things are tough back in Toronto
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
A friend of mine lost his job in Toronto in early October, just a couple of weeks before I did. He's now applied for 180 jobs and has decided to start driving for one of the courier firms at $16.50 an hour. His wife asked if this is what he'd seen himself doing after all the countless hours that went into his MBA (his third degree). His wife had also lost her job in November or so and while she found work it was at a 20% pay discount to her previous role. A good friend of my friend had similarly seen the writing on the wall with his small employer and realized that he could come out way ahead if he simply sold his place and moved to PEI to start over again on the "winnings" from the house sale. Toronto's insane housing market obliged, and that friend is also gone.
Our generation can't win in Toronto. The housing market has apparently found a magical state where sales volume and prices somehow always trend up. The employment market, always prone to weakness, seems to be going through cyclical problems as the credit cycle ends as well as "structural" problems resulting from NAFTA. And then there's our age, which at is ~50 the age at which everyone's shown the door for the last time. There's no winning combination. When Mari and I were briefly living apart, we learned-within two weeks-of half a dozen other couples who were living and working apart in some cases for several years. In each case one half was anchored in Toronto for "quality of life". But with the streets becoming free-for-all zones in which six pedestrians are hit every day and the police admit they're not even ticket speeders, what's the "quality of life"? What's the quality of life in a place where increasing numbers of people are now living in tents? What's the quality of life where the schools are failing to the point that our son in the "gifted" program had no textbooks, homework, or access to computers? It's become a lie. I'm worried that the break-ins to commercial properties that followed the lockdown will start extending to homes as well. I'm worried that the bubble will burst and literally millions of people will find themselves with underwater mortgages. And I'm worried by how many people agree with me. Very glad to be out, I have to say.
Anyway, I've introduced my friend to my brother, as there's a job lead with my brother that my friend could pursue.