What If You Had Millions?

This blog is my imaginings about what I would do if I won $14 million in the Powerball lottery.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

With Unlimited Captial

I was walking through Georgetown here in DC the other night, and as I passed an apartment for sale (which was pretty tiny; I saw a realtor showing it the other day), I thought: I'd like to rent this place and give it to a Latin guy who's working as a dishwasher in one of the restaurants down on M Street.

Then I thought: "With unlimited funds, I buy a whole house and install a bunch of immigrants working in the service industry in this part of town. I'd buy a couple houses. If the zoning said single family only, I'd find a big family - with four kids, aunts, uncles, abuelos - and have them all move in. Then they could have guests for weeks or months at a time. Invite people from other countries.

Then I'd replicate the experiment in San Francisco, a place that's been documented as cut off from the working class. I buy a few giants houses and install service employees, and maybe firemen and policemen. I'd show the millionaires how it can be done, and tell the employees' stories to show how the situation is out of wack.

Maybe I'd do it in New York, too. I don't think of it with New York, for some reason. I assume it must be the same there, too, but I don't know it well enough to know, so I can't say. I have another idea for New York, but I'll write that up somewhere else.