I saw a couple of pretty funny bumper stickers yesterday. They didn't exactly exude the aloha spirit, but they made me chuckle. One said, "Welcome to Hawaii. Now go home." That one reminded me of one that became popular in Oregon during the first wave of California immigration in the late 1970s, when real estate prices went through the rough in the Golden State and people began cashing out and moving north to the Beaver State. It said something like "Welcome to Oregon. We don't care what you look like, as long as you look like you're leaving."
The second sticker I saw here (on the same car, mind you) said, "Aloha also means goodbye." Finally, my favorite was, "How's my driving? Call 1-800-ainokea." What made that one even better was the fact that it was on a van with a big fat dent in the bumper.
It's raining today. Yes, it rains pretty much every day. But today, it's really raining, without any let up so far. In fact, it's been raining constantly and steadily since about 8:00 last night. At times, the rain changed from steady to deluge. The catchment tank is overflowing. We skipped our walk this morning. A little rain would have been fine, but pouring makes for a very soggy stroll. I'm hoping it lets up a little this afternoon. All we need is a one hour window....
We learned yesterday that, just like we can hear our neighbors immediately downhill from us clearly when they are outside, so can our neighbors just uphill hear us. That means, when the conversation gets lively on our lanai, they can eavesdrop on the whole thing. That bugs me. Not that we have any real fights or incriminating discussions or anything. It just feels like an invasion of privacy. There are lots of trees between us. We can't see them, but they can hear us. So we'll try planting a dense row of bamboo in addition to what's already there to see if that helps. The bamboo grows very tall. Another option is to build a wall, but that's not likely. Hmmmm..... it's a dilemma.
We drove down to the other end of Glenwood to check out the neighborhood down there. Turns out, we live on the relatively civilized end. The other end, which actually turns and becomes Jungle King Road, is primitive. Very primitive. There a few people totally living off the grid down there, and off the land, too. They are off the grid, but with no alternative energy source that I could see. I don't think they have electricity or phone or running water. There are also a number of tiny, homemade dwellings down there. Most are unpermitted. They're little 200-400 square foot shacks, really that private shelter for someone, usually a free spirit, his dog and a few chickens. There were also plenty of junked cars being reclaimed by the forest. There's really no place to take old cars here. No place cheap, anyway. So many are dumped in the rainforest. Amazingly, an old jeep that had been sitting at a pull out along the highway for literally years, with no top and no tires or wheels left, was finally removed completely. I guess the county finally got as tired of looking at it as the rest of us. Either that or somebody came along, saw a use for it and took it.
It's not uncommon to see homes being reclaimed by the rainforest as well. It does not take long for a house left abandoned and untended to become completely overgrown by the jungle, with foliage and vines completely engulfing it.
In America, we often think of the poor as being urbanized. We see them living in public housing tracts in run down, crime infested parts of cities. But America also has it's rural poor. You'll see it in Appalachia. You'll see it in small farm towns throughout the country. You'll see it on Indian reservations. And you'll see it in Hawaii. The contrast here is stark because of the huge, clear and visible gap between the haves and have nots. White, baby-boomer haolis moving here from places like California, cashing in on the real estate boom there, buying or building big homes on large parcels of land, driving up the cost of housing and making it virtually impossible for locals earning wages in a service-oriented economy to buy or even rent a home. Some people say higher wages are the answer. When the median home price soars to more than $600,000 (Oahu) the median wage would have to soar to $200,000 per year to match that. Not gonna happen. The home prices are soaring, not because local people are suddenly flush with cash, but because people from California and elsewhere are. Some say build more homes to increase supply over demand and drive down prices. Again, when the price of homes is driven by people coming in from outside the community with that much money, and the supply of those people comes from a generational pool larger than any in history (boomers) you can build all you want and the demand will still outstrip supply. You'll simply have more homes on the market that only those moving here from elsewhere can afford. There are plenty of those people, so those homes will be sold, for top dollar. The housing boom will have to crash elsewhere before it really has an impact here. That's my theory and I'm stickin' too it! The national housing boom does seem to be slowing a bit now, so we'll see. The only real immediate remedy is for government to step in and mandate the building of affordable, essential, workforce housing. Clearly, the market isn't supplying it, despite the demand for it. Shoots. Why would a builder construct condos to sell for $150,000 when he can sell them all before they're even built for $400,000? So, other forces will have to make that happen. Why bother? Because every human deserves a good roof over their head. It's that simple. It's a moral obligation. It's also a matter of sanitation. It is not good for anybody, the homeless or the wealthy, to have hundreds or thousands of families living in tents in public parks, with limited facilities. More and more, those people are not just drug addicts and alcoholics, lazy bums or mentally ill. More and more, they are working families who have lost their housing and have nowhere else to go. Homelessness, regardless of the cause, is also not good business. The spirit of Aloha is dampened, to say the least, for people who spend lots of money to travel to paradise, (wether that paradise is Hawaii, Florida or California) only to share the parks with people and their tents and vans and laundry and trash. I also believe that the majority of that housing should promote ownership, not rentals. If people can actually own their homes, they will be more likely to take care of them and to participate as full fledged members of their communities. Statistics have shown that when rental units in high crime areas are made available to people to own at reasonable prices, crime rates go down. Of course, there must be some rentals. I'm just a proponent of home ownership. It is for many, after all, still the ultimate American dream.
So there you have my two cents worth on housing. I'm not sure how I got there from "It's raining...." Oh well. Nothing like a good ramble.
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