I heard on NPR someone is doing a survey to assess rental increases across the country. They’ve got a formula for the data that takes into account any actual improvements the landlords made to justify the jump. Those don’t count against their karma.
What I want to know is: what happened to all the dumps? There ought to be dumps. If we’re not going to insist on a living wage or universal basic income in this country, we need a lot more dumps.
My ability to make it as a post-larval adult relied on the existence of dumps. The available rental space around our university was an excellent source of these treasures. I no longer remember if I ever signed a lease on an apartment, but in any case students sifted in and out of the local dump supply like beans in a GI tract. Nobody spruced up between tenancies. Any new paint was rolled on by a tenant and was probably purple or black. The ceilings still bore the accumulated hash oil of previous residents. When I moved into my second apartment things were looking pretty spiffy. My roommates had moved in earlier and already chiseled stalagmites off the floors in what they still called the Dog Shit Room and the Cat Shit Room.
Most of us renters would send a squeak to the landlord if the pipes broke or a raccoon moved into the kitchen, but cockroaches, rats, and exploding light sockets were below the threshold of intervention. Odds were good there was some kind of activity going on in the apartment that one wasn’t eager for the landlord to see, and so the owner lived a life of leisure popping a Schlitz down at the Legion Hall while tiny checks rolled in monthly from names he’d never heard of.
Our apartment was pretty cool-looking from the outside but was held up mostly by interior layers of psychedelic paint and adhesive ceiling stars. I know that when all four of us bought waterbeds and began filling them up, especially the two upstairs using a hose through the window, we didn’t have much confidence in the structural integrity of the place and we went out for grinders while they were filling, just in case.
There were protocols. Wait until the toilet tank filled up and jiggle the handle if it didn’t shut off. Midnight snack, flip on the light switch and close your eyes until the skittering stops. If you can’t find a jar, stand your cigarettes up like soldiers on the end table. Let your friends know about that rotten third step.
That house was as close to campus as you could get, so naturally the school acquired it and hired a couple guys with stout gloves to push it over, and erected something or other. Parking lot, I think.
It was squalor, and we matched it like squid in coral. But any fool could summon the coin to share a house with their buddies and their various bedmates and stay out of the weather. Haul in a beanbag chair and an Indian print bedspread and you were good to go. The crappiest job would net you shelter and beer money and you could take an extended road trip just for the adventure of it until your car broke down and your cash ran out, and you’d be able to find another dump wherever you landed. It might not be much, but it meant Freedom.
Where’s that freedom now? The landlord has put in stainless and granite and a farm sink and a subway-tile backsplash and built-in USB ports and you’re going to pay for it. Can you get by with stuck drawers and drafty windows? Good luck. If you do find a dump you’ll still be paying more because that rising rental tide lifts the leaky dinghy along with the yacht. If you want freedom now, you’d better have the scratch for it.
Great read, and right on! This took me back to my first place, $135.00 and included electric and water, came furnished (haha) and rented by me, my friends Dan and Tommy. The day we moved in, it had just been vacated by a couple Mormon missionaries around our age. The kitchens rusted white cabinets were still stocked with lots of Rice Krispies and spaghetti. Since it came with only two bunk beds, we hung a hammock in the room and took turns with the beds. Now I see college freshmen moving into my apartment building every summer, usually with new Ikea stuff and their proud parents helping, and apartments here are not cheap and I wonder how they are paying for living here.
There’s too much money around and the distribution of it is MIGHTY lumpy.
When I moved out of my parents’ house, my dad gave me a small book called “The Impoverished Student’s Guide to Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery.” Aside from advice such as “peanut butter is the staff of life,” it advised that any room can be decorated instantly if one has enough Indian print bedspreads. And boy, did I.
I still remember what colors mine were.
made skirts of mine. Still have two.
“It was squalor, and we matched it like squid in coral.” You are so good.
Well, I matched it anyway.
