhere near that high. if i can somehow move laterally and actually find something acceptable for $700 in the next six weeks, i could find myself saving over $1000 this winter - which means i'm likely to have a fun spring, but is far more than i'd think is even reasonable, given that i'm on disability.

keep in mind that rents in toronto are far higher, so the answer isn't to slash odsp - it's just to realize that if i don't spend the money on rent, i'm not likely to spend it at all, or likely to spend it on beer and popcorn. i'd rather spend it on rent!

the market has opened up a lot in the last week. so, hopefully, i can find the kind of landlord i'm looking for, soon.

and, if i can find something for the $650 i signed up for initially? at $1230, i'd have $310 worth of spending money. a month.

if this works out, it will have been worth it...

in some ways, this is a kind of a shitty analysis. but, maybe it's more realistic, too.

the fact is that i didn't have the choice to stay where i was - all i could do was make it expensive to get me out.

and, i've wasted a year, but i've now got the settlement i should have gotten in the first place, too.

so, i've been looking at percentages and inflation and calculating that i'd need to find a two bedroom for $700/month - inclusive - to be in the same situation i was in when i moved here. if i can get to that end point, i've lost nothing, in the end, except time - meaningful, but there's no value in complaining about it.

but, if i look at total dollars instead, it's a different computation.

i was initially getting about $1075, total, when i moved here. my hst checks were a few hundred dollars, and came in in the summer; i wasn't getting these monthly deposits. so, my total income was $1075...

the rent was $650 all inclusive. so, that's 61%.

then, i started getting the hst checks in monthly instalments the next summer, which brought my monthly income up to more like $1130. i decided that the hst checks were the way the government paid for my estrogen. but, $650/1130 is now 58%, which is where i'm getting these $700 numbers from.

but, even that's an exaggeration, isn't it? i wasn't budgeting that money, initially. i was planning on using it to buy wood to build furniture.

to be fair, if i'm going to use the 61% then i should also apply it to the pre-hst income, which is $1151 - and scales to $700, as well.

but, in practice, the change from a lump sum hst that i used as found money to a monthly check that i'm budgeting is very much an actual rate increase. so, i should be applying it to the $1215, or the $1230 in a few months - and that's almost $750, inclusive. but i've got free hydro, now, too...

so, that's really the more realistic calculation, percentage wise - $750 + hydro, or $750 all inclusive.

but, what about actual dollars?

i had budgeted $150 for food, initially. internet was about the same price. estrogen was more expensive. laundry was $20.

$1075 - 650 - 150 - 30 - 50 - 20 = $175.

and, i had $100 budgeted for cigarettes.

it was $75, left over.

by the time i moved out of this place, i was getting $1190 monthly, and i had quit smoking. it was more like $180/month, put aside.

if my income is now $1230, how much can i spend on rent (including utilities) to have $75 left over?

and the answer is $885.

but, the place had better be totally smoke free, because i'd essentially be taking the money i saved from not smoking and giving it to the landlord.

so, i applied somewhere yesterday for $850 + hydro, assuming i wouldn't pay hydro for at least a few years. and, i can see that that's actually more reasonable than i thought....if i can control for the smoke in it as well as i'd like to...

so, what is less wasteful, in terms of utilizing time - going to work to pay for a nicer apartment, or backpacking around the province looking for somewhere to set back up again?

i mean, if i'm wasting all of my time looking for somewhere to stay anyways, why not just get a job?

the difference is that the backpacking is short term. i could very well waste far more of my time looking for an apartment in the short run than i would if i just got a job, but at least there's an end point to it. so, short-term homelessness provides a level of hope that long-term employment cannot provide for.

it is consequently preferable to be homeless in the short run than it is to be employed in the long run.

i would need a change of clean clothes & a laptop.

i'd just need to find something cheap with a functioning screen, as i'd be putting my existing hard drive into it.

do i think i could trust people in a rooming house more than people in a shelter?

no.

do i think i'd get along with people in a rooming house better than people in a shelter?

i think i'd actually get along better with people in a shelter than i would with people in a rooming house.

do i think i'm safer in a rooming house than a shelter?

no.

i'm not exaggerating about it making more sense to be homeless than to get a room.

let's say i get a room. i will then need to put my things in storage, until i can find somewhere to put them - a room would be transient, short term, by definition. even if you could find me a big enough room, i still couldn't leave all my gear in an unsafe location like that. so, getting a room means i'm paying for storage.

and, if i'm paying for storage and living in a strange place anyways, why bother paying for it? i mean, here's the fundamental question from my point of view: what is the difference between living in a rooming house and living in a shelter?

well?


it's basically the same thing, right?

and, if i have my things in storage, and am looking for an apartment, all paying for a room is doing is tying me to a location.

so, it makes more sense to be homeless than it does to pay for a room.

the way the managers at the so-called non-smoking buildings want to interpret the idea is not as a selling point, but as an annoying rule that has to be enforced.

so, they'll say things like "only new tenants are not allowed to smoke".

it's not seen as a welcome positive right to a healthy, smoke-free environment, but as an annoying rule to limit behaviour - one they ultimately don't want to enforce.

the attitude i want to hear is "existing tenants now have the right to a smoke-free environment", and not "only new tenants are prohibited from smoking.".

do you see the culture shock, here? the difference in values? the backwardsness inherent in the misunderstanding?

can i get disability to pay for storage under the understanding that i can't find acceptable housing?

if not, my check is going to come down by $489. if you consider that my expenses will come down by $730, that's a net increase of $241. can i find a storage space for <$241? i'm going to have a few thousand dollars sitting, so if i'm paying $350, i'll have something like two years to find something....

can i live on $200 food if i'm back-packing? well, i'll probably need to hit some food banks. soup kitchens. etc. i think so, though. i'll need to be careful about it.

i've got two months, still. this is premature. but i need to be thinking about it...

this city is hopeless.

the landlords don't think it's a real problem.

the management companies don't want to rent to non-smokers.

even the managers at the non-smoking buildings (a policy that is mostly being pushed down by corporate head offices out of town) don't want to rent to non-smokers. you call them up, and they tell you they don't enforce it.

the people that live here want to smoke, and want to tell the world to fuck off if they don't like it.

and, maybe the world should just get up and leave them to their lonely deaths - and take the jobs and wealth with us, when we do.

i came here hoping to build a new society in the wreckage of the old one, and found a population that is clinging to the society that has abandoned it. you can't rebuild unless people are willing to destroy what used to be, first.

they just want to sit back and chain smoke in the smouldering ruins...

maybe i'll come back when they're dead.

i dunno.

what i'll need to do, if it comes to it, is put my things in storage in the first week of october and hitchhike around until i can find somewhere acceptable to live where people don't smoke.

c'mon, windsor.

you're going to tell me i can't find a non-smoking apartment on disability income?

what a pathetic indictment of a disgusting place to live, that would be.

windsor: where you're always downwind of somebody chain-smoking, whether you like it or not.