Seven ☆ 25 ☆ they/them ☆ queer nonbinary masc/fem whenever i feel like it ☆ gender is a toy and mom said it was my turn to play with it ☆ I like D&D, Pokémon, video games and other stuff ☆
There’s some company, blackstone, blackwater, something like that, buying up houses that go on sale for 30k above asking price. Immediately outbidding anyone who tries to buy. Corporations are also buying property all across america.
Fuck…
Nobody comes to my tumblr for this, but Americans need to understand that THIS is why my generation can’t afford to own a house outside of Smallest-Town USA. THIS is also why people my age in bigger cities struggle to find decent apartments that don’t consume half of our monthly income.
Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That’s value they can borrow against, that’s a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that’s a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It’s probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can’t afford to take you to court.
I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who’ve lived there for generations because they can’t keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the “affordable” housing for an entire neighborhood. It’s gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that’s left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you’ve instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future “improvements” that further contribute to the commodification of communities.
Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.
These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can’t it’s because we’re lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.
I hate these fuckers so fucking much.
It got so bad in Atlanta that in 2022 they passed a law limiting Airbnb-type operators to two physical addresses, and the owner is required to live in one of them. In addition to that, they are charged an annual permit fee + additional taxes.
It’s an excellent start, but only applies to the city of Atlanta – not any of the kazillions of Airbnbs in the surrounding greater metro area.
“This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.”
So I’ve done my first aid + CPR a few times. And every single time I try and bring up scenarios for fat folks
Specifically like ‘what if someone is too large for me to wrap my arms around then to do the heimleich’
And its incredibly rare I get a decent answer.
How absolutely insane is it that me, as a fat person, is asking how to have MY life saved or to save ANOTHER life, is an impossible feat if someone is fat.
Most of the time they tell me to 'just try anyways uwu’
There has got to be a better option.
From a first aid and CPR trainer, who is also fat.
The heimleich is scientifically as effective as slapping someone VERY hard on the back. The only reason it’s so well taught is the man that invented it did a lot of great PR for himself. It’s also a bit easier for smaller framed people to get the necessary force in, because people are often extremely scared to hurt people, even in life threatening situations.
With larger bodied people, whether they be fat, tall, muscular, etc. If you cannot get your arms around them, literally just slap the shit out of their shoulders. You want hard, open palmed slaps right in the center of the shoulders or slightly below.
If they are too tall for you to reach that high, guide them to lean over the back of a chair, and then slap slap slap slap slap.
It’s been proven to be just as effective through many studies. It just doesn’t have a trademarked name and a dramatic effect in film.
If you have to do CPR on a larger bodied person, again, fat, body builder, tall and broad, whoever, the trick to finding where you want to put your hands if going to be to take your hand and shove it in their armpit. No seriously. Put your hand in their armpit, then drag it in a straight line towards yourself until you’re in the center of the chest, then put your other hand beneath that one. This is where you push. Then you are going to move the arm closest to you out of the way so you can get closer to them, and get the leverage you need to press down for compressions. The more of your body weight that is over your hands, the better the compression will be. Act like you are trying desperately to pack the last of your clothes in a suitcase, and just slam down hard on their chest.
They will make *horrible* noises. You might even break ribs.
But a broken rib is better than being dead.
One day, perhaps, other CPR and First Aid instructors will actually know and teach this shit. But the medical field is filled with people who don’t know, don’t care, or just outright hate fat people. So while this information won’t fix your complaint, I do hope it helps someone out there with saving their loved ones, should it ever be needed.
So I’ve done my first aid + CPR a few times. And every single time I try and bring up scenarios for fat folks
Specifically like ‘what if someone is too large for me to wrap my arms around then to do the heimleich’
And its incredibly rare I get a decent answer.
How absolutely insane is it that me, as a fat person, is asking how to have MY life saved or to save ANOTHER life, is an impossible feat if someone is fat.
Most of the time they tell me to 'just try anyways uwu’
There has got to be a better option.
From a first aid and CPR trainer, who is also fat.
The heimleich is scientifically as effective as slapping someone VERY hard on the back. The only reason it’s so well taught is the man that invented it did a lot of great PR for himself. It’s also a bit easier for smaller framed people to get the necessary force in, because people are often extremely scared to hurt people, even in life threatening situations.
With larger bodied people, whether they be fat, tall, muscular, etc. If you cannot get your arms around them, literally just slap the shit out of their shoulders. You want hard, open palmed slaps right in the center of the shoulders or slightly below.
If they are too tall for you to reach that high, guide them to lean over the back of a chair, and then slap slap slap slap slap.
It’s been proven to be just as effective through many studies. It just doesn’t have a trademarked name and a dramatic effect in film.
If you have to do CPR on a larger bodied person, again, fat, body builder, tall and broad, whoever, the trick to finding where you want to put your hands if going to be to take your hand and shove it in their armpit. No seriously. Put your hand in their armpit, then drag it in a straight line towards yourself until you’re in the center of the chest, then put your other hand beneath that one. This is where you push. Then you are going to move the arm closest to you out of the way so you can get closer to them, and get the leverage you need to press down for compressions. The more of your body weight that is over your hands, the better the compression will be. Act like you are trying desperately to pack the last of your clothes in a suitcase, and just slam down hard on their chest.
They will make *horrible* noises. You might even break ribs.
But a broken rib is better than being dead.
One day, perhaps, other CPR and First Aid instructors will actually know and teach this shit. But the medical field is filled with people who don’t know, don’t care, or just outright hate fat people. So while this information won’t fix your complaint, I do hope it helps someone out there with saving their loved ones, should it ever be needed.