[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Apartment manager sent out an email saying they won't be renewing any leases that expire in July, but residents will have the option to transfer to a newly renovated unit... at an increased rate. Now my lease doesn't expire until August so it doesn't affect me directly, but the new owners had plenty of people come in to evaluate my apartment for renovations, so I think there's a very high probability they're going to force me to move so they can do extensive renovations and sell it as a "luxury apartment"---or maybe a store front, since it's on the ground floor. And there's a strong chance that they won't have any other ground floor apartments that open onto the courtyard rather than a hallway full of other peoples' germs.

If I'll be forced to move anyway I might as well just move in with my elderly parents---I haven't been going out for the last few years because of the pandemic, and with Trump, DOGE, and RFK Jr it seems likely that funding for an effective intranasal vaccine will be pulled and we won't get one in the United States for the foreseeable future. Plus I'll save a ton of money. And my parents could use my help---they're getting close to the age when most elderly people need assistance, which can be very expensive. There are also some new cheap apartments within walking distance of them if I find I need more solitude, and then I wouldn't have to pay Philadelphia city tax. The biggest issue is that my elderly father has been recklessly going to stores and restaurants without a mask. I could sleep and eat in the garage. And I can put fast acting air purifiers through the areas of the house I go to, which combined with masking when in their proximity indoors might be enough. But unfortunately the downstairs bathroom doesn't work, so I'd have to put on a mask every time I want to go to the bathroom.

So these might be my last few months living in the city---there are some outdoor events I'd suppose I might as well go to. Wonder if there are any AirBNB's in Philadelphia where I wouldn't have to worry about getting covid or other diseases---probably not, unless it's a bring-your-own-tent type thing. Then again a groundfloor apartment that doesn't open onto a hallway or other apartments, with excellent air purification, would suffice.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 05 March 2025 - 11:07 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 27 February 2025 - 06:16 PM, said:

The deaths have now been ruled suspicious and have been deemed to require a full investigation.


- The front door of the residence was unsecured and opened and no gas leak (CO) present.

- Pills were found scattered next to Betsy's (his wife) head as was a space heater.

Died of natural causes but wife was dead for about a week before he died from heart disease... and dead dog was in a crate. Two other dogs survived on the property.

He had Alzheimer's, not hard to imagine how nightmarish it could be for someone with dementia and a failing heart to keep wondering where his wife was and why he's grieving and then discovering her dead (over and over again) though IDK why he wouldn't have contacted anyone... unless they didn't want him dementia dialing people or posting Alzheimer's musings---otherwuse I'd think they'd have a phone he'd still know how to use (implicit memory).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 March 2025 - 09:51 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

A Haunting Coda: The 7 Days Gene Hackman's Wife Could No Longer Care for Him

[...] Hackman, 95 with advanced Alzheimer's, was alone for about a week after his wife and sole caregiver died.

[...] the timeline [...] raises the terrifying possibility that Mr. Hackman, a Marine veteran and actor of consummate precision and control, had spent days in the presence of his fallen wife, too disoriented or feeble to call for help — trapped, essentially, in the handsome, secluded home that had been his reward for a life toiling in the limelight.

https://www.nytimes....sy-arakawa.html

Horrible, though I'd imagine there are many cases in the United States where the sole caretaker for someone with advanced dementia dies---and that's very often a younger spouse, usually a wife (and no it's not divine retribution for the age gap). Although smart homes, wearables, and robots could prevent it from happening (for those who can afford them and choose to).

New York Times speculation fails to mention one of the most horrible parts---he'd likely keep forgetting she was dead, but since dementia typically doesn't impair implicit memory (like lingering emotions), he'd feel heartbroken but not know why, and then he'd keep discovering her body over and over... until his heart finally gave out.

I could imagine it as an advanced acting class exercise... like an acting exercise from hell made real.

No food in his stomach but he wasn't dehydrated---so he was drinking fluids other than spirits, but since his wife was controlling his diet (because of his heart disease) it's possible that the food was locked away.

So the two surviving dogs went not only about a week after her death but another eight days after his death. Wonder how much longer it would have been before they got hungry enough to devour their corpses. Would they starve before eating their humans (or trying to eat each other)? If Hackman was starving to death did he ever consider trying to eat the dogs (I'd guess he wouldn't try to eat his wife's raw corpse---romantic as that might be from some perspectives)? And if the dogs had eaten them (well, most of them, probably not the bones---though they do like to gnaw on bones), would the coroner still have been able to determine they died of natural causes? Or would the headlines for history blame the dogs for just randomly eating them?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Visited my elderly parents and started preparing for the probable move. Thought the air quality would be better out in the suburbs---there are certainly far more trees, and significantly less traffic on their street---but the air was wretched with the stench of smoke. From burning wood. Because the next door neighbor, and another one two houses down, and probably even more of them, like to burn wood. Breathe in all that wonderful carcinogenic stench (while proximity to the fire, without proper eye protection, is probably slowly giving them cataracts). Well, good thing I have my P100 masks....

