Not quite that much, it's seasonal, so more like 8-9 months rather than 12. I of course don't want to take care of everyone forever or anything, it's just that everyone needs that launch pad, someone to actually help they get established. My dad was making three times less than he is now from disability and social assistance (he pays me 300 a month, 90 of which pays my little sisters cell phone bill, so he gives me 210 for utilities a month. He though, could afford to live by himself and take care of himself now if he wanted. My sister has also found an apartment in a close by town (the biggest town I'll let Dad drive to from home, since he has health issues, I have a second vehicle which he uses) I didn't charge my sister for anything, not that she didn't offer or insist, but we need an opportunities to get our shit together without someone using us, or taking from us, when we're at our lowest points.

I also, it just so happens did have a girl friend for a couple of months last year, didn't work out but it was definitely fun while it lasted.

I'm trying to save, winter is coming, and I try to save enough to maintain things during the off season. I did it without trouble last year, but had to get a job for the last month of winter the year before, and might also this year as well.

There is WCB but I am indeed attempting to prepare for everything. Last year I was explaining to my dad that I had to save a certain amount also for the unforeseen when I was budgeting, and he said "like what?", lol... if I knew, it wouldn't be unforeseen....

On another note... when it comes to houses, they really don't make them like they used to. At least based on my experience, the cheapness of the quality is unbelievable. If you're paying a lot for a new house you'd better be paying for the location.

On yet another note, they give sweet houses away at Alberta, you can get them for one dollar. No joke, you just have to move them.

Wasn't Royston Vasey set near there? (Sorry couldn't help it). My folks come from Huddersfield, I know that part of the world well, beautiful countryside. — Punshhh

Alas there aren't enough local jobs for local people round here :)

And so while I can't resolve THE problem, I do think it's reasonable to resolve the best I can one person at a time, with the understanding that eventually there'll be some that really need aid and then we can deal with them one person at a time. — Hanover

I think this is a philosophical mistake, particularly in relation to economics. A macro problem is not always solvable at the micro level. Problems that present themselves at different levels require different answers. Indeed, quite often if everyone does the right thing for themselves on the micro scale, the macro result is not the right thing for the group as a whole. People crossing a footbridge begin to march in step, making the whole footbridge swing perilously; the intervention of engineers becomes necessary to re-balance the system as a whole.

In my youth I was a housing aid adviser to people, and it became clear to me at one point that the best thing for an individual to do was to cheat the system, even though that would mess up the system as a whole. The affluent were already doing that by piling up housing debt when they didn't need the loan, because they received tax relief on the interest repayments, and while this seemed to me an ethical cheat it was entirely lawful; it therefore meant that every rich house-owner was receiving a far greater subsidy from the government than, say, a poor tenant in public housing that had long ago paid off its own debt. All the poor could do was to find ways of elevating themselves up the waiting list, or illicitly sub-letting part of their dwellings (besides fiddling the details of their income to receive more benefit.

These inequities and follies remain in the UK housing system, and have been compounded by subsidies to buy-to-let landlords for their investment and running costs. The thing requires a system-wide reform, which it has alas no prospect of getting under either prospective regime.

In the UK...

It costs about £70,000 to build a house - a nice modern insulated one. The average house price is somewhere around £270,000. The £200,000 difference is the cost of land with planning permission, which is not being manufactured any more.

Even in depressed areas, one is hard pressed to find even an old, rundown Victorian terraced house with no garden for anything close to the cost of building a house. My house is one of those, and is worth about £140,000. So I won't be moving to London anytime soon, where the same house would be worth from 3 to 10 times the price, depending on centrality.

So you landless peasants who rent obviously have to pay the equivalent in rent of a loan on the house plus a bit for maintenance and insurance, and a bit for the profit of the landlord. And that is almost everywhere a huge chunk of the minimum wage which is what peasants are supposed to be worth.

Aye, and there's the rub. There is a glut of peasants, not a shortage of housing. Time for a war...

Too bad you don't still have that empire of far flung colonies to which you could export your waste people.

Now you're stuck with "The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Your tired, your poor, your tempest tossed huddled masses yearning to own real estate!" They are just going to keep driving up prices. Is it too late to retract Australia's and India's independence?

You know what a great way to be a dick, makes lots of money, choke up available housing and cause inflation is if you're already rich, and the tears of the desperate are all that sustain you? You can rent a shit ton of places, and then just re rent them for more illegally all airbnb style.