Eugene weekly., March 21, 2024, Page 4, Image 4

letters
ing increased equalization of income, I
see no solution.
Lioba Multer
Florence
ENABLING GENOCIDE
Director Jonathan Glazer, in his ac-
ceptance speech as he won an Oscar for
The Zone of Interest — a film about the
family of Auschwitz’s Nazi commandant
who live peacefully inside a walled gar-
den, cut off from the horrors just the
other side — said that the film’s point is
not simply to say, “‘Look what they did
then.’ Rather, ‘Look what we do now.’”
For while the Nazis had the good man-
ners to be deeply ashamed of the horrific
acts they were perpetrating, and strove
mightily to conceal them, the political and
military leadership of the apartheid state
of Israel have publicly declared — and are
daily conducting for all the world to see —
genocide against the Palestinians.
So we in the U.S. are now living in a
Zone of Interest. To the degree that as
individuals we are aware of, but fail to
actively resist the ongoing genocide, we
are in fact enabling it.
Trisha Driscoll
Veterans For Peace
Eugene
EXPANDING THE WOKE
LEXICON
Democrats continue to expand the
woke lexicon.
According to their latest addition,
if you’re in the country illegally, been
deported and have returned multiple
times, have been arrested and released
multiple times and have brutally mur-
dered a young woman or raped a 12
year-old girl, you’re not an “illegal alien”
or “illegal immigrant.”
As President Joe Biden discovered,
you can no longer use such terms for
these monsters, even though they’re ac-
curate, without the left going ballistic.
Now, according to the woke word-
book, you’re a “newcomer.”
The Democrats in the Oregon Legis-
lature were quick to adopt the change
and incorporated it in Senate Bill 4159,
which included their latest attempt
to support illegal immigration (oops!
“newcomers”). SB 4159 would have pro-
vided housing and rent subsidies for
“newcomers” regardless of citizenship
status. Thankfully the bill didn’t make it
through the 2024 session, but given its
high priority among Democrats, it will
almost certainly be back in 2025.
“Newcomers” is right up there with
“birthing people” (formerly “mothers”),
“bropropriate,” “cultural appropria-
tion,” “microaggression,” “non-binary”
and a host of other terms to know if you
want to remain in good graces among
the woke. Pretty soon we’ll need to re-
write the dictionary!
Jerry Ritter
Springfield
Editor’s note: Merriam-Webster says,
“microaggression, noun, mi· cro· ag· gres·
sion: a comment or action that subtly
and often unconsciously or unintention-
ally expresses a prejudiced attitude to-
ward a member of a marginalized group
(such as a racial minority).” Seems like a
pretty good word to know!
Local
Vocal
and
VIEWPOINT BY BILLIE BEST
Housing is a Rigged Competition
GETTING A PLACE TO LIVE SEEMS LIMITED TO THE WELL-RESOURCED AND THE DIGITALLY LITERATE
R
ight before Christmas, my partner and I received a termination notice
from our landlord. I lurched in shock, and then I got online to look for a
new place. After a couple days of intense scrolling we found a modest
dog-friendly rental in town that seemed perfect, so we hustled.
On Christmas Day, I sent a letter by email to the property manage-
ment agency describing us as “two
adults near 70 with a three-year-old
medium size poodle, prepared to sign a 12 month lease,
including pet rent and security deposit.”
I expected ageism to play in our favor, thought we
would be treated like the ideal tenant, but I was wrong.
The response we got from the property manager
was a link to an app where adults over 18 must pay
$45 each to register for individual credit and criminal
investigations. That’s a nonrefundable $90 just to be
considered. This we discovered is quite common. I
guess it filters out the riff raff. Elitist, but effective.
I’m good with apps and we were willing to lose the
money, so we jumped on their merry-go-round. But I wondered what a more economi-
cally challenged household would do if they had to pay $45 per adult just to apply to
be considered for a new place?
My partner has been the resident caretaker of an estate where he lived for 19 years
and where I lived for three. He has worked at the same business in town since 1995.
But that meant nothing to our prospective landlord. We were treated like potential
criminals until we signed the lease.
The tenant portal required digital literacy. We had to have credit cards, smart phones,
email accounts, personal computers, internet access and navigation skills, dexterity
with password management, double authentication, downloading and uploading, taking
photographs and sending attachments. This is also an economic filter as the underly-
ing infrastructure for these skills costs thousands of dollars a year.
Now I should say that I was a landlord in Boston from 1987 to 2000, and I appreci-
ate the myriad ways tenants can grift a landlord. We lived in a three-family house with
two tenants, and it was a lot of work to keep the place occupied and in good repair. It’s
reasonable for landlords to want to protect themselves.
But during all that time, I interviewed prospective tenants face-to-face, took them
at their word, and trusted my instincts, never asking for proof of anything. We had
many tenants, and I was only wrong once — if you don’t count the college students
who painted their bedrooms black. Anyway, I appreciate the intention of the digital
application process to protect the landlord and the neighbors.
After we paid the $90, and before we met a human, each of us had 48 hours to
produce digital records for government issued photo IDs, Social Security numbers,
three months of bank statements showing deposits and withdrawals, and paycheck
stubs showing salary, taxes, sick days and vacation
days. Then we were finally allowed to inspect the place.
Afterward, we were required to set up accounts
for utilities at the new address, even though we had
not signed a lease. For our new electric, water/sewer,
trash removal and renter insurance we had to produce
confirmation emails showing our new account number
and address. Finally, we had to produce medical
records for our dog with the contact information
for his veterinarian, and his breed, weight, neuter
certificate and rabies tag. Gathering all these docu-
ments and submitting them electronically took me
six hours. Fortunately, I’m self-employed.
As expected, we had to provide landlord references for the previous three years.
When my Portland landlord from 2018-2020 did not respond to the property agent’s
queries about me, the property agent asked to inspect our current home, which we
agreed to. She came to our house and looked in every room to confirm that what we
said about ourselves was true. Good for her. But you see how difficult it might be to
deal with this for somebody who works far from home or is struggling with their life.
Once all that paperwork was accepted, we were sent a link to the digital lease docu-
ment, which included a detailed fixed-term 52-week lease, a smoke detector adden-
dum, a mold addendum, a landscaping addendum, a pet addendum, a portable cooling
device addendum, a relocation addendum, a move-in checklist addendum, a new tenant
handout, a tenant education form, a satellite dish policy addendum, and a summary
document, all to be digitally initialed before we gave them our electronic signatures
and they gave us little brass keys. This was as complicated as getting a mortgage.
Our new lease started Dec. 30, a week after we got the termination notice. Now
we're in, we're settled, and things are good. Yet, the process of re-homing ourselves
raises some important issues as we ponder the problem of affordable housing, home-
lessness and upward mobility. Housing is a digital competition. We played the game
and won. Those without the skills and resources need not apply. We are the lucky ones.
‘Housing is a digital competition.
We played the game and won.
Those without the skills and
resources need not apply.’
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M A R C H
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Billie Best is a writer living in Eugene. A longer version is at BillieBest.com.
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M