This weekend I have to spend looking for a home in Oxnard, Ventura, or maybe some other less-desirable place because, again, my rent is going up. I am a retired professional with three master’s degrees and 35 years of service to the needy, counseling abused and discarded youth, teaching emotionally disturbed teens, and managing substance abuse patients. Now, due to the death of my spouse of 27 years and the enormous cost of alternative cancer treatments, the loss of our savings of a lifetime, and having to sell our home have left me unable to ever consider buying even the most humble of homes in S.B.
A retired person living on a fixed ( no COLA) pension, I am subject to a 10 percent a year increase in my rent. The property owners here are slamming the average person for enormous profits and seem to be laughing all the way to the bank. To view a one-bedroom rental — that animals would run from — for $2000 a month when your gross income is $3,500 a month as a teacher/administrator is devastating. It has come to be impossible to live here if you do not have millions or have not been here for many years.
This is a moral question. I ask those who are ruining the quality of life for so many to look into your hearts and find a way to give something back to those who have given so much to you. I seriously doubt that any one of you who can do something about this will ever step up and realize when you are taking your last breath, all the money is gone, and you will only have yourself to answer: Did I do the right thing?