I remember reading “How to Live Cheap But Good” when I was renting a 3rd floor walk-up in my college town in the 1970s. (This was poor grammar, but I bought it anyway.) One of the chapters was titled, “Books Are Not Your Friends” (which was kind of self-defeating since this was in a book) and described the pointless, back-breaking work of boxing and hauling heavy loads of books from one apartment to the next. But I loved stacking books with boards to make my own bookcases to hold — er, more books.
Books is one of the things I’m trying to get rid of now. I’m not even sure which books make the cut and why, except that I have built-in bookcases and something needs to justify them. I still buy new books so writers make money but then I try to give them to someone.
I have gotten rid of a lot of my books because it’s just another thing to dust. The ones that make the cut to keep? Anything about birds (Julie’s are there, yeah, baby!) and a few fiction and non that I considered inspiring. Also, reference books about plant identification, health, and computer bull-shit. Some of the books I got rid of, I gave to a used book store, some I gave to friends, others to the library book sale. I also like tucking the odd book into one of those “little libraries” that pop up in neighborhoods when I’m garage-saling. Sometimes I even take a book from them. Mostly, I depend on the library for my reading material. Sometimes I will like a book I’ve gotten from the library so much that I will buy a copy. Especially with cookbooks. I try a few recipes, and if i like them, i buy the book.
And don’t be afraid of empty shelf space. I have some, and I revel in it when I see people who have stuff crammed into every nook and cranny available. It’s kind of liberating.
I will try to Be Not Afraid. I will. Dave always wanted a house he could clean with a fire hose. We ain’t there yet.
You are so funny! My first apartment away from home was nice, as long as you didn’t turn the lights on late at night – then you saw thousands of roaches, silverfish and lord knows what else. My roomie and I paid $175 for a 1 bedroom, 1 bath place. It was painted all white (Thank the Lord it wasn’t purple), so our furniture (or lack thereof) matched okay. There are NO CHEAP places left in the world that I know of, especially not in my neck of the woods.
The last apartment I rented was $135 a month, furnished, with a large kitchen and a back balcony. That was $35 more than I’d ever paid for an apartment, but I had never expected to be able to live by myself when I was living in Boston, and this opportunity in Portland was a dream come true. Also? I didn’t have to pay anything up front, or do a background check. I just moved in. Dave living across the hall from me was a bonus.
When my wife Cary and I moved up here in jan of ’70, we rented a 5th floor corner apt at 1811 NW Couch. Red brick building, it’s still there, and looks the same as it did back then. Cary was a caseworker at the welfare office near PSU, and I had a GI bill that gave us 200 a month. My quarter’s tuition was around 120, if I remember. It was a great place, hardwood floors, dining room, tiny kitchen, etc. It had a chandelier in the dining room, ffs.
Our friends were amazed.
A lot of our friends had rather different places…but we were older, both mid 20’s, and had resources.
Oh, and I never found any hash oil back then, where did you get it?? lol.
I know the building. Actually that was just a few blocks away from my mail route, but in a different zip code.
My first apartment, in 1970, was a two-room studio in an old home that had been chopped up into a few similar places. It was funky but not quite a dump. I put a mattress on the floor and called it good. The closet was in the kitchen, and I had to share a bathroom with the apartment across the hall. $70 a month including utilities.
And sure, you might have been earning only $1.70 an hour, but it was still more affordable than things are now.
Steve and Jed’s names were on the lease for the close-to-campus house. We improvised all kinds of room dividers, some of which required nails. John lived in the basement. He decided he needed a sofa, so he found one, then found it wouldn’t go down the basement stairs, so he just pulled out the staircase and lowered the sofa down (I don’t recall how — I suppose there were two men above and two or three below). After that he used a rope ladder to get in and out. Then he decided he wanted a fireplace, which the house did not have, but he found that the furnace’s chimney was in his area, so he scraped mortar and pried bricks until he had an opening in the chimney in which he built small fires. That played havoc with the furnace’s draw. A passing neighborhood resident walking his dog detected the smell of a malfunctioning furnace and contacted the landlord. As the landlord came up the front steps, Steve just happened to feel the need to go run around the track. I can still picture him hightailing it across the street. Jed was conveniently absent. The landlord was madder than a wet hen. I’m glad he didn’t try to walk down the basement stairs that weren’t there. I don’t recall what happened next…. Anyway, after that I sympathized more with landlords than I had previously done.
