By Gerri Graves
My kids and I get together once or twice a week. We fix dinner, eat and discuss current topics. They each have their own subjects of interest, as well as I, and we basically update each other on articles we’ve read that week.
We’ve been on a rather worldly foodie kick lately. Pozole, Thai curry, Indian curry with homemade garlic naan, Korean Bugolgi, Lebanese Shawarma……you get the picture. Lots of great food, made from scratch. Bean’s up next with Korean vegetable pancakes with pickled radish and kimchi. Vero is working on a Japanese dish.
I was particularly excited about that last one, as I just found this $400 Hitachi Japanese rice cooker, brand new, at a yard sale….for $4! It’s all in Japanese, which meant I had to translate all the directions. (We found it even more awesome that it WAS all in Japanese.) I was itching to play with it.
At one of these dinners, we were discussing the articles we had read that week, and we had come to a somber realization. A life, many lives, that had been taken…..were all reduced to numbers. We couldn’t find the names of the victims anywhere. Thousands of lives were extinguished, and we don’t even know their names.
Dismissed as collateral damage — Those two words we latch onto, to excuse the innocent victims caught in the crossfire.
I mentioned, on my end, an article on a coroner in Colorado, who has been accused of secretly burying ‘homeless’ men, without a grave marker or even notifying the families. One victim was double buried with another man. Just put in a body bag, and thrown in with another burial. Had the family of the buried individual not asked for an exhumation, the second body would never have been found. What’s worse, they don’t know the identity of the victim that was double buried…..not that I could find anyway. (There’s corruption involved, but I’m not including it, because that’s not the point of this inclusion.)
We talked of current wars. Of kidnapping and forced labor…..either as sex workers, or other.
I read of where a Chinese actor was lured to Thailand for a role he was offered, and then, just disappeared. His family were relentless about finding him, however, and a private detective was hired. The PI ended up finding him in a slave compound where victims were forced to make calls for phone scams. Locked to a desk. Tortured and beaten. His kidnappers only gave him back because of the public outcry his family had managed to muster. The perpetrators had lured him to Thailand, kidnapped him and crossed the border into Myanmar where the compound was located.
What’s worse, the recovered victim spoke of hundreds more still in captivity.
We talked of people warehousing. Especially in some Asian countries. Rooms, barely the size of a closet, in large buildings that housed thousands. Mentally and physically disabled, the elderly….even some children.
Casualties of many wars currently playing out globally. Paupers graves. Mass burials. No memoirs. No family or friends speaking on their behalf. No names. Just numbers, nothing more.
I’m going to do a mid-article change here, and look at this from a different angle.
I recently attended a four hour seminar on the Fair Housing Act’s rules/regulations hosted by at least three female lawyers. It was presented by Our Path Home and the Intermountain Fair Housing Council. While the info itself was rather dry….. information laden powerpoint presentation, the lawyers themselves gave us examples of how these rights were abused and how they had affected their clients. That alone made it one of the best seminars I have ever attended.
I am unable to sit for four hours without consequences…meaning, I will be in excruciating pain for the rest of the evening, but the stories that were discussed were so powerful that I stayed. That’s how important this information was to me. (And yes, there definitely were consequences.)
They related stories of how the disabled and impoverished were either taken advantage or kept out of housing altogether. For instance, an apartment building refused to rent to a person with a hearing disability. Their reason? He wouldn’t be able to hear the fire alarm. By law, he was allowed reasonable accommodation.
Another instance involved a disabled person’s service dog. They demanded a DNA sample from their service dog. Their reason? In case the service dog created damage, they would be able to keep the deposit or sue for damages.
An immigrant family (non english speakers), were being overcharged on their rent.
A family with small children, were told there were no units available, when in fact there were. The excuse the property owner gave? They were not ground level units. He had said he thought they wouldn’t be interested, given they had children. That wasn’t his choice to make.
Did you know that assistance animals do not require a deposit or ‘pet rent’? They also cannot restrict your animal based on breed, require proof of need, call your Dr for proof, random unit inspections (based on assistance animals), charge carpet cleaning fees, DNA testing or single out a renter based on their need for an assistant.
They also pointed out that many are paying 50% of their wages (or higher) just in rent alone. Stats from 2024 state that in order to afford a 2bdrm house in Ada County, you’d have to make approx. $55,520/yr or $26.69/hr. That is if the rent is $1388/month. The current two bedroom average in Ada County on Zillow last year was $1740.
What occupations can actually afford to rent in Ada County? Front line managers, registered nurses etc. Teachers were dropped from that list in 2024. A college educated teacher cannot comfortably afford the rent here in Ada County. (Comfortable meaning- 1/3 of your take-home)
Canyon county is much the same as Ada County.
One more tidbit I learned from this seminar — The Fair Housing Act supersedes any state law. Interesting.
Where am I going with all this? It does seem our worth, as an individual, is based solely on how much money we either earn, or have. Our importance within a social structure diminishes the closer we get to the poverty line. Dip below it, and our lives seem barely perceptible.
I’d be a number, even though I’ve done many good things in my life.
And yet, many of the people I admire, both living and passed, started out well below the poverty line. Their days spent in the trenches made them better people for having lived through it. Our value as a human being should be based on merit, not what car we drive, or trendy apartment we can afford. We should not be filed away as a number, simply because we cannot afford the luxuries a small percentage can.
We are not a commodity. Every life counts for something……and at the risk of sounding cliche, we matter.
My son asked me, at the end of our last dinner, why I grieve so hard over people that I’ve never met. I thought about it for a second and replied, “Every life extinguished too early, is a potential voice for change. A change, now, never realized. I guess my kids will have to speak for them.”