Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

inviting comfort and a luxurious convenience emanated from those pictured rooms,
where one could spot brightly coloured curtains, bedspreads and large windows with a
sunny view. The optimism of it all also transpired in the way the marketing team offered
residents the chance to move into bigger rooms if they so desired.
At the first annual meeting of the Tacoma Pastures residents’ executive committee, the
president of the Joint Church Manors board indicated for the first time that the sales
results were less than satisfactory. Higher than expected construction costs exacerbated
by the 1973 oil crisis, and the fact that Tacoma Pastures was only looking at a 40%
occupancy, meant that Tacoma Pastures could not generate enough income to pay its
increasing debt and facility costs. The economic crisis of the 1970s is not just a mere
historical footnote, but a backdrop against which to situate the financial failings of
Tacoma Pastures. Post-structuralists like Fredric Jameson and David Harvey have been
making the argument that the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’ ushered in a new
dimension of global economic history. Historian Daniel T. Rodgers argues that in this
milieu of post-Fordism, finance capitalism, global markets, and the destabilisation of
‘identities’, ‘the age of fracture’ is an historical period where, “Americans [were] trying
to reimagine themselves and their society” (Rodgers 2011, 10). Rodgers goes on to say
that in this age of fracture, “[…] older understandings of [the] social like in terms of
institutions, solidarities, or the pressure of history could not help losing some of their
force. Where instruments of finance came ever closer to Americans’ lives—in pension
stock funds, balloon-rate mortgages, leveraged buyouts, corporate restructurings, and
plant closings—it was not surprising that the language of the market economics should
travel with them, seeping into new terrains of social imaginations” (Rodgers 2011, 9).
After receiving the news of Tacoma Pastures’s financial woes, the administration and
residents decided to hire an extra sales counsellor. An ‘opportunity lease’ was offered,
allowing prospective buyers to rent and occupy an apartment for a short period before
buying a life lease. Tacoma Pastures residents also volunteered to act as tour guides,
escorting prospective buyers around to see various furnished apartments, and other
shopping points of interest such as the refreshment table.
Despite the vamped up efforts of the sales team and an ad hoc media blitz, on February
4, 1976 the Joint Church Manors board hired a lawyer and had a petition signed stating
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