as far as i can tell, the worst thing that could happen is that i may have to stay homeless until  a smoke-free space opens up in subsidized housing.

five years?

six years?

lots of books...

and, you can't smoke in the library.

of course, i don't expect it to take that long.

i would rather leave my items in storage and live in a shelter for the next five year than get a job.

that's a lot of time to read, if that's what i have to do to wait this out.

i've explained myself as well as i can.

i'm sorry if you still don't understand.

and, i'll explain by example if that's what you need - if you're more of a hands-on learner.

but, i thought we went through that already...

i don't want to climb ladders or get titles or raise kids or anything else attached to capitalist goals.

i just want a little quiet, healthy space to myself where i can think to myself.

and i'll happily spend the winter homeless if that's what i have to do to get to that end point.

the simple fact is that employment offers me no solutions, just a set of extra problems that i don't want.

even if i did have money, i still wouldn't want to own a house.

maintenance. upkeep. taxes. yuck.

there are lots of things i'd like to spend my time doing, and maintaining a property is simply not one of them.

i don't think that a smoke-free apartment ought to be a luxury, or a difficult to obtain commodity. the situation i'm in is really absurd. it shouldn't happen. ever.

this is actually a smart approach.

if we're running through a period of regression here, where backwards attitudes become dominant in terms of sheer numbers of adherents, we're going to need the court to set things straight.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/08/09/ontario-sex-ed-human-rights-challenge_a_23499205/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation

so, if your building recently gave you a letter indicating that the building is now non-smoking, should you take that as a less than subtle hint that they want you to leave?

yeah.

probably...

can i even put out an open letter to smokers, not just in windsor, but ontario more generally?

the rules in ontario around smoking inside have recently changed quite a bit. landlords now have the ability to insist that new tenants sign leases that prohibit them from smoking, even if they can't enforce it with old tenants. while smokers may think of this as a headache, it is actually in everybody's best interests to self-segregate around the habit.

while i cannot speak for other municipalities, there is clearly no deficit of landlords willing to rent to smokers in windsor. if anything, it appears to be difficult to find landlords that want to rent to non-smokers. i've found a few families that don't want smokers, but none of the management companies appear to care much about the issue at all.

i know that moving is annoying. but, if your landlord has decided that your building is now non-smoking, please understand that there are non-smokers that are having difficulty finding a place to live that is non-smoking - and plenty of options where smoking appears to actually be preferred. you will solve a lot of problems by relocating yourself to somewhere where you're more welcome, and allowing the space to open up for somebody that wants to follow your building's new rules.

a little bit of voluntary co-operation is going to work in everybody's interests.

even biking home exposed the depth of the situation.

biking through a residential neighbourhood on a saturday afternoon, all you can smell from every direction, is smoke. every house has somebody out smoking.

it's unscientific, but it seems like the smoking rates in the downtown core of this city are approaching 80%.

you can't understand it until you've experienced it.

maybe it's just the simple fact that so many people have left, leaving the most hopeless people behind.

like i say: i came here expecting collapse. this just isn't the form i hoped it would take.

i saw three places today.

two of them were advertised as non-smoking, and both had smokers. i thought maybe the one that was advertised as not non-smoking would be smoke-free, but there was a huge butt can out front.

even the places i've put applications in on are compromises - smokers at the other end of the property, kind of thing.

there does not appear to be anywhere here for a non-smoker to live without jeopardizing their health.

it really seems like i'm going to have to leave this town because i can't find a healthy place to live.

as surreal as that seems.

01/15 is updated...