Steps from Cruz del Pueblo Series.
F and I spent a lot of time today cruising colonias and looking for places to rent. We also passed out my massage business cards to a few spas. One of the more successful spas has recently shut down its second location. The friendly woman who fielded my questions there told me that she was pretty sure that the masajista market was saturada. But she encouraged me to come back mañana to talk to the owner.
I asked her why the second spa had closed and she told me that the rent had been raised to an impossible price. And herein lies one of the major problems here in San Miguel: La Renta.
Rent is exorbitantly high in this town in relation to salaries. Most of the prices in El Centro are on par, if not higher, to the rent in Eugene. However, the salary for a full-time librarian pays a paltry $700 a month. How do people get by, one wonders?
Well, they don’t live in El Centro. However, when we went out scouting today outside the city center, all the places that still had their rent signs out were snatched up. These places were going for $250-$300 a month and they don’t stay on the market for long. Neither are they advertised in the paper. To find them, we’ve found, you have to walk around. So we’ve been walking.
As we walked, we saw many FOR SALE signs. Fernando believes that the real-estate businesses are run by lobos, or wolves. He thinks the emergency in housing comes from mucho gringos buying up extravagantly priced property set by the lobos. Neighbor A sells his house for a fortune and sets up his kindgom on the orilla or outskirts of town. Neighbor B is tired of working for peanuts, realizes the bundle A made on his sell and does the same. Pretty soon, you’ve got the Lobos setting ridiculous prices, gringos buying it up, and gentrification displacing folks who still rely on their poor peso jobs to get by. Gringo Rent + Mexican Salary = lots of walking around to find a place outside the central that’s available or disponible.
A good thing that came from all the walking around today is we found Tony Globo’s Gym. Tony is a 5-time winner of Mr. Guanajuato. There are pictures of Tony on the walls and he told me about his winning right after he told me his name. Membership at this well appointed gym is only $25 a month. Tony personally sets up your workout as well. I think we’re going to go for it. A good gym is right up there with a place to live.
Leave a Reply