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GamblersOctober 20, 2008 Toward the end of the summer, I ranted about the Island Affordable Housing Fund's scheme to raffle off a two-bedroom house; tickets were a thousand bucks a pop and only 600 would be sold. At the time I couldn't figure out what anyone who could afford a $1,000 charitable contribution would do with a two-bedroom "dream home," and I concluded that the IAHF was lacking in ethical ballast. An op-ed by Nis Kildegaard in last week's Martha's Vineyard Times provided an opportunity to revisit the issue from a different angle. I'm about to e-mail it to the paper as a letter to the editor. * * * Like Nis Kildegaard (The Tax on Desperation," Soundings, Oct. 16), I've been thinking a lot about lotteries, and about gambling. In the mainstream media coverage of the ongoing financial crisis, we hear a lot about "investors." To me "investor" suggests a rational person who gathers information, weighs alternatives, then invests his or her money in promising companies -- sounds good, doesn't it? Trouble is, the ones who built Cloudcuckooland by dismantling the U.S. economy's formerly sound foundation aren't investors at all. They're gamblers. Beside the banking executives and hedge fund managers, the scratch ticket buyers are teeny weeny potatoes, barely big enough to dig up and eat. The harm they do is generally limited to themselves and those in their immediate vicinity. The damage done by the big gamblers is global. And what's more, they're making out like bandits by holding a gun to our heads: If you don't bail us out of this mess we're created, we'll take the whole world down with us. The moral of the story -- if one can talk about morality without dissolving in helpless laughter -- seems to be that if you're going to gamble, gamble BIG. Maybe this is the reason that the well-heeled folk in Newton and Lincoln spend far less per person on the state lottery than do the not-so-well-heeled folk of Martha's Vineyard. Why buy scratch tickets when you've got dough and connections enough to sit in on the really big game? I'm not just thinking about scratch tickets and the stock market, though. I'm thinking about how gambling has insinuated itself into Vineyard life. Raffles and bingo and casino nights are fundraising staples for many an Island nonprofit and scholarship fund. We take them for granted; harmless fun, and all for a good cause, right? Right. But how about lotteries where the prize is the chance to rent an "affordable" apartment? How about lotteries where the prize is the opportunity to buy an "affordable" lot or even a whole house? Sure, it's great for the winners -- but the same can be said about scratch tickets and Megabucks and Mass Millions. How about the losers, who fill out the forms again and again and never quite make it? How about all of us who pat ourselves on the back because a few people are getting year-round housing who might not have it otherwise (and maybe heave a sigh of relief because we ourselves don't have to go through the same ordeal)? Where's is the public queasiness? Does everyone out there think that this is OK? Or are we all froggies in that proverbial pot of heating water? Maybe people who accept moving twice a year as normal aren't likely to think twice about housing lotteries. I've moved 11 times in 23 years and most days I think that's normal, acceptable, the price you pay for living on Martha's Vineyard. After reading "A Tax on Desperation," though, I sat myself down and looked myself in the eye. "OK," I said to myself, "if lotteries are an acceptable way to allocate housing, why not use the same technique to allocate surgical procedures. Want a cesarean section? an appendectomy? a biopsy for that suspicious lump? Fill out the forms, put your name in the big drum -- maybe you'll win an operation!" If I read in next week's paper that the Martha's Vineyard Hospital had instituted such a lottery, I'd be outraged. That's a good sign. Froggy isn't fully cooked yet. Back in August I read a news brief in the M.V. Times: "Home raffle offers small chance at big dream" (Aug. 21). The Island Affordable Housing Fund and Island Elderly Housing were raffling off a house. Tickets cost $1,000 a piece, only 600 would be sold, and the proceeds would benefit, according to the article, "affordable housing projects, as well as supplement a senior van and a community meals program that help older residents keep their independence." Huh? Obviously no underhoused Islander of modest means was going to fork over $1,000 for a 1/600th chance at a house, energy-efficient or not. Anyone with the wherewithal to buy a $1,000 lottery ticket probably had a house already, maybe two or three houses, at least one of them on Martha's Vineyard. What was the lucky well-heeled winner going to do with a two-bedroom "dream home"? Maybe they'd bestow it on a poor relation. Maybe they'd rent it out for big bucks in the summer and let some lucky Islander live there the other eight or nine months of the year. Did no one at IAHF or IEH feel just a tad queasy at the idea of raffling off a house to people who don't need a home, to support projects for those who do? The raffle was scheduled to close on Oct. 11. The date came and went with no front-page story in either Island paper, so I went to the raffle website, www.key2mv.org, to see what was up. The raffle had been cancelled. "Although tickets have sold at a brisk pace," says the open letter to ticket holders and potential ticket buyers, "and we thought that the weeks leading up to the drawing would bring a further surge in sales, we have seen a dramatic slowdown in the number of tickets sold since word of Wall Street's problems have hit the news." Truly it's an ill wind that blows no one good: "Wall Street's problems" seem to have rescued the Island Affordable Housing Fund from its own ill-conceived fundraiser. Maybe now the fund will take the advice that Nis Kildegaard offered to Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick: call the gambling hotline and say, "Hello, I'm calling for the affordable housing organizers of Martha's Vineyard. We need to talk. I think we're addicted to gambling."
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