Oakland’s unhoused population has increased by 24% over the last three years. The city has spent over 12 million dollars evicting people from their homeless camps in the last two. How many meals could have been bought for that much money? I see people being pushed off areas that no one else even wants to walk down—under highway overpasses. Among the rats. And yet I see new high-cost living units being built all over the Bay Area. As I walk by them, many of these high-cost units appear at least partially empty.

Lowering the standard rent and raising the minimum wage is the only way to diminish the housing crisis. But landlords don’t want to lower rent. They want to drive it up and up and up. And what can the renters do? What can they do but crowd more and more people into smaller and smaller spaces? People hold onto their units for as long as they can, even though they might like to move. They are afraid to complain to the landlords because they might raise the rent.

Someone I know had a tree die in their front yard. They notified the landlord. A week later the landlord raised the rent.

People I know are in a constant state of anxiety because of debt. Yet some landlords raise the rent whenever they can, and others raise the rent to whatever the standard price seems to be. People can work 40 hours a week and not have enough money for rent and food. There is a greater disparity between the wealthy and the poor than at any time in America’s history since the so-called “Gilded Age”.

Hunter S. Thompson said, “It’s a strange world. Some people get rich. Other people eat shit and die.”

I don’t know what to do or how to do it, but I’m going to find a way to help those I can. Even writing about the disparity is a beginning. Hopefully it helps people consider their own position. And the positions of others.