#164. Paying Rent

Black people don’t save money for the future, putting long-term thinking and planning aside for the gratification of short-term stimulation. In simple economic terms, Black people purchase  wants more than they do needs.

In the battle between luxury items vs. necessities, Black people will always choose the former. Street cred is vital in the Black community and those who lack the newest threads, shoes and car accessories will be left behind in the struggle for authenticity.

This struggle places a premium on short-term monetary strategies of questionable legality since employment at the barbershop precludes purchasing the requisite items to “keep it real”.

The purchasing of luxury goods means an erosion of funds present for true needs, such as housing. Single Black women, who have a net worth of $5 dollars and disproportionately raise children that Black males abandon (to the tune of a 72 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate), constantly find themselves without funds come the day rent is due:

Among young black men in America, about 10 percent are currently incarcerated. It’s shocking, but we’ve almost grown used to it.

But while those young men are in prison, what’s happening to their wives, girlfriends, mothers and sisters?

Eviction. A new study coming out of Milwaukee shows that eviction is for black women what incarceration is for black men. One in 20 households there are evicted every year. In predominately black communities, that rate doubles to 1 in 10 families.

For those of us who are affluent, with relatively stable incomes, we’ve never even had to think about what it would be like.

Getting the eviction notice in the mail. The knot in your stomach, knowing you can’t pay the rent you owe. The court case, and the eventual knock on the door from the sheriff, telling you it’s time to go.

This study focused primarily on Milwaukee, a city where Black crime is rising at a rate that exceeds Black unemployment. Black women comprise 40 percent of the evictions in that city:

The study also found that women from predominantly black neighborhoods comprise 13 percent of the city’s population, yet make up 40 percent of persons evicted. The study cites to some of the obvious causes for eviction such as low wages and benefit amounts. In the Times article, Milwaukee property manager Tim Ballering asks, rhetorically, “On $673 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school and still pay your rent?”

Rent is not free, though many Black people living in Black Run America (BRA) believe it to be such a luxury that the government or Mein Obama will pay.

In many major cities, Black people are being priced out of homes, apartments and condos by Disingenuous White Liberals (DWL) who deem their presence acceptable only for photo-ops and in classrooms taught by Crusading White Pedagogues.

It’s politically convenient for DWL’s to live off of Black votes and appear to have Black people’s interests at heart, but Black people to dare live in a liberal enclave is unacceptable.

DWL’s, you see, are people who plainly can see, but rationalize any excuse, plausible or implausible, to absolve themselves from this reality that they otherwise embrace through mating habits and housing patterns.

DWL’s price Black people out of living in their communities, while most white people found the strategy of fleeing to faraway suburbs a positive tactic. Public transportation can only go so far, right?

Paying the rent, even rent at Section 8 prices, is a problem for Black people. Even at zero percent interest and built by Habitat for Humanity presents problems that can only be explained by some form of bigotry or predatory loans from an overzealous mortgage broker trying to reach a quota for the month to attain a performance bonus.

In reality, the simple economic idea of a need vs. a want explains the reason why Black people have high rates of foreclosures and evictions.

Thankfully, The Rent is to Damn High political party is on the scene to combat this problem:

Is your rent too damn high?

Super long-shot New York State gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, of the Rent is Too Damn High party, made the monthly nut the topic du jour on Tuesday, after stealing the show at Monday’s night’s debate. Mr. McMillan is such a tireless advocate for the renter, that during a cellphone conversation with the WSJ reporter Erica Orden, he stopped a man on the street to ask if his rent was too high.

It is our hope that after the election, The Rent is Too Damn High party goes nationwide with Alvin Greene as the organizations new head.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes paying rent, a superfluous expenditure that gets in the way of the pursuit of luxury items. Rent is a need that Black people want, as long as someone else fits the bill entirely.