Seven in the morning. The dog and I are back from the Morning Trudge. She’s taken up her position in the cool cave under the toilet. The human is desperately swilling iced tea.
Ugh! What an AWFUL morning! Hot and sticky and swampy…feels like hideous Saudi Arabia, there on the shore of the Persian Gulf where we lived for ten years. That was an awful place then. And this is an awful place just now.
We walked by our transplanted neighbor J’s house. It used to belong to SDXB, until he got spooked by Tony the Romanian Landlord and ran away to Sun City. In his panic, SDXB merrily sold the place for a pence to the City of Phoenix, who gave it away to a welfare case.
That lady is a sweetheart and a nice person to have as a neighbor. But she has neither the experience nor the cash to maintain an aging upper-middle-class house. Sooo…. the place has more or less gone to pot.
And of course, that affects property values for all of us.
Thank you, Big Brother!
😀
Occasionally I think about moving down into M’hijito’s neighborhood. Centrally located, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store, madly gentrifying, steps from a bus line…. But…
But GAWD, do I hate moving! Even if the cost were irrelevant (which ain’t the case anymore!), packing up four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a dining room, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a two-car garage is more than I care to contemplate. Just. Too. Much. Work!
But…hmmm…. It might be worth it.
Just depends on which way the wind blows.
If the city continues to give away houses here, property values will tank. In that case, I won’t be able to get enough for this house to move into a comparably middle-class neighborhood, and when M’Hijito inherits this place, its value will be nil. So…
Could be worth selling out now and jumping to a more stable district.
My neighborhood is “less stable,” shall we say, because we are the next one south of a dangerous slum. The low-income district to the north of us is notorious, and it took some nerve (and maybe some stupidity?) to buy into our area.
Because of that neighboring blight, I was able to afford much nicer housing than I could have hoped to buy anywhere else in the central city or the East Valley.
Our area has stayed stolidly middle-class since I moved in — a good 15 years ago. But it’s beginning to look like that may not be the case much longer. The accursed city ran a train line up Main Drag West, conveniently bringing every bum in town up to our neighborhood. The nearby grocery stores are getting old…the infrastructure is getting old…everything is getting old. So…
It may be time to start thinking about moving elsewhere. Or consigning myself now to the inevitable old folks’ prison.
At any rate: for the moment…yes. The place is still pleasantly tidy and blandly middle-class. But how long will that be the case?
Anyone’s guess…
