Tenants Living In Basements Demand Your Respect!

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TOGeordie
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Tenants Living In Basements Demand Your Respect!

#1 Unread post by TOGeordie » January 1st, 2019, 7:33 pm

Excellent article in the Toronto Star:

Basement dweller cliché needs to be buried
By Emma TeitelNational Columnist
Mon., Dec. 31, 2018

Mattan Lustgarten lives in his aunt’s basement and he loves it.

“I am fortunate to have such generous family,” says the 26-year-old surgical resident at the University of Toronto. “As my aunt says, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. In the rare moments when we have time, it’s nice to have a coffee together, bounce ideas off one another, or talk family matters.”

Lustgarten doesn’t pay rent. Instead he helps out around the house with groceries, cooking and home improvement. “This summer I spent several weeks renovating a section of the basement into a kitchenette,” he says.

Living in his aunt’s Seaton Village basement has not only allowed him to become closer to his cousins who live upstairs; it’s also enabled him to start paying off his student debt. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, of course, except that it contradicts nearly every stereotype still pervasive in our culture about the kind of person who resides in a basement apartment, particularly one belonging to a family member.

“Basement dweller” is synonymous with many stereotypes, few of them positive: arrested development, unkemptness, internet trolling. Our media seems to pump out clichés about the nameless “guy in the basement” — or, more common these days — the nameless “millennial in the basement” on a near-daily basis.

“There’s this stereotype of lazy, unhealthy people that are basement dwellers who only come into the light when they have to,” says Ally Buso, a student at Humber College who rents a basement apartment for $1,200 a month (utilities included) in Parkdale.

This assumption annoys Buso, not only because it is inherently classist (basement apartments tend to be cheaper), but because it’s also grossly inaccurate in a rental climate where compromise is essential.

“I know a lot of people I went to school with who turned their noses up at the idea of living in a basement apartment,” says Buso. “I find it frustrating because in this market, you don’t have a ton of choice. Sometimes you have to take what you can get, and a lot of the time a basement apartment is that.”

Put another way, people willing to compromise on certain features like natural light and higher ceilings in order to save money are usually the opposite of lazy. They are, like Lustgarten, proactive and practical. This doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of the nameless millennial ingrate chowing down on Cheetos in an underground lair.

Not that there is anything wrong with Cheetos, but perhaps it’s time we retired the basement dweller cliché for good. Yes, there are probably lazy, anti-social, internet trolls living below ground in this city. But we know very well that such people live above ground, too, in penthouses and, since January 2017, in the White House.

It’s essential that we put these clichés to bed not just because they are annoying but because our city is facing a housing crisis, and basements may be a small but effective means of chipping away at that crisis.

“They are a really important source of affordable housing supply and it’s unfortunate that so many of them are illegal,” says Janet Mason, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Mason is referring to the fact that many secondary suites in Toronto are illegal because homeowners have to jump through regulatory hoops to get them approved by the city. Housing advocates hope city council loosens some of these rules so that more legal, affordable basement units can make their way onto the market.

In the meantime, Andrea Ferguson, a sales rep with Core Realty Group Inc., advises renters not to be “dismissive” of basements outright.

“They can be bright and spacious, and what they lack they can often make up in affordability. I would proceed with caution, though — ensure there are at least two means of egress, adequate windows and light, and that there is air intake and outtake.”

Or, if you’re Barb Macfarlane, you might ensure your unit is warm and dark. Macfarlane, 56, loves the features most of us loathe about basements because, she tells me, she’s “mildly agoraphobic.”

“I feel very unsafe when I’m out in big open areas,” she says.

Macfarlane attributes a significant recent improvement in her mental health to her Mimico basement apartment by the lake. She can hear the water from her unit and sometimes a squirrel sits outside her window and waits for her to pop a peanut through the screen.

“A lot of people don’t like the dark, but I’m the opposite. This time of year in my basement is absolute heaven. This apartment is never super-bright. It’s always very warm and cosy and kind of like (I’m) curled up in a little nest. I’m so incredibly happy at the change in myself in the last couple of years and a lot of that has to do with my unit. I can go out now because I know I’ve got this wonderful, safe little welcoming place to come home to.”

Basements: they’re not for everyone, but they’re everything to some.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-co ... uried.html

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Laura
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Joined: September 18th, 2010, 8:42 pm

Re: Tenants Living In Basements Demand Your Respect!

#2 Unread post by Laura » January 1st, 2019, 7:35 pm

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