For Rent

Chapter 7: Big dreams and bigger clashes

The following day, after the eco-center was built overnight, Karine wonders just how large is the rent for it. Negotiating a lease just isn't like negotiating an insolvency proposal, beyond the payment portion. In an insolvency proposal, you need to allocate the debtor payments among the various creditors, but I just don't know much about local leasing practices.

Here it seems like Yenaleda drafted a lease agreement for the eco-center as if it was a finance, long-term lease. Especially since the rent appears to be a long-term lease with relatively high interest rates, probably higher than a mortgage.

"I wonder how long is the useful life of the eco-center..." Karine asks the other two at the start of the working day.

"Why?" a puzzled Yenaleda asks the human.

"Which leads into my next question: how are leases handled for accounting purposes?"

"I'm sorry, Karine, but lease accounting questions aren't for you to deal with. You're responsible only for managing the construction budget!" Billerica warns her.

"Right now, the construction budget represents the entire budget! Does this mean the leasing budget will now be separate from the construction budget?" Karine asks her boss.

Speaking of the construction budget, I might have given her too much autonomy over it, Billerica sees that Karine has purchased the quadruplex blueprint for T120,000. How is Karine different from her predecessor as project manager? Other than wanting to become caliph instead of the caliph, of course...

"I guess, yes; that way I should be able to pay the recurring bills when the rent payments come in without having to worry about debt payments getting in the way" Billerica answers her, before the next idea arrives.

"I wonder if there is enough demand for a homeless refuge to be quadruplex-sized. If so, maybe we can get some more rental revenue out of the town!" Karine suggests to her boss.

"It's not that simple: a bigger refuge also means more staff, even if the capacity and demand was there, at least in the long run!" Yenaleda comments, speaking with a high-pitched voice.

"There's the demand for the service and the ability to provide it. Sure, it would be less expensive in the long run to get more housing built, but you know by now that often short-run costs might be the big obstacle" Karine comments on the economics of operating homeless refuges.

"Now I have two people wanting to become caliph instead of the caliph! Do you think the town council would be happy to hear about how you want the homeless refuge to be twice as large as originally planned?" Billerica screams at his employees.

"There's more nuance to the issue than you think! It depends on how serious the homelessness issue is to them" Yenaleda asks before calling the town hall.

So while Yenaleda asks town officials about the homelessness issue, Karine orders the construction of a quadruplex which, unlike the previous units, take longer to build, even when it requires five bots to build as opposed to three.

"Everywhere I look on this world, it seems like I hear about how people are forced to share a housing unit because of the rent. Yet a shortage of housing starts is symptomatic of issues in the construction sector. What makes the construction industry such an undesirable sector to work in, or start a business?" Karine asks her boss.

"What do you mean, the construction industry is undesirable?" Billerica asks her, while the construction of the first quadruplex is well underway. "Are you implying that no one wants to build anything on this world?"

"Not quite, just that I am made to feel like, even with construction bots, there's something that makes me feel like construction is an industry people avoid" Karine answers a boss whose annoyance she can feel in the air.