Our Current Landlady Is The Very Image Of One Of Those Landlords Whod Be Spared The Guillotine.

Our current landlady is the very image of one of those landlords who’d be spared the guillotine.

She’s an older, polite, maternal (white, middle class) woman who just happened to have enough money to buy a spare house, and is renting it to top up her pension. She reads The Guardian and asks after my family and does the occasional repair when necessary. She’s not one of those evil landlords.

She also just repeatedly lied to our faces about our contracts to try to get us to forfeit most of the rights we have as tenants. She also visits frequently, criticising how we live and reminding us that our home belongs to her. She also condescendingly and unnecessarily explains to us how boilers and washing machines and carpets work.

She explains to us how renting works.

She explains it with an indulgent smile, like a grandmother talking to a child, as if she’s being terribly patient about correcting our misunderstandings.

And she lies.

She lies because as much as she wants to convince us, everyone else, and even herself that she’s a good person, our entire relationship is based on the power she holds over us. She uses her wealth and position in society to extort payment from us, who have nowhere to live. We sacrifice to her the majority of the income we spend our lives earning, just so we can have a roof over our heads. But any time we don’t show proper deference to her, she could have us out on the street in weeks or months. We’d lose our home, because to her it is merely an asset which in no way belongs to us, the people who live there.

Today she repeatedly lied to us about our contract, and about the law, because she wanted us to have the minimum legal power possible. If I didn’t organise with a local tenants’ union, I wouldn’t have known my rights. And if I didn’t have the security of being a member of that union behind me, I never would have had the guts to challenge her. My housemate had no idea she was lying, and would have trusted her, signing away what few rights we had under the law.

As part of this tenants’ union, I’m always fighting with the worst landlords - the ones who keep people living in squalor, the ones with a dozen properties, the ones who are violent and abusive. But today has reminded me that even the “nice” landlords are still scum.

A genuinely good person who has enough spare money to buy a spare house (which is a lot of money! they wouldn’t need more!) would just let people who need a home live there, not bleed them of their income for the privilege of a warm place to sleep.

Never trust a landlord.

But more importantly, join a tenants’ union, and take back the power they hold over you. It was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done.

In London, I recommend London Renters Union.

In Scotland: Living Rent.

In the rest of the UK: ACORN.

+ there are tenants’ unions all over the world, and housing co-ops where everyone who lives there part-owns their home and there’s no landlord to answer to

Tiramisu

hey everyone! i recently compiled a bunch of useful links to various online archives, libraries, and the like, and i wanted to share the result since i feel like a lot of these resources would be very useful to people!!

feel free (enouraged even) to repost/share this wherever you want, or even take the links for your own masterposts or compiled resources or whatever. the goal i had in mind when making this was to share knowledge, not to take credit or anything, so go wild!

fair warning this is fairly targeted towards online leftist queer spaces since those are the circles i run in but this is tumblr so figured that wouldn't be a problem lol

also, if anyone has any cool sources or links they want me to add to make it more comprehensive, just hit me up!

resource directory

resource directory

a collection of libraries, catalogs, archives, and other resources

Hey you know how I said I was going to make a workbook on the kind of bullshit you need to do when someone you love dies? I actually did that.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH LOTS OF SWEARING AT THE USELESS, SHITTY SITUATION YOU’RE IN.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF BLACK HUMOR BUT NO CURSEWORDS.

Featuring Helpful Sections such as:

Death Certificates – What you need, why you need them, and how to get them

Prepare to spend a long and miserable time on the phone

What the Everloving Fuck is Probate

Some Simple Dos and Don’ts

Shitty Mad Libs – Templates for writing Obituaries and Memorials

How to plan a non-religious death party

So you suddenly have to become some sort of hacker or some shit

This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other in front of the fucking casket as they argue about who’s inheriting grandma’s favorite dentures.

It’s not exactly cheerful and it’s full of things that are probably going to feel really fucking raw if you’re processing a fresh death.

I’m sorry! I love you! Death is shitty! I’m trying to laugh about it a little and I hope you can laugh a little too because otherwise we’re all just going to cry together.

Good luck!

(in memory of my weirdo mother and her weirdo siblings who all died too fucking young and left me holding this flaming bag of dogshit)

So I just got a text; apparently my father just dropped by the house, handed my husband a large box full of slightly under-ripe peaches, said “For the love of god take these I was picking up windfalls and I have another bushel at home” and left. 

The joys of having parents with a fruit orchard. 

In a couple days once they ripen, I’m thinking peach pie :)