We have the pleasure of living in a well-placed apartment facing a lake and parklands in the city. We also pay almost thirteen hundred dollars a month in rent for the joy of living here. You might wonder why our landlord has decided to rent the apartment below us to a young man, his girlfriend and their young daughter, especially when they don't seem to have to work to cover the exorbitant rent.

But surely, you ask, how can a young family like that be able to afford such a ridiculously expensive apartment? Drugs my friends! That's how. A steady stream of seedy looking young men in dew rags and designer street ware have been making their way through the apartment downstairs. They walk in out of the park under the cover of the trees, right through the patio doors of Mr. Dealer downstairs. Twenty minutes later, after listening to their base heavy stereo thumping out an inane beat that suits their mentality right through my floor, they slip back out the door and a Colombian smoke cloud rolls up across my balcony making me gag. With their pupils dilated and displaying the paranoia that only the high can, they slink off into the sunny afternoon, no doubt looking for a rich, bored kid to sell to.

I asked our landlord if they screened tenants before they moved in. Our building contains retired old couples, some SWFs, some young professionals and a crack dealer. Can you see what doesn't fit in here? Our landlord got all snotty about it saying of course she did and I should leave her to take care of things I don't understand.

Way to bring the crack dealer into the neighbourhood there landlord. Now perhaps your own rich, useless kids will have better access to the crack that gives their lame lives meaning.

There has been a steady stream of young men moving into the complex with no discernible source of income. Does the landlord care? No. They raise the rent until only kids pushing drugs can afford it and then invite them to live here.

When the cops bust this piece of shit living below me (and I happen to know that this is immanent), then I think they should throw an aiding and abetting charge at the landlord who nobly turned her head the other way because she didn't want to know where the money came from, as long as she got her grubby little hands on it. Nothing would please me more than seeing a landlord that wilfully refused to properly screen a new tenant getting handed a fine and a record for aiding and abetting a criminal.

When I consider how hard it was for us, two educated professionals with real, socially responsible jobs to get in here, I'm a bit boggled at the ease with which these people are allowed in. I guess the money is what talks, even if it's dirty.

Since when did money become the only mark of a person's worth? In North America I'd say it's been happening steadily for the past four decades, but especially since the nineties a person's social value seems tied almost entirely to how much money they possess. I suspect that this is how we've resolved the entire multi-cultural hegemony. Rather than choosing a single moral code based on a specific culture (or taking the time and energy to develop a new code based on many), we've just gone to the lowest common currency: cash. Your moral value is as a consumer. If you can rent a stupidly expensive apartment, even if it's with money made from killing children, you're a better human being than an honest guy on welfare. These vacuous landlords with their greedy little hands are just the latest symptom of the disease.