Bad Blog Post for The Flying Cow

This is a bad blog post. We went to eat with my dah and her kids Thursday night but I was feeling blah and took no pictures. The Flying Cow even that is not acting right Looks write in preview There is an old video though

No Names

 So my wife says I cannot name names as I tell you about my dream.

Not sure where to start.  Names have been changed to protect people I really like.

I guess we start with Sue who is James Garners daughter and not Jennifer so not really.  Then there is Meg who is a former Houston City Council member.  We have Kim who is a current Congresswoman.  Meg it turns out is Kim's daughter.  We are all members of some Ivy League university club with a lot of dark wood paneling.

An FBI agent shows up to tap the phones on a room off a bar where we all hanging out.  A friend of Sue's offers to help with the wires and then connect a wire to his computer.  It turns out the people in the room are somehow doing arbitrage trading on the U. S. Mint and it is very profitable so it must be illegal.

Nope not illegal but now I know how to make a lot of money for people who are not me.

One Teeny Tiny Problem

 But I decided to eat it anyway.

... and that reminded me of at least three stories.

Story one is that in our family cemetery is a headstone that reads:

    This man came here and was sick.

    He died so we buried him.

Story two:

My widowed grandmother with four girls and two boys that were my mom, three of my aunts and two of my uncles took a wagon to visit an elderly relative.  That relative made biscuits for them before they set off for home.  One sibling did not eat any biscuits.  When asked why they had not eaten any biscuits they said it was because that relative's nose had been dripping into the batter.

Story three is about burnt toast and generally is passed on as relationship advice:

No need to tell the story just if someone you love serves you burnt toast, eat it.

A Middle of the Night Thread to a Flipper

So there was this person on twitter that seems to like container homes but also does gut and refurbs.  Seems some folks must have accused him of being a gentrifier.  He showed a nice looking refurb and a home that if in my neighborhood could have been my aged neighbor's across the street that walks the dogs at midnight and walks to the store three to four times a day.  Actually the home shown was in better shape than the one across the street.  Sometimes a home like that the owner will die without a will and no one claims it then taxes get so big there is little point and it gets sold for taxes.  Now I am old and my home is not in perfect shape.  I just spent $4000 due to the freeze and could easily spend another $40,000 on electric, a/c, kitchen upgrade and add another bath and a half that would make my home list at the comparable $425,000 two blocks from me.  That would be likely at least $250,000 to $275,000 more than what a flipper would offer me right now.  So there is nothing wrong with making a $200,000 plus profit on a less than $200,000 plus investment that takes six months to turn except that home has not sold yet so we will see but the comps seem about right without my actually going and computing comps but just ballparking what I have seen.

Now as I said I am old.  I have retired and would of course like to stay retired but medical costs, sometimes unexpected as well as unexpected costs for repairs here and family and friends that also have unexpected needs that I like to help with may make me at least try to set up a business here while I really just want to help others learn to do a lot of the building, repairing and IT skills I have acquired.

Oh, and annual taxes and insurance on my home running about $2500 and rising with some major jumps if I get appraised at much higher than my current sort of fair appraisal.

That person on twitter must somehow not only wanted to be "not the problem" but wanted to find investors who would also not only want to see themselves as being "not the problem" but also maybe want to see themselves as some sort of hero that is a rock that does not make ripples as it enters the water.  So that person blocked me and here is what I thought as I was awake way too early that morning.

**********

It is not so much that you are the problem yet you are the energy that creates the vector which drives displacement.  The problem is long term generational wealth that does not have critical mass and how the individuals in those homes may avoid displacement especially 

if healthcare, home repair costs from freeze, hurricane, pest or others and taxes exceed fixed income.  The taxing entities politicians may pretend to dislike you but in fact see you as the simplest conversion of a property to an income ( tax ) stream though 

at the loss of the property to the current owner and constituent who may get enough out of the property to survive elsewhere but seldom in the area that may be three or four generations deep.  Affordable housing for the displaced in the same neighborhood is a challenge. 

Additional words - you are not the problem, you are a set of parameters and not in control of all of the other parameters just as are all of us as individuals, couples, families, corporate or government entities.  Thank you for letting me put some of the parameters into words.

What I have seen you post I call refurb and infill that could involve the land bank or the land trust.  Something different will be the Hardy Yard and Yellow Cab Development which will soon have a NOFA.

The developer will likely not be able to build anything for current residents being displaced or for residents currently renting that are also being displaced.  The problem then becomes either new income or subsidies which is someone else's income.

So the problem from the view of the current resident is like watching flood waters and finding the resources to get to dry ground.

Smoke 1

Tweets to robot streets

mine

someone who types more

Old Us to Walmart and to see Art Art Art Outside in the Heights

So my sleep cycle came around to the time we could go and we got much more than expected.

You can see this work being built.  Creation of my favorite local artist.