{"id":32393,"date":"2024-10-30T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32393"},"modified":"2024-11-23T10:39:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T15:39:54","slug":"the-cost-of-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/30\/the-cost-of-living\/","title":{"rendered":"THE COST OF LIVING"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nThis essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Cost of Living<\/p>\n

LAKEWOOD, Ohio —<\/strong><\/span> Some older folks like to regale young people with stories about how matinee movies cost 25 cents, circa 1960. These old folks rarely mention 25 cents in 1960 equals $2.66 in today\u2019s money. And Coca-Cola was a dime. Give me a break; I always try to reference the Consumer Price Index (CPI) whenever I do historical flashbacks.<\/p>\n

The CPI is a big part of my life and job. I\u2019m a landlord. I don\u2019t go ballistic with annual rent raises, but enough to stay in the game. An efficiency apartment in Lakewood goes for about $700\/month. That\u2019s a bare-bones, 1920s-era apartment — no dishwasher, no air conditioning, no elevator. Academics call these apartments \u201cworkforce housing.\u201d Tenants get a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room that doubles as a bedroom. About 350 square feet. You don\u2019t throw big parties. If you lay out your efficiency tastefully, you can call it a studio. I\u2019ve seen studios that look like sleek Pullman cars, with everything in just the right place. I\u2019ve seen expensive folding bikes hanging on racks along walls. An efficiency can be a work of art, or just a huge mound of dirty clothes in the center of the room. Depends on the tenant.<\/p>\n

Bill rented an efficiency in Lakewood. His apartment was clean, small and cheap, period. Nothing fancy. Bill told me his rent check had been stolen. He had never been late with his rent before. I went to the Lakewood police station with him. A police officer asked his name. Bill said, \u201cBill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWilliam?\u201d the policeman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill . . . Bill R. Hunter.\u201d Bill had moved to Cleveland from Kentucky decades ago and was a retired factory worker. He smoked a lot, and his right hand had no fingers. We repainted Bill\u2019s apartment walls nearly every year because the government wanted the walls to not look like the color of Bill\u2019s lungs. Bill\u2019s rent was partially subsidized by the government.<\/p>\n

Eventually Bill<\/strong> <\/span>was reimbursed for the stolen rent payment by a money-order company. A crook had knocked Bill down on Detroit Avenue and cashed the money order. The cops nabbed the robber several weeks later. Lakewood police are good.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Detroit Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio<\/p><\/div>\n

But then Bill missed two rent payments in a row. I found out he was in a nursing home. I wondered, \u201cHow creepy would it be for me to try to collect the rent at a nursing home?\u201d Bill\u2019s distant relatives didn\u2019t answer my calls, and the government stopped paying its portion of the rent. I went to the nursing home, which was right across from Bill\u2019s apartment. Bill — with oxygen tubes in his nose — muttered to me, \u201cYou\u2019ll get paid.\u201d Flat on his back, he balanced a wallet on his chest. He counted out the rent. \u201cHere you go, buddy.\u201d He called a lot of people buddy.<\/p>\n

Then Bill\u2019s wallet vanished, and so did Bill. He wasn\u2019t at the nursing home, and he wasn\u2019t in the hospital. And he wasn\u2019t in the obits. And he owed rent. The housing agency eventually gave me a \u201ccase closed\u201d green light to enter Bill\u2019s apartment. We pitched Bill\u2019s belongings into the dumpster, except for his TV, which another tenant took.<\/p>\n

Bill\u2019s wooden floors hadn\u2019t been re-sanded in19 years. That\u2019s how long he had lived in the efficiency. The cost of re-sanding floors was up 94%. Inflation was up 53%. Bill\u2019s rent was up 64% in those 19 years.<\/p>\n

I called<\/strong> <\/span>the Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics. A clerk said she had many dead Bill Hunters on file. I said \u201cBill R. Hunter. Lakewood.\u201d She said he had died shortly after leaving the nursing home.<\/p>\n

I doubt Bill ever checked the cost of living. He didn\u2019t need to. He lived it. He used to write \u201crant\u201d in the subject line on his checks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week. The Cost of Living LAKEWOOD, Ohio — Some older folks like to regale young people with stories about how matinee movies cost 25 cents, circa 1960. These old folks rarely mention 25 cents in 1960 equals $2.66 in today\u2019s money. And Coca-Cola was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32393"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32410,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32393\/revisions\/32410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}