I might have to use this scenario in a novel some day. Thanks. Lawsa-mercy.
Go for it! But please change the names.
“It was squalor” and I can’t even imagine living like that. We were “dirt poor” when I was growing up but never lived in anything that wasn’t properly habitable.
I’m guessing it was just the “University” crowds who lived like that with the freedom and beer and pot flowing freely.
Australia was different I guess, most kids finished High School and got jobs.
Yup, it’s the university crowds with the beer and pot! You nailed it!
Ahhhh…..the good old days. And we got a good education to boot!
For not much money!
Six of us lived in an old 3 bedroom house on SE Belmont that was maybe half a step up from a dump. Everything worked from what I remember. Not sure how we functioned with one bathroom for six people, especially since four were boys. I guess I was less picky about cleanliness then. One roomie was growing pot in the space underneath the roof and fell through the upstairs ceiling up to his shoulders. I don’t remember how we explained that to the landlord. When was in Portland last, I drove down Belmont, and I see that the house is still there, but the area has been gentrified and so has the house.
My apartment was just off Belmont, at 29th and Morrison.
Omg-nighttime wildlife= roaches as big as Tonka trucks. My mom was so freaked out when I came home for summer break she insisted I freeze everything before it was admitted to the house. Course those buggers would only have thawed out and resumed their frolicking. We had to push down the toaster/ turn on the oven and wait until they exited. I had a Chicago apt w swirly purple giant “frescoes “ . …
I heard that cowboy boots are good for stepping on cockroaches in the corner, but I don’t believe it for a minute. I think they don’t die unless you can drill them with something.
My wife and I once stayed at my mom’s place in LA while my mom was at her sister’s (can’t recall why). We spotted one impressively large cucaracha and flushed it down the toilet. Later my mom said it had been her pet. I think she was serious.
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And Amiria…. your English is okay… but only just. You sound a bit stilted, as if you might be a Bot. You need to get a little loose, girl! Or, Bot… as the case may be. But that’s okay! I’m sure that Bots through a translating device will be perfected someday, and you won’t sound like English Royalty with a constipation problem.
Ah, the college memories. The scent of patchouli brings them back. Six (sometimes seven or eight, depending on the ebb and flow of boyfriends)of us shared a 3 bedroom house with one bathroom for $300 a month. (You usually figured a place rented for $100 per bedroom) I had the nursery which didn’t count as a bedroom – tiny, but private. I had to go through the “Master” bedroom to get to and from, and we worked out codes and schedules for passage. We all shared utilities and the gal with her name on the lease was adamant that baths be no more than three inches deep in the immense claw-foot tub. “You can shower at the college gym!”
Whut? I guess she paid utilities.
I’m thinking rent usually worked out to $100–in a larger shared space in Boston, all by myself in Portland (BTW I also showed up in town with NO MONEY and NO JOB but still got that apartment in a week. The house pictured was $60/month each for four of us for one/half the house.
Great column great pics. Thanks Murr! What did we pay for our dump? 25 bucks a month? 30? old Hercules Roy, he was the man. Imagine he made his money selling it to Clark Loved those turrets
love the memories better
I paid $60 a month I think, Gare! I know my father sent me $100 a month for room and board and I’m pretty sure it was $10 a week for my pizza, but maybe it was the other way around. I never met Hercules Roy. Forgot that name. Thanks for that. Gary lived in the bottom floor round tower room. Didn’t you have a round waterbed?
Also, Gary is the one gaping at the guy in the noose. I guess the rest of us didn’t care.
Not a round wAterbed. Just a big rectangular one that took up the whole of the round tower area