So, this is my last night in my condo.

Thanks, pandemic, for dashing the dream of a "good-bye condo" party.

But, it's fitting that there's no last party, last toast, last "good night!" in my condo. This is not cause for celebration, so it's appropriate that I sit here alone with only boxes and a few dust bunnies for company. After all the time, sweat, tears and money I've poured into my condo the sad, the unfair bitter end is better spent on my own.

The condo I worked so hard to purchase, the home I sold my blood to pay the mortgage on during the recession, the condo I jubilantly refinanced for a crazy low interest rate a few years ago, the condo that is my nest egg, is being forcibly taken away from me by a parasitic practice known as deconversion.

For the uninitiated, deconversion is exactly what it sounds like: the opposite of a conversion.  A deconversion is when a condo building deconverts into a rental, usually with one very wealthy person (or group of investors) with real estate dollar signs in their eyes swoops in, buys the building and 75% or 85% of the units in the building then forces the remaining orders to sell their units. Why, you ask? Because they then turn around and sell the building to a rental management company and walk away with a huge profit AND 75% - 85% of the HOA funds. It's legal in Illinois and a few other states. It's not fair, but it's legal.

The irony is not lost on me: I bought my condo because my apartment building went condo and I was forced to move. It was happening all over the city, so, I bought a condo. And now here we are: moving boxes and dust bunnies.

And no, they did not offer me a huge sum of money. They only have to offer fair market value. And because the housing market in Chicago only recently started to come back from the recession, the fair market value of my condo is barely more than I paid for it.

So.

Yeah.

It sucks.

There's a lot more to this, and over the few months I've gone through all the emotions on the roller coaster that is deconversion.

I try, very hard, to find some way to accept it, but it's still a struggle to ascertain how it can be legal to force someone to sell their home.

But it is legal. And not even a pandemic can stop it.

I'm not buying another condo. Not after this experience. Not in Chicago. Not until (if) the laws change and deconversions are outlawed.

A house is out of the question for many reasons, primary among them that I cannot afford a house. The pittance I'm being given for my condo is laughable in the context of housing cost.

So, I'm moving in with a friend for a while. A decision made a few weeks before the pandemic gained momentum in the US, and finalized the week before Illinois when on shut-down. If we knew then what we know now we probably would not have made the same decision. Pre-Covid we were both gone a lot. Work, travel, family stuff.

"No worries about the usual roommate stuff, we're both gone a lot, we'll hardly ever see each other," we said, innocent of the stay-home order that was about to go into place.

And now we're both working intense jobs from home. We both have Teams and Zoom meetings several times a day. This is going to be...interesting.

We'll share expenses and hopefully save a little money. The apartment is not awful but it's not great, either. My stuff is going into storage with only essentials going into the bedroom that will now be my live/work space. It's an interim roof over my head. I remind myself it's temporary but it's still depressing.

It feels like a giant leap backward because it is a giant leap backward.

So, the last night in my condo, my last night as a homeowner, is being spent on my own. Self-isolating during the pandemic my cozy little condo has been my comfortable sanctuary. Me in my place, rarely leaving my home, staying safe, staying home. After tonight I won't have a home, not a home-home. I'll have a bedroom. But not a home. I can still stay safe, but staying home won't be staying in my home anymore.

I'm trying to act like it's just another night, a failing attempt to avoid melancholy. Every time a good memory snakes around a corner I push it back with a bad memory. Ever-increasing HOA fees with nothing in return. My stoner neighbor's skunky weed stench. The huge amount of crime in my zip code. All good reasons to be happy to move.

Next chapter, new beginnings, all that.