I was taking my regular digital stroll through interesting posts on Hive when I noticed some things that stood out. In photo after photo from authors who live in Europe and beyond, the streets were largely free of trash. There wasn't the soda cans, candy wrappers, cigarette butts and half-eaten hoagies tossed on the ground as you see in so many cities across America.

Not to mention the used condoms and drug needles that one has to tiptoe around. In fact, I recall being surprised at the general lack of "street trash" that I found when I lived in Germany back in 2017/18.

Something's afoot here! as the old saying goes, and I'm guessing culture (and a few other things) may be behind what makes us different home-side. It made me think about renting vs owning.

You see, my city is a renters city, with over half of the properties rented out. People tend to take care of the properties that they own as opposed to the renters who don't give a damn how they live as they don't benefit when the home value goes up. It's somebody else's gain, not theirs, right?

Skin in the Game

I watched a documentary of an investor who bought a cheap dilapidated house in either Chicago or Detroit (I don't remember which). In the heart of the ghetto he restored this once beautiful Victorian home back to its former glory and installed all new appliances, expensive countertops, bathroom fixtures, it looked like something you'd see in the upscale suburbs.

But in this case it was in the middle of the ghetto, and that was his first mistake.

His second mistake was to rent it out to a seemingly nice lady, who turned out to be associated with a quite unsavory crowd.

You can imagine what happened next...

No he did this over the objections of a local developer who warned him that unless prospective tenants were carefully vetted, they would simply destroy the place. However his Social Justice Warrior mindset won the day, and he was more interested in giving back than protecting his investment.

After a long battle in trying to remove the horrible tenants, we got to see the damage they left behind. All of the beautiful upgrades had been smashed beyond repair. The property owner learned a valuable lesson, and now took the advice of the local expert and installed only the cheapest and most basic fixtures, while screening the hell out of the replacement tenants.

So I share that to wonder how much of the renters mindset may play a part in why our cities here are crumbling and full of trash.

I'll never forget when I was 12-years-old and I saw a neighborhood kid about to spray graffiti on a freshly-painted wall in an alley. I asked him why he would destroy our neighborhood after somebody had attempted to beautify it? In the end, he was shamed enough to put away the spray can and go home.

Here it's not unusual to see a person take the last sips out of a soda can and then throw it onto the ground in full view of a nearby trashcan. Their little kids see that and the behavior becomes normalized.

Cleanliness being next to Godliness is a behavior that needs to be learned it seems, then passed down from parent to child. There is hope though. Some people do respond when you point out a nearby trashcan to them, and I've actually seen some pickup the trash and toss it in. We're seeing more trash pickup crews in the city mirroring our own Clean Planet initiative which gives me hope for the future that we're on the pathway to a future that's cleaner and healthier for all of us.