I am still recovering from the family meeting yesterday. The drop dead date is they have to be out by 1 August BUT there’s no formal paperwork from Brian the landpeer yet. Neither of the downstairs tenants are apparently being evicted. The hot water heating system is still in disrepair.
I have never seen Keith this low and Paul is doing his best to stay positive by not really engaging all that much. They can’t afford housing unless they live together and I don’t think it would be good for either of them. Keith is under the impression that wherever he ends up he’ll be able to afford running a car.
I don’t really think that will be possible and it’s just horrible. Everything Keith has managed to accomplish in his life is being clawed away from him by the economy and his disabilities.
Rents have gone up 15 to 30 percent in a single year in Burnaby. They’ve been offered temporary refuge here IF THEY CAN’T FIND SOMETHING ELSE but it will have to be very temporary as Jeff is not keen to live with both strapping guys in this tiny house when Jeff and I have matching schedules for sleep and they REALLY DO NOT. To say that I am not keen on living with them either is one way of putting it. Paul was a hard man to live with for a long time before I left him and Keith, although he’s nice as pie to me these days, can be waspish. Not saying I can’t, just that I really want them to find their own place and I feel like I can’t get off this train and there’s a stench of inevitability in there with the class war and tough family dynamic and I feel ineffectual and without hope.
At the meeting yesterday we took a little break and Keith said that Paul couldn’t read the words on his computer screen.
I’m sad.
I’m renting a storage space for July 1. That’s another $450 people, and we have to pay it because we don’t have stable housing for our family, and if the furnace quits I’ll be using it too.