There's less space in the house than I thought, and I have a large number of large

Spoiler

paintings and small sculptures to move. Plus the basement occasionally floods a little. Basically there's a large ground-floor recreation room adjacent to the garage, with a nonfunctioning bathroom (horrible sewer issues decades ago), and stairs leading down to a basement/laundry room with a working sink. My elderly father, the one recklessly going to restaurants, supermarkets, and offices without a mask, never uses any of them, because there are short steps leading to a front door on higher ground. So I'll use foam and draft blockers to minimize airflow between the rest of the house and the recreation room (I could go further and try to seal it off, but I'd like to be able to use the door in case of emergencies). Unfortunately only one of the screen windows in the recreation room works properly, but they're willing to have new screen windows installed for the recreation room, laundry room, and the bathroom I'd use in the main house, and I'd place high-powered air purifiers in that bathroom, the recreation room, and the laundry room, and maybe also right outside the door leading from the main house to the recreation room (AKA the wreck room).

I've considered decorating the door to make it look like an air-lock (trompe l'oeil 3D, perhaps), the recreation room to look like a space station (the interior of a space station, that is---not, like, standing on the outer surfaces), and the laundry room to look like a dungeon. (I would be doing their laundry, so they don't contaminate my air space.) But I'll probably just let that be my head canon for time being. Especially with all the massive paintings. (Which, for better or worse, are not of the interiors of space stations, nor of dungeons. Though most of them are pretty abstract, so technically it's open to interpretation... "you see that painting? It's actually supposed to be a nebula! And that over there? It's the interior of a space ship. But the essence of it. And that over there? That's another space ship. They come in all sorts of different forms.... And those down in the laundry room? Those are demons and torture devices. Yes, they come in many different forms....")

More ominous signs from my apartment's new owners: they're ordering current residents to remove all their bikes from the bike-rack by a certain date or have them confiscated, explicitly to make room for new prospective tenants. Seems like they want to get rid of the current residents to replace them with higher-paying "luxury" tenants. Or perhaps they want to con new residents into thinking there's plenty of space among the existing bike racks when there really isn't.

OTOH my elderly mother pointed out something I had somehow never realized---ground floor apartments generally cost less, and it's apparently typical for people to associate "luxury" with a nice elevated view and higher floors. Whereas my apartment is half on ground level and half underground (built into the side of a hill, so the entrance is ground level from the courtyard, and the rear is half beneath the streets). Combined with the extensive water damage through almost every room of my apartment and the more than 20 year old appliances my apartment would probably be one of the least lucrative to try to renovate into a "luxury" apartment. So mine might be one of the last, if they even bother with it at all.

Trump's disastrous policies will probably make it harder for them to find "luxury" tenants and more expensive to renovate. Most of the current tenants are college students, many of them foreign, and I'd guess most of them are from the nearby third-rate school that many people go to because it's comparatively cheap and has classes year-round to get through a degree faster (and cheaper). Granted, there are probably also some University of Pennsylvania students (second-rate Ivy, with a few first-rate graduate programs) who tend to be more affluent, but aside from the science center most of the Penn buildings are a more substantial distance away. So I'd imagine that most of the higher-paying tenants they're imagining would be associated with the biotech hub that the city has been trying to create nearby. But Trump's freeze on grants, his tariff proposals, the chaos of his flip-flops, and again his hostility towards noncitizens is probably going to have a substantial negative impact on the local biotech industry as well, with few people looking to move into new luxury apartments.

Meanwhile, the cost of materials for apartment renovation has in some cases already gone up substantially:

Quote

The [effects of tariff proposals] have been felt not just in ground-up development but also in the multi-billion dollar industry for interior work and renovations.

Richard Jantz, an executive at Cushman & Wakefield who leads its project and development services team in the tri-state region [New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania---I live in Pennsylvania], said that a large office tenant recently put a roughly $20 million renovation of a space it occupies in Manhattan on hold because of cost escalations that coincided with the tariffs.

The duties have cascaded through the supply chain, Jantz said, raising the price of items like ceiling and acoustic tiles, which often use China-made fiberglass, or lighting systems, which can have internationally sourced components. [...]

[...] "That is largely based on the tariffs and a little bit of greedflation that we're seeing," Jantz said, referring to domestic manufacturers and suppliers who have been opportunistic by raising prices because foreign competition has grown more expensive.

The higher costs have also had an impact on the construction of apartments

https://www.business...truction-2025-3

So if they can't find enough "luxury" tenants for their first sets of renovated apartments, they might decide it's not even worth it.

OTOH the company that owns my apartment might correctly guess from my history that if they just jack up my rent as if they'd renovated but don't actually bother to renovate I might stay on if it's not utterly exorbitant or beyond my means---at least for another year or maybe two. But since I've barely been leaving my apartment (because of the pandemic) there's little point to me living in the city when it would be much cheaper to live with my parents and help them out in their advanced old age. And it turns out they're even older than I'd thought.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Yesterday, 10:57 AM