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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Not entirely true everywhere.

    If you go into the poorest places in the county you can own apartments and have them paid for in no time. You can charge HUD twice the going rate and make life miserable for everyone by destroying the market in those areas.

    Take where I live. The average rent in 2012 for a three bedroom, two bathroom home was 400 bucks. Now 13 years later it is 800-1000. Way higher than inflation.

    How did this happen? Well, landlords exploited a program designed to help poor people by overcharging it and causing the rent to go up everywhere. Why rent to steady job Steve when meth head Molly’s check is always there because HUD pays her rent?

    I know the three men who bought up all the property in this entire area.

    One I know very well, so I’ll focus on what he did.

    In 2010 he bought 3 apartment buildings for 115k each. They were all built by the same people in the 50s and are nearly identical with three bedrooms in each unit, but one of those bedrooms (in the downstairs apartments) has no window so can’t be categorized as a bedroom, only a closet.

    So HUD pays 800 for the ones downstairs, 1,050 for the ones upstairs.

    Each building has 4 apartments.

    That’s 6300 a month for the upstairs apartments. 4800 a month for the downstairs.

    That’s 133,000 a year for apartments he paid 115k for. The previous landlord only charged 200 a month. He has changed nothing about them. They were only fixed up enough to qualify for hud with the cheapest materials available. Nearly no upkeep. Pay a local drunk to redo the roof every few decades. Bam.

    I’ve been living here for 8 years. I have nearly paid for the apartment myself.

    How did dude get money? You guessed it. Dad helped him start businesses and everything grew from there. He has always paid his workers minimum wage and recently started selling off his businesses because being a landlord is easy peasy.

    In the 8 years I’ve lived here, the only thing he ever had to fix was a leak outside.

    Before he took it over, the entire building was on the same water and electric bill. First thing he did was separate all that so people handle their own bills and he gets as much as he can get.

    NONE of the original tenants are here now. They all got priced out and replaced with easy money HUD recipients.

    I’m the only one left who actually pays my rent in full. I’d say he’d be stoked if I moved out. I would, but I’m just too damn lazy and my upstairs neighbor is amazing. If she ever leaves it might motivate me.

    I would like to say that many many outsiders have been buying up property here for the last decade and a half. They’re stopping now they they’ve made it impossible for us natives to buy a home.

    This place is so poor that I almost had a house for 5,000 dollars in 2003. You could get homes crazy cheap here back then. That same house recently sold for 130k. It has been remodeled, but that was around 2009.

    One county over things are still like that if you’re brave enough to live there. I had a problem once over there and had to call the police around 1 AM. “All of our officers are asleep at the moment, but if it turns out to be a big problem call us back and we’ll wake one up.”








  • Not OP, but I promise you that I can hear what sounds like digital water being thrown over the cymbals when listening to mp3 files below 320 kbps. Even then, every now and then I hear that sound here and there across whatever record I’m listening to.

    I don’t experience it when listening to records, CDs, or cassettes.

    My hearing used to be very sensitive. When the whole world was using CRTs, I could tell you who had their tv on just standing outside their house.


  • I thought it didn’t sound any different to me too. That is until me and a friend were riding around listening to Icky Thump by The White Stripes for a few weeks when it first came out.

    Higher bitrate, ripped directly from the CD, pretty decent car radio.

    We had been listening to my copy, he didn’t own it yet.

    We stopped at a record store one day when we were out and he picked up his copy. He wanted to play the CD for whatever reason, and when he stuck the disc in, “berderwiddledod dahta dah BOOM BOOM BOOM”.

    I couldn’t believe it. It was like the record just sucked the power out of us both and used it to burst through the speakers.

    The mp3, by comparison, sounded shrunk down from the source and splashed with water.

    It didn’t change my listening habits because of convenience, but damn. It was an eye opener.





  • I get it. I left Facebook when they changed the feed like a thousand years ago and I haven’t missed it.

    My wife is definitely addicted though. She left it for a year, went back just to check in on family after a friend of hers had a baby and she didn’t know about it. She hasn’t put it down since.

    She’s a very family oriented person and everyone is on Facebook. Their family is the type to wake up first thing in the morning and start calling each other.

    Within minutes of being up, “Ok kids let’s talk to mamaw. Let’s talk to aunty. Now we’re calling great grandma!” Cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody. They’re always talking.

    My family is tight like if something goes wrong, but we don’t talk much otherwise. Sister needs help with a bill, someone’s car breaks down, blah blah blah. We can count on each other, just not to talk.

    I get why it means so much to her and why it’s been easier for me. I’ll know my cousin had a kid when I bump into her with it at the grocery store. That’s good enough for my people. :p

    Edit:

    Not that anyone will see this, but we were talking about it tonight and I was dead wrong. She missed her cousins wedding. That’s why she went back, she’s still very sad about it.