dreaming

My cousin Mark and I have been dreaming out loud as we worked on a house project for a wealthy retiree.

When I moved to River Dog, I was shocked at how few places there were for a family to rent. Amazingly, the need is there but nobody seems to be doing much about it. Most of the former low-end apartments have been bought up and are now being turned into condos. Kick the poor out, move in the rich. Same story, different town.

I asked around with the Reach Out crowd where they or their friends lived and how much they were paying. It was easy to investigate as they all knew we were homeless ourselves at the time.

Most of the folks lived in run down shacks on the various reserves surrounding River Dog. The government gave them the reserve houses somehow. But the ones in town were paying around $750 a month for a crapped out single wide mobile home in the hood (two streets over from where I now live).

$750! We ain't in the fair mo' city no mo'. Some of that is just Canada, with its higher cost of living. But then some of that is supply and demand. In River Dog there's much demand and little supply.

Mark and I were dreaming about buying one or two of the numerous empty town lots for sale and building a decent apartment building, like a quad-plex or an eight-plex if double storied. All two-bedroom, maybe some three, etc

This is real do-able. I am sure my father in-law would love to invest in something like that. So I think the money is there. But I'd need to have some plans drawn up by an architect, get a bunch of bids and numbers together, etc. I'd like to charge fair and realistic rent while making the entire project paid off in 5-7 years. I assume that's possible. We'll see.

Other ideas were to get our feet wet and build our capitol up by flipping a house or two. Those possibilities were limited in River Dog. We might have to do that in the nearby Capitol City.

It's fun to dream. Especially when the dreams seem so realistic. And it could help out the locals with a fair shot at housing.