Living and Dying in a Rooming house is now a 21st Century thing, the way it once was a Great Depression thing.

I’ve recycled this post because it is a year since the person died who I wrote about in this essay. The housing crisis hasn’t eased and won’t as long as our politics and economy are governed for the benefit of the entitled in our society. Political Incrementalism is a lie and much like playing the lottery; it gives the illusion you can win big, whilst it is always carving away at your earnings.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I stepped out last night for a walk in a lingering winter light. A gentle rain fell from clouds above and puddled on the ground, still partially frozen from winter. In somnolent leafless trees of my neighbourhood, birds chattered in song to each other.

It gladdened me to hear their eternal tunes of regeneration break the silence of a long winter. I needed that reminder that all living things renew in their season. I was feeling down because I'd just gotten off the phone with an absent friend from long ago who informed me in a by-the-way tone that a university acquaintance of mine died this past January.

I wasn't a mate of this person at university or after. But our lives intersected for 3 years because he tagged along in the circle of people I was friendly with. At university, I avoided being alone in his company. There was something about him subconsciously I detected that told me he was more of a broken soul than was good for me. Something or someone had rent asunder his sense of self-worth. It stained his personality like perspiration on a hot day to a white shirt. He was a pleasant, enough person, but if scratched- hard enough, anger bled from him.

Drink was his unrequited love at university, and like all indifferent love interests, it treated him with contempt. Many then labelled him an alcoholic. But I don't think he drank any more than the rest of us at university. It was how he drank which gave the impression he had a thirst to forget and had a problem with alcohol.

In my dealings with him at university, I was pleasant but aloof. I didn't want to be his friend, and I don't think I pretended to him or others that I was. In youth, we are always searching for our promised lands and judging who will be good to join us on that journey. This person was not that for me.

When my time at university was done, it was not hard for me to lose touch with him. I know I never asked for his phone number or address when I left. He was to me, like half a pack of gum you leave- on the bedside table in a hotel room for house cleaning to put in the bin. But then again, I suspect I was not much more than that to him either.

In the intervening years, I heard from others who I'd gone to university with who were his friend. They'd tell me about his ups and downs. He had some career success after university. Then things, for one reason or another, fell apart for him as they do. At first, he was able to put all his pieces back together to go on living and hoping. But he got older, and life had other plans for him that didn't include success, love or making peace with the lot he had. He wasn't lazy, bereft of intelligence or a bad person. He just ran out of luck and couldn't rebuild himself from the shattered parts of his life.

At the beginning of 2023, he was found dead at 57 in a flophouse in a large city far from where I live. It was a down-and-out end because his health was in decline, his employment precarious, and neoliberalism doesn't give a shit for single men short of the ready in their 50s. He had siblings, but people grow apart, and brothers and sisters can also be overwhelmed by the grind of their own poorly paid existence.

Throughout the early part of the 20th century being found deceased in a doss house was the end for many people, elderly or otherwise, who had been squeezed hard by capitalism until the birth of the Welfare State. It shouldn't be happening again in the 21st century. But it is.

Death in a rooming house can be the fate of anyone now who has the bad luck of poor health, doesn't come from inherited wealth or lacks real estate assets. Although considering even affordable rooming houses are now hard to come by, many may find themselves dying in tent encampments for the homeless.

Sometimes, I fear that it too could be my end because my health isn't good, and my income is precarious. I hope not, and I will fight against it for as long as I can. But the undertow of poverty is a strong and deadly current.

As for the fellow who I once knew at university and is now dead. I hope during his toss-turned life, he heard bird song that gladdened his heart and gave him hope; if not for himself, for the fact that- spring and rebirth always return to nature around us. Remember our lives are the briefest dance to the music of time and for many thanks to capitalism the tune is a harsh jig to dance to that ends up killing them sooner than they deserved or wished for.

As always, thank you for reading. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John