I'm seriously amused by your last paragraph. It actually made me smile, because, despite explaining precisely why I'm doing this kind of stuff, you're still loo

I'm seriously amused by your last paragraph. It actually made me smile, because, despite explaining precisely why I'm doing this kind of stuff, you're still looking for the "angle", and that's the best example of why I find this attitude so difficult to communicate in an effective way to so many other people (and why I've all but given up at it). Yes, I am now living in a place with lower rent than I might be otherwise, but the rent is not lower than the total amount of money and time I have put into it; yes, the landlords might write an amazing letter of recommendation, but my experience so far has been that it's nearly impossible to wrest any kind of letter out of a landlord, no matter how good your relationship. As far as capitalism goes ... y'know, I don't dislike it, but I don't think it's an answer to everyone's needs, either. In order to work, capitalism requires that everything have a measurable, monetary value, and that most people agree on that value. Talk about the Mona Lisa to a capitalist, and the capitalist will tell you that whatever is spent on insuring and protecting the Mona Lisa is representative of its value; talk about the Mona Lisa to an art expert, and they'll use a term that is utterly foreign to a capitalist: "priceless". If people had money to spend at capitalist parks, and capitalist parks realized that they could rent space to vendors (and make some money too), then capitalist vendors would move in and compete for the same spaces, and discerning customers would visit the best vendors, and everyone would be happy! ...except, the story doesn't end there, because eventually the capitalist park realizes that it has developed more value in its space by drawing people to a park where there's great food, so they raise the fees on the vendors, and the vendors realize that they can make more money by advertising more aggressively, or, better yet, by opening up side-businesses and operating those in the same park also ... eventually, this system corrupts itself and the park is no longer a park or the people can no longer afford to go there or any of a number of outcomes. For real world examples, look no further than the article that spawned this whole thread, or the huge number of empty commercial spaces that are still asking for ridiculous rents. So, I am skeptical of capitalism's ability to be anything more than a better economic model than anything else that's currently viable. And, the house does belong to the community, in a way, because it's a part of it, and it belongs to me, in a way, because I live in it. I think when I said "value", I was thinking of something different than what you were when you read it.