Does greed feel like greed?

Or misguided survival?

I live in a big, well-managed, relatively new (extremely new, for New England) apartment building. And this year’s $434 rent increase had me wondering — does it really come down to greed?

After some casual LinkedIn spelunking, I tried a bit of polite letter writing to what (or whom?) I suspected to be the source (which is not, of course, the leasing agents who have to deal with how much of the building justifiably felt about the whole thing). No particularly direct anger, no throwing blame around, no lamenting the struggle — just kind of an honest, “Hey, this is a lot. Is it just because you can?”

Some time later, a leasing agent reached out and said we could meet about it, but I felt dreadful about the idea of putting her through that sort of awkwardness, having no idea what upper management might have told her about the whole letter thing. So I declined the need for anything in person, having already signed the renewal and accepted that even if I had the slightest interest in a battle (which I never do; I’m conflict-avoidant to a fault), it would be a losing one. Boot me out; find some other kid getting paid by local Big Tech with more spending tolerance than me, and raise the rate again next year. I took a silly comfort in the fact that me taking the maximum 15 month renewal meant they’d have to wait that much longer to do so. That comfort may well have been misguided, as they still seem to be struggling to rent out a few studio units like mine for $100 more on top of the $434 increase. A bit less neighborly noise potential for now, at least!

Anyway, since I never did get an answer in writing and am too afraid to ask, I want to believe that somehow, my $434 and everyone else’s $434 have been magically, fairly split apart and rained benevolently down into inflation adjustments for the leasing agents and the cleaning staff and the landscapers and, perhaps most of all, the fantastically kind maintenance person who rescued my washing machine the other day. I almost said ‘trickled down,’ but then ‘trickle-down economics’ came to mind, which is almost memetically known to be bullshit at this point. Perhaps that’s a telling thought.

So what if it is greed? I still want to think that it doesn’t feel that way — that nobody’s at The Big Real Estate Company’s main office, kicking their Miu Miu-clad feet up on their African Blackwood desk (I googled ‘expensive shoes’ and ‘ expensive wood’ for this sentence), their own mortgage paid off years ago, wanting for nothing and saying, “Eh, why not raise the rent by an amount that seriously affects people?” I like to think it’s just a matter of being out-of-touch. Or maybe a matter of the monetary mind acting exactly like our bodies do: we’re wired by evolution to get fat.

The misguided scarcity mindset got me thinking about my own greed, and how comparable it may very well be. Call me naive, but I still want to believe that real estate investment isn’t an intentionally malevolent activity, even though the idea of ever doing it myself makes my stomach churn. (“But a property would pay for itself!” and old friend once mused. Sure, I thought, but imagine every single day, having to make sure that the living space was functional and okay for your tenants, and to be perpetually on-call to make sure of it. I can’t just…not care.)

Anyhow. My own greed came up when I got an accidental, automated refill of my hormone replacement therapy a couple of weeks ago. As I’m on a hormonal implant now, I don’t need those vials for a couple of months — nor for the foreseeable future if I remain on the implant. So did I immediately get in contact with another person like myself in Florida or Missouri or even my home state of Texas and secretly send them the lifesaving medication in the face of frankly genocidal, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation?

No.

I hoarded the vials in my bathroom drawer, my scarcity mindset and flurry of ‘what-ifs’ winning out. Like a greedy little coward. I have what I need for now, but I viscerally do not want to share, because…what if?

What if they shut down my clinic?

What if my blue state turns red?

What if I go back into that horrible, indescribable void, my brain deprived of the chemical that warmed and enriched and stabilized it, and become an automaton again?

I shudder at these what-ifs, and so I am greedy.

Writing it all out, though, I have to chuckle. Somehow, I don’t think a lot of business execs perceive themselves to have quite as much at stake…