It’s been about four months since I moved into my dreamy hipster starter house in Plaza-Shamrock.
Homeownership has been an incredible journey that’s provided financial security, a sense of pride, and six spicy hot takes all my homeowner friends disagree with.
It’s not Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district’s job to protect my home value.
Redistricting is a huge point of discussion in Charlotte. If the school assignments shift too many roads over, and if anyone even breathes the word “busing,” homeowners freak out about the value of their homes dropping.
That sucks, but like… that’s not the district’s problem.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has a moral responsibility to deal with the segregation in our schools. I’m honestly shocked at how many people are happy to speak out publicly against fixing segregation. I thought segregation was one of those things we all agreed was super bad.
If it takes me an extra year or two to reach 20% equity, that’s fine. Just give all the kids in this city a fair chance at a great education.
There’s nothing wrong with stray cats, owls, deer, coyotes or other wildlife.
I don’t understand why Charlotteans freak out so much about animals. My neighborhood’s Facebook group loses their collective marbles over every woodland creature wilder than a squirrel. You would think I live next to a bunch of roadrunners the way these people freak out about wily coyotes.
Wildlife is a natural part of living in a growing urban city. The animals were here long before your sprawling development was. We need to learn how to share space with them.
And yeah, it’s sad when domestic pets get attacked by wild animals. That’s why we should all take proper precautions to keep our pets safe, like keeping cats indoors and keeping dogs on leashes. Those owls and coyotes are just doing what their instincts tell them to do. They don’t deserve to be hunted out of their homes for that.
Related Agenda story: As Charlotte sprawls, wildlife comes face to face with urban dwellers
I’ll go out of my way to get to my favorite grocery store.
I used to think that the Charlotte grocery wars were just clickbait. After all, doesn’t everyone just go to whatever grocery store is closest to them?
But I learned my lesson when I bought my home five minutes further away from my favorite grocer. Then I realized I’d willingly drive right past a Food Lion, a Harris Teeter, and a Target to get to Trader Joe’s.
I can’t tell you anything about which grocery store has the lowest prices either. I think grocery shopping is becoming a lot more about virtue signaling than anything else. I’m willing to pay a little more and drive a little further just so I can say I shop at Trader Joe’s instead of Whole Foods. Does that make me shallow, or just brand loyal?
Those companies that snatch up cheap homes to renovate/rent should be banned.
There are a handful of venture-backed out-of-state companies making a killing off buying cheap homes, kicking out the renters, doing some renovations, and renting out the home for hundreds or thousands more than the previous tenant could afford. Even though I tend to get more comfortable with certain aspects of gentrification as I get older, there’s something about this process that really doesn’t sit well with me.
For capitalistic reasons, it takes money out of Charlotte.
The rent doesn’t get reinvested in the city like when local landlords rent to local tenants. Plus, the resources and streamlined processes of the buy-to-rent companies allow them to snatch up homes faster than you or I. That means local buyers have to wait longer and pay more to find their dream house.
But on a personal level, people are getting kicked out of homes they’ve lived in for years, and priced out of neighborhoods they grew up in. Even if you’re a homeowner, you should be concerned about losing peaceful neighbors and having them replaced with gentrifiers who seem to hate urban life.
Charlotte is still really Southern about living together before marriage.
My girlfriend and I chose to buy a home together before we got married. We knew it wasn’t the traditional Southern order of things, but we figured in 2018 it shouldn’t matter much.
We were wrong.
People won’t outright tell you they think you’re immoral for living together before marriage. They will, however, ask you lots of leading questions to try and get you to apologize for it.
“But you’re getting married soon, right?”
“What do your parents think about it?”
“But what happens if you break up?”
I know some of these folks are just itching to accuse me of getting free milk without buying the cow, but my milk is my business. Also, women aren’t cows.
Craigslist is the best way to find home improvement work.
I’m sure there are tons of great small businesses in Charlotte to get skilled labor. The problem is they’re not all hip to their digital game. Their websites are impossible to navigate, their contact forms drop into a black hole to nowhere, and their emails are dead.
That’s why I get all my laborers from Craigslist.
I once spent an hour comparing costs on electricians only to find the one I chose didn’t even have their correct phone number listed. I posted the job on Craigslist instead, and within an hour I had dozens of willing and ready laborers. It’s cheaper, faster, and easier than hunting down a small business. I’ve had chandeliers wired, ceiling fans installed, closets painted, and lawns mowed.
Some talented millennial needs to start making a boatload of money shaping up the digital marketing of home maintenance companies in Charlotte, because if I don’t trust your website, I don’t trust your work.
