The city of Ottawa and I are going through a situation that underscores a longstanding intuitive observation that was confirmed in my history of housing class. First the situation, then the observation, then some questions, and then, as always, some music:
Because I’m a musical artist, I need a bit of space to be able to make noise, so I live a bit outside of the core and rent a house in a neighborhood that was built for World War II veterans, some of whom still live there. Young musicians and old retirees get along much better than you might think, but obviously we differ on a few things. During the summer I tend to let the grass grow. If someone complains though, I always cut it. That having been said however, somehow the city sent my landlord a bill for an undisclosed amount saying that they had to come and cut the lawn.
Now both my landlord and I are sure that the city either cut the wrong lawn, or got the wrong address but it’s not the bill or their mistake that I’m observing in this situation – it’s the fact that they won’t discuss it with me because I’m not the property owner. As a renter, I don’t have any say in the matter as far as the city is concerned – they need to talk to the owner, even if he doesn’t live on site. It goes right back to something that my prof said in my housing class: In North America you’re not considered to be truly participating in society unless you own property. Here, the privilege and promotion of ownership as a goal and ideal is as old as the frontierism that brought Europeans to these shores in the first place. Land ownership is part of the ethos, promise, and policy of both North American nations.
As a renter, I can’t help but have a problem with this notion. And while many owners tend to pat me on the head and give me their best “that’s-the-way-it-is” pout, I still think that it is worth considering; just because an owner has the responsibilities incumbent upon the choice to be rooted, does that mean that their stake/ability to participate in society should be greater than someone who rents? What if renting isn’t simply an intermediary in the quest to own, but is actually its own kind of stake in the community?
This is one of the issues where youth and seniors share a common ground. While as young people we will rent until we own, seniors often want to offload the burden of ownership as they get on in age. For both there is a strange transition – a friction that seems tied to a system rooted in an anachronistic compulsion toward ownership that the current markets can’t even sustain. As young people who – let’s face it – will be renting for at least the first part of our individual domestic careers, what steps do we need to take to change current attitudes about rentership toward attitudes of equal participation?