[Vwoolf] Rent or own?

Fri Jul 3 09:40:54 EDT 2020

I would take issue with there being little difference between leasing and
owning except for legalities.

As least in the US, a house is not only a machine for living (thank you,
Victoria Rosner) but also a machine for wealth creation.  And the
government itself had a huge part in excluding Black people from that
method of attaining prosperity, loaning money, for example, to post-war
developers of suburbs on condition that they not sell to Black people and
that they put into the deeds that the owners of houses in these new tracts
could not legally sell to Black people either.  When you do the math(s),
the current disparity in wealth between Black and white in America can be,
for the most part, put down to the results of these policies -- truly
tragic.

It never occurred to me that the Ramsays owned the house, presumably
because I was aware of the Stephens' lease in St Ives, though the Ramsays
were of course (thank you, Mark Hussey) fictional, and not the Stephens.
Ahem.

Mary Ellen

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 12:03 AM Victoria Rosner via Vwoolf <
vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

> Dear fellow Woolfians,
>
>
> As long as we're on the topic of Woolf and real estate, I wanted to share
> with the list a flyer offering a 30% discount for my newly-released book *Machines
> for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life *(Oxford UP, 2020).  The book
> discusses Woolf throughout and has an entire chapter on Woolf's numerous
> experiments in architecture and design carried out at Monks House.
> Woolfians might be interested to see Woolf's own sketches for renovation
> plans and builder blueprints for modifications to the house over a 20 year
> period.
>
>
> If the book passes muster with this learned group, I will be well content!
>
>
> all best,
>
> Victoria
>
>
>
>
> Victoria Rosner
>
> Dean of Academic Affairs, Columbia University School of General Studies
>
> Adj. Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia
> University
>
> Co-editor, Gender and Culture
> <https://cup.columbia.edu/series/gender-and-culture-series>, Columbia
> University Press series
>
>
>
> *Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life*, Oxford University
> Press, 2020
>
>
> <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/machines-for-living-9780198845195?cc=us&lang=en&>
>
>
> https://bookshop.org/books/machines-for-living-modernism-and-domestic-life/9780198845195
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+vpr4=columbia.edu at lists.osu.edu> on behalf
> of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 2, 2020 5:20:35 PM
> *To:* 'Woolf Listserv'
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?
>
> First of all, can anywhere be more obsessed with buying property than the
> UK?  (In a more familial way, Greece is unpretentiously enthusiastic.)  But
> this is a phenomenon that only started between the wars (esp. in the
> 1930s), and really took off after the war.
>
> Of course, we obsessives, when it is pointed out that European countries
> have large numbers of people renting, say: “Well, *someone* must own the
> properties”.  (Why not us?)
>
> But even the well-to-do often rented rather than bought.  At the end of
> 1924, the Hutchinsons had given up River House in Hammersmith ‘(in the
> manner of the period it was rented) in favour of a larger residence in
> Albert Road, Regent’s Park’.
>
> Mortgages – and there were mortgages – were not readily available for
> buying property.  You are more likely (in Trollope, say) to have bought a
> property, and now you have mortgaged it up to the hilt, owing to your
> gambling or poor returns on land (agricultural depression, as in “The
> Importance of Being Ernest”).
>
> What is the difference between renting a property and taking out a lease
> on a property?  Really, it’s just the legal implications of each – which
> differ as the years go on, and the govt deals with the tussle between
> landlords and tenants, one govt favouring one and another the other.  I
> think that someone with a lease might easily have said that “the rent was
> precisely twopence half-penny” (i.e. a peppercord rent), even tho’ they
> actually have a lease.
>
> In England and Wales, Land Law was radically overhauled in 1925.  VW
> wrote: ‘I’m so glad about Gavelkind’ (L3 554) - ‘A law of inheritance,
> peculiar to Kent, which divided an intestate’s property among all his sons’
> (L3 554 n. 2).  Out went gavelkind, scot and lot, and lots of other obscure
> ways of “holding” land.  We now have only freehold and leasehold.  I have a
> leasehold of 999 years, which feels like freehold – ah, but you can’t have
> freehold of a flat because it doesn’t rest upon the ground.  For Land Law
> is about Land.
>
> I expect you’re no further forward, but I just had to “share”.
>
> Stuart
>
> *From:* Mark Hussey via Vwoolf
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 2, 2020 9:02 PM
> *To:* 'Woolf Listserv'
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?
>
>
> But the Ramsays are fictional characters, so I’d stick with renting the
> house in the Hebrides…
>
>
>
> *From:* Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> *On Behalf Of *Neverow,
> Vara S. via Vwoolf
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 2, 2020 2:22 PM
> *To:* Woolf Listserv <vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>; Michael
> Schrimper <Michael.Schrimper at colorado.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?
>
>
>
> The Stephen family had a lease...
> https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm
>
> <https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm>
>
> Talland House, plate 37c | Smith College Libraries
> <https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm>
>
> Talland House, c.1882-1894 Anonymous. Click on this image to open it at
> full size in a new window. This is the front view of Talland House at St.
> Ives in Cornwall, England, where the Stephen family spent their summers.
>
> www.smith.edu
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Vara
>
>
>
> Vara Neverow
> Department of English
> Southern Connecticut State University
> New Haven, CT 06515
> 203-392-6717
> neverowv1 at southernct.edu
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+neverowv1=southernct.edu at lists.osu.edu> on
> behalf of Michael Schrimper via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 2, 2020 2:13 PM
> *To:* Woolf Listserv <vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
> *Subject:* [Vwoolf] Rent or own?
>
>
>
> Do we know if the Ramsays were renting the house in the Hebrides, or if
> they owned it? I had always assumed their ownership of the place, for a
> number of reasons. Yet the text says “Never mind, the rent was precisely
> twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be
> three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his
> libraries and his lectures and his disciples” (29)…so they were renting the
> property?
>
> I'm not finding any evidence that "rent" is another word for, say,
> mortgage payment....
>
> Edition I’m using: Harcourt 1990.
>
>
>
> Michael R. Schrimper
>
> Ph.D. Student, Department of English
>
> University of Colorado Boulder
>
> Traditional Territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute Nations
>
> https://www.colorado.edu/english/michael-schrimper
> <https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.colorado.edu%2Fenglish%2Fmichael-schrimper&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7C25252351e017464c448008d81eb39c0b%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C1%7C637293104057153644&sdata=dK9Wm0BAfsAaP0wE39kK5TpBsIdEHVx%2FB2rxDyVkF9I%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
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