This March on my 67th birthday, a Gen Z-er complimented me.

I sat in my favorite Las Vegas watering hole, watching a game, drinking beer, and reading a senior citizens’ bulletin whose main feature was being alert for AI fiscal scams.

On his way out, the sharp-eyed young stamper gave me my due. In his view, I’d been multitasking to the max. He admired that. I wondered if he also saw himself doing the same sort of juggling in 40 years.

Gen Z-ers are usually dismissive of Boomers like me. To them, if Boomers aren’t hogging the wealth of America, we’re lingering in homes we need to vacate for younger generations – theirs – to occupy.

As I love answering about the first, Boomers contributed mightily to America’s wealth. Now, we’re taking our share of the proceeds. Maybe Gen Z will eventually contribute to the national weal. Should it be substantial enough, then it too can take from the trough. Secondly, having bought and maintained the homes others coveted, why should Boomers forsake them? To where would we go? Jump on ice floes and expire? Even if we wanted, we couldn’t. Climate change is shrinking the number of ice floes.

About the above points raised, I never have any compunction offering this remedy to impatient critics of the 1946-64 generation – stop whining, get off your asses, put down the handheld, start learning to hustle and scuff, begin learning how to defer and delay.

Gen Z holds itself back through immediate gratification, short attention spans, and unreasonableness insofar as problem solving. The future develops over time. One must work towards the future. The idea of arriving at the future before taking steps there wouldn’t have even sufficed as a Star Trek premise.

Saw a befuddling billboard recently. It chummed the waters for prospective homeowners who lacked enough cash for down payments. In essence, the financial company trawling for trade offered loans to enable down payments.

That astonished me. Taking out a loan in order to qualify for a mortgage. Doubtlessly in such cases the down payment loan would run at a much higher rate than the mortgage. In any case, the prospective buyer would be saddled with a pair of nuts and two vigs. Looking at it that way, whoever would be desperate enough, financially illiterate enough, to assume this burden might as well start the foreclosure countdown as soon as the last unread bank document got signed.

Numerous members of my family who emerged from the Silent Generation, and plenty of their closest contemporaries owned their own homes. Growing up, living in a house rather than renting an apartment was a common thread among my schoolmates. We could did so because though our parents didn’t spare themselves life’s diversions and comforts, they also worked like dogs. There were plenty of extravagances they denied themselves to put aside sufficient stashes for down payments.

No. New cars every three years and taking their full vacation allotments weren’t extravagances. That was living life and enjoying it. Unlike too many modern-day adults, they could manage money and time.

Most of our parents started their lives in Industrial America as renters. Some lived in what was then known as “transitional housing.” Later to be known as “The Projects.” Little known now, but this municipal housing was to have served as transit stations. Ideally, turnover would be frequent, the residents temporary because urban planners expected they’d adhere to the American Dream of homeownership.

How “transitional housing” became “The Projects,” in whose apartments perpetual generations settled across decades deserves studies worthy of doctorates.

For those who’d heeded “The Projects’” transitory intentions, as well as the cohorts of young postwar couples who’d rented elsewhere, they’d grown up in rural Southern family homes. Substandard, okay ramshackle, as these addresses frequently were, they were already steps ahead by having lived in homes of their own. It wasn’t mystery. It wasn’t adventure. It was a goal.

As they knew, owning the property, residing inside the dwelling atop it lifts the inhabitants a rung. Black or white, possession also confers further rights.

These days, there are debates regarding which is best: owning a home or renting. Surely if the resident has no intent to remain long term, by all means renting is better. However, if the locale settled in will become “home,” tenants should strive to shorten that monthly state which enriches others and find four walls which they can make theirs.

The advantages are clear. Homes appreciate in value. Apartment living only fills landlords’ pockets. If necessary, homeowners can borrow against their properties. This way they can avoid dancing with banks should some emergency or crisis arise needing money. Increasingly fewer apartment dwellers have enough resources if the above comes calling.

They’re not ready for the Spanish Inquisition. But then, who is?

Most of all, there’s just the simple, deep-seated satisfaction behind owning one’s place. Homeowners aren’t beholden to landlords. Banks, yes, until mortgages are paid off. But banks want homeowners to succeed. Banks do not want to carry real estate on their books.

No matter how luxurious the apartment, there remains the fact living in them is just on a month-to-month basis. Furthermore, if landlords want to rid themselves of tenants, laws and courts are weighted against renters.
Homeowners have far greater leeway, and rights when it comes to possible eviction. While never immune to dispossession, householders have more time and room to maneuver.

It’s tougher to dislodge homeowners. The whole process against parties desirous of evicting householders from their addresses is a deliberate one. Which is good. Whereas once the sheriff or marshal arrives at an apartment bearing duly sworn and attested to papers delinquent renters must vacate. Skip any discussion. Just pick up, pack up, and leave. The alternative being free stays in the county hotel and further legal hurdles to clear.

For the most part, the Silent Generation elders I grew up among sought curtailing their rental existences as quickly as possible. While they might not have been capable of articulating it, very few liked their labor adding to strangers’ wealth.

They would’ve confirmed their labor ought have benefited them first and foremost.

Often, they sought overtime at their regular employment like drug fiends seeking another fix. Likelier were Saturday jobs whose cash wages – always cash – went directly into the down payment fund.

Some uncles and plenty of other neighborhood men seldom enjoyed leisurely full weekends. Friday afternoons, evenings, they could be heard on phones arranging work on Saturdays. Aunts, too. Back when suburbia was splendiferous, numerous more affluent homeowners always needed their homes’ interiors cleaned, the properties spiffed up or minor repairs and small alterations performed.

Looking at the above, these same tasks today are mainly performed by Spanish speakers hounded by ICE Gestapo.

As blacks did in an earlier America, the newcomers aren’t complaining about housing affordability. The immigrants, like blacks before them, are focused towards fulfilling dreams by the means available. A lesson so simple it should even get through to Gen Z.

If one is old enough, seeing Latino and Hispanic aspirants into the middle class reminds that upwards mobility depends on drive and desire. Before manual labor became denigrated, many in the rising black middle class didn’t bother worrying themselves with the tasks making them appear menial. What mattered then as now were the extra dollars. Again, as always, in cash.

A motto that served the civil rights movement, “Eyes on the Prize,” also served individuals’ goals. Where the movement strove for justice, fairness, and equality, countless numbers of its foot soldiers wanted a two bed/two bath with lawns front and back and a two-car driveway on one side.

Inside one’s own home, the residents were only beholden to themselves, not the boss or ignoramuses who refused seeing them as human, who denied their humanity. Within the rooms contained in their homes, they could speak freely as well as act without bothersome observation. This aspect of mid-century urban/Industrial American black life isn’t touched upon enough. While nowhere near as prevalent in the 21st century, 75 years ago when blacks were escaping proscriptions mainstream America had erected around them, shutting out pressures that challenged “normal” life in one’s own home could be regarded as finding refuge. Ownership a kind of therapy.

The men and women who benefited from this might’ve been hard-pressed to explain what resulted. Yet had it been explained, they would’ve agreed. Often, it’s difficult for us to recognize what’s occurring within when we’re busy inside working towards it.

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