The Aging Mitten

Michigan, Americas high-five, its dirty glove, the mitten, as it is affectionately known, is advanced in its age. How and where do we find, draw in and keep younger talent here and intact? One way is to offer affordable housing prices. Michigan is not doing young adults any favors and sure won’t be enticing a younger generation to move here unless we trim the cost of housing for these kids being introduced into the workforce and life.

Let’s take a look shall we? According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Out of Reach report ranked Michigan 28th worse in the nation for rental affordability. A person living off minimum wage, which is $10.10 an hour, would need to work at least 86 hours a week just to afford a two bedroom rental according to the report. This basically requires each person to hold down two full time jobs. Is this what the American Dream has become? Working away your life to survive, no time for play?

Young people in Michigan have to spend greater than 30% of their income on housing cost. Now since 1981, the government found that people who spent over 30% of their income on housing were "cost-burdened.” Just to make it in the world today, these young people are at a disadvantage. They have to get out of school ( and don’t get me started on the debt from student loans, that’s another story) and make $45k a year or double what a minimum wage job would allow. The blame is the burden that keeps growing and being left on the shoulders of our children.

The U. S. Census data tells us that as of July 1, 2022 nearly a quarter of all housing units in Michigan are rentals. When you take this into consideration with the fact that Michigan lacks almost 200,000 units statewide it is no wonder we have a housing crisis in our state. This comes to us from the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness. Even so, who in the leadership even cares about their own legacy? These children of the future are not their children, or are they? We prefer to look at them as rivals opposed to what they are more accurately, which is America’s children.

Director of public policy for the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, Lisa Chapman goes on to say, “Not only have we not been producing enough, we’ve also lost housing over the last couple of decades, If you think about subsidized programs like the tax credit program. The tax credit program has an affordability period. Then after that, it depends on what the developer picks ... they can sell the property, they can go market rate. Developments are coming online and not being recapitalized to continue to be affordable.”

Here we see greed coming into play. Not always the fault of citizens trying to carve out their own American Dream. The problem lies with our leaders, how do we close the gap on what they created us to owe? How are you angered at the generation coming up, bearing the responsibility of failed policies from their predecessors?

I guess we wait until the legislature comes back from summer break, see what happens when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs the budget. This budget includes a $2 million grant to help veterans obtain affordable housing and avoid homelessness and maintained nearly $3 million in funding to help serve runaway and homeless youths. Not that either of these funds help us get and keep a youthful workforce.

I sit here at 3 in the morning reflecting trying to make a sensible choice on how to look at this revised, altered and adjusted, American Dream. At this moment in time a twenty something year old can’t drive across the country to appreciate their piece of the pie. No trips for the family to Las Vegas. No vacation home. The term “sound as a dollar” has even lost its value, if in-fact it exists anymore. There will be a time that people will awake, that time is now! The two party system has tore apart the American Dream, and divided Americans.

When will we see the true face under the mask? The oppressor is not your neighbor because they have a differing viewpoint. We can live without agreement together, we cannot live provoked, with the media fanning the flames and prompting our people to be divided at every turn and every topic.

We are so worried about being identified as this or that, when we need to identify the enemy. That fat cat politician, these seedy, con artists, who only have one true quality over the masses they rule. That is their ability to dupe those masses in question. We have been swindled by greasy, arrogant, narcissistic aliens; these reptiles are such because they are no better than cold blooded bottom feeders.

In no way do I feel represented by these creatures. The authoritarian regime of Trump, to the inability of Biden, both sides have shown us how utterly incapable, and dreadfully, worthless they are. Biden is as ineffectual as Carter, Trump by design is a swindler, scumbag ready to unleash hell as Nixon once did. No we have a skewed perception of what we are inclined and prepared to deal with. Not out of a genuine desire to elect, but out of the deduction of the lesser of two evils.

That is not how we should approach our democracy. This is the way we lose our republic. Fact is, the masses get their information from TikTok accounts created by false information in some government run think tanks while the starving, emaciated swines rush to eat this nonsense that barely keeps them sustained. These little piggies don’t know they could break the flimsy slats holding them in and live free. They have been conditioned to only acknowledge the control they were fostered in.

Little pig, little pig, let me in! Remember the political man can only huff and puff, he will not blow your house in, because we are the people that hold the short hairs on their chin. All we need to do is wake up and see the power our Founders have blessed us with. The house they threaten is ours not theirs but we all reside inside and our taxes pay for the ride.