Every few years, someone gains notoriety for voicing the opinion that the elderly are in the way, usually in a country whose populace is decreasing in volume and increasing in age. This month the views of Yukuse Narita, enjoying an assistant professorship in economics at Yale University, are getting attention within the pages of the New York Times. In 2021, the expat of Japan suggested the country might benefit if its elders committed seppuku (ritual disembowelment) in mass suicide. When questioned on the point more recently, he hedged his bet, telling a school boy, ” if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.” (“A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean?” in The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/smarter-living/wirecutter/domestic-abusers-can-control-your-devices-heres-how-to-fight-back.html).
Such statements attract attention because they shock. Invariably, they serve the anger of some subclass whose members believe they are deprived of their due. In Mr. Narita’s case, his opinions on the mass suicide of elders have gotten him attention that his economics writings do not. Maybe what he’s really saying, is that he needs your attention.
When you are young, the prevalent meaning of saying that the old should die, is that you are not among them. Supporting the old is expensive, that’s true. So is supporting the young. Excluding the expense of college and estimated in late 2022 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child to adulthood tops $300,000 with the cost of inflation thrown in (“How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Child?”, U.S. News, https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child). When one generation advances the idea of mandatory euthanasia for the generation that brought them up, it’s little more than bad taste. When it comes to children, all of us are the village that raises them. Even the childless contribute to the bonds that fund the schools and libraries that bring our children up. We all stand on the shoulders of others. Sometimes we stand taller on the shoulders of those who are not our parents, but no one becomes without others.
U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates on the cost of raising a child probably assume attendance at publicly supported elementary, middle, and secondary schools. Parents magazine estimates the cost of private school at $5,279 per year in Iowa, with Vermont averaging $22,067. The average in New York City runs over $55,210, and if you are schooling a child with ADHD in Connecticut, you might be looking at an average of $119,720 on a yearly basis (“How Much Does Private School Really Cost–& Is It Worth It?” Parents magazine, https://www.parents.com/parenting/money/how-much-does-private-school-really-cost-is-it-worth-it/). With such figures, the competition over homes in well-reputed school districts is no surprise.
Niche, a website that provides ratings of schools with conveniently positioned maps of nearby real estate on the same page, gives Albany High School an overall grade of A+. On the high end of the scoring, Albany High School gets an A+ for academics, A grades for teachers and diversity, and A+ for college prep; on the low end, the administration gets a C+.
Despite the current scoring for diversity, according to Wikipedia, Albany “remained closed to African Americans” well into the 1940s with only three Black residents in 1940. I remember the storefront of the John Birch Society that stood on San Pablo Avenue when I was a child, in the years when the Vietnam War was protested in Berkeley. I don’t remember hearing about the speech of a former klansman that the John Birch Society hosted at the Albany Veterans Memorial Building during those years. That building is located at Memorial Park on a block shared with Albany High School. Also according to Wikipedia, “Albany has a history of real estate discrimination, which made it difficult for non-white buyers to acquire property and build homes in Albany.” Real estate prices in Albany are noted as “rising steeply” since Census 2000 (“Albany, California,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,_California).
Given the test scores for attendees at Albany High School, coupled by the increased cost and competition for real estate—not to mention that the Albany Unified School District is the top employer in this small town with the City of Albany coming in at number five—it’s within the realm of possibility that other cases of mobbing besides mine involve block coordinators and city employees.
The involvement of those who represent the city indicates an interest in turning over properties, at least for kickbacks of some kind to individual city workers, if not out of some unspoken policy in certain departments. As an old acquaintance who sat on the Albany City Council put it when I wrote to alert the Council of block coordinator involvement in criminal harassment: “They run the city.”
Maybe they shouldn’t.
In California towns like Albany, mobbing might be used to rid the municipality of the Proposition 13 houses that remain, to generate property transfer taxes and increase city coffers (a mobber once said I had “just stayed too long”), or even to change the politics of the city. For mobbers who serve the city, such goals might justify the criminal sabotage and assault on others in their homes.
We all buy our way into school districts by virtue of the cities in which we pay for housing. The involvement of prospective buyers who seek admission to schools in mobbing towns like Albany, however, indicates a willingness to buy their way into a school district by throwing people out of their homes. I don’t know how this is justified. But perhaps the false reasoning goes something like this: (1) It’s not like they bribed a school official, after all; (2) The city needs more money; (3) Families with young children need the housing; and (4) If you mob your victims right, they’ll think something is wrong with the house or in their head.
In this scenario, mobbing is supported for a combination of reasons. In a small town like Albany, California, the city wants to increase its budget and sees the lesser taxes paid by the Proposition 13 home owners who linger as a constraint. Families trying to find homes in the Albany School District see homes that are rented to U.C. Berkeley students or occupied by singles and elders as an obstacle to getting the housing they want. City employees living in Albany want salaries that are on par with larger cities funded by greater numbers of taxpayers. They see the influx of high-salaried tech workers and want change that will increase property values and raise their salaries. And the mobbers, they have something of value to sell. They get paid to turn over your home; they may get more from a buyer who wants access to Albany schools.
Eventually, like Mr. Narita, mobbers see others as obstacles to their own advancement. They want them to get out of the way. From my standpoint as a woman who continues to be stalked and harassed in a bid to turn over property, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that in addition to some Albany city workers, speculators, and residents engaging in a criminal conspiracy to turn over neighboring homes, there are potential buyers willing to do the same. Parents do all kinds of things “for” their children. And when wrongdoing serves the interests of those in local government, investigation is replaced by a “see no evil” refusal to acknowledge corruption and serious harm. This is what has happened to me and to my family. If it goes unpunished, if the conditions that allow it are not understood and corrected, if this wrong is not made right, this is what could happen to yours.
With the decline of the American Dream, economic exclusion is basic to home buying. This is something we know. Economic exclusion is basic to housing. But what happens when the inventory doesn’t allow the monied to buy? Buyers who want to get their kids into the right school district may do what’s necessary. And what kind of place does any town become when crime is the price of admission? Are those the people we want to walk among us?
Maybe the Albany Unified School District isn’t that good after all.
