You know how California got sick of greedy companies ripping off people for insulin so now they’re going to sell insulin themselves at a reasonable price? Yeah, they should do that with apartments.
California’s housing would be much less of an issue if the high speed rail was built
High speed rail such a great way to travel medium distances anyway it’s downright criminal the US hasn’t figured it out yet.
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Not just california, basically the entire world has maybe 10% of the HSR that should exist, japan is the only country i feel has a sufficient amount of railways.
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Let’s all keep doing more and getting more people active to get it done. We got this. Same thing for other states as well. With every state getting mid-range high speed rail. Then we can get bullet trains for long distances
It will happen eventually just needs more people doing and more proper usage of funding. Can’t wait for upgrade from 39.5 million people to 200 million. Making it a full fledged country with amount of people to back it up. If California can develop in same Japan and South Korea do that would be awesome
That’s an idiotic take
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It would obviously allow people to live in cheaper committees and commute into the more expensive ones alleviating some of the issues.
Why are you so defensive and mean about someone bringing that up? Seems like you might have some issues
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Yes but he said “high speed rail” which is popular here so now you’re getting downvoted.
You’re right of course. It’s an idiotic take.
It’s kinda like saying housing would be a lot better if there were more forest rangers.
It’s kinda like saying housing would be a lot better if there were more forest rangers.
How is that at all the same?
It’s not.
That’s what it seems. I try not to write everyone off immediately and gave them space to explain themself because some people’s brains are a mass of wet noodles that don’t do logic good.
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That’s because I’m agreeing with the person and not rebutting the original comment. Which I have no desire to do.
But I will say this if you think high speed rail will impact housing in California you’re an idiot.
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Ok. Thanks. Good luck to you too.
This literally happens in some areas outside the US. I can’t remember if it’s NotJustBikes or HappyTowns that talks about it on YouTube. But basically, the government offers affordable housing to force landlords to compete on quality and price. Shockingly in those areas rents are down and the quality of apartments is decent.
It’s fairly standard for each municipality here in sweden to own a landlord company that has some small fraction of the local housing supply and is explicitly for the public good.
I’ve lived in such housing basically my entire life and it’s so hilariously superior to anything else that if they removed the arbitrary limit on how much housing they can own, the municipal landlords would utterly dominate and the total spending on housing would probably drop by 50%…Vienna, Austria is a classic example. Don’t know about the current situation, though.
I lived in a housing market like that. It was a college town dominated by a church subsidized school. The students had to live in on-campus, off-campus and registered, or unregulated housing. The only people allowed to do unregulated housing were those who had their stuff together e.g. married or living with family. Housing was cheap and any landlord disagreements could be complained against the uni housing office. The uni provided so much housing that prices were based on the uni’s low cost instead of anything higher. A friend from high school had her dad choose to “invest” by buying a small apartment building out there, but even with his daughter as manager, he didn’t make a good return because he didn’t have the scale to provide the minimum level of service. I think he sold it.
Students there tended to get married and have children while still in school.
Long story short, housing market regulation can be done via a dominating entity over demand, but non market forces are not common everywhere.
This is a great idea. Multiple states should band together to make this happen as well
I think it would work better if the weapons were firing at the sleeping kid directly from the soldier
Aka Gaza style
One of the saddest things about Gaza is how many people lost their property investments. It will take years for the real estate market to pick up again 😔
All those landlords died though, so technically lemmy got what it wanted just not where and how they wanted it.
That picture is incorrect.
The landlord isn’t pictured inside a Porsche SUV.
mine has a gtr
Smith goes into great detail in “The wealth of Nations” about how landlords are parasites. He explains why theoretically and empirically and gives specific examples. He lacked an understanding of historical materialism, so he wrongly thought capitalism would naturally get rid of them.
Reality is worse than this picture though. The landlords are contributing to all thkse knives and grenades, intentionally.
I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.
Rant incoming. I’m trying to rent a apartment that is less than 1/4th of my salary but I might not get it because the landlord is too stupid to understand 80% of my salary is stocks so they won’t show up on a paystub. This is the people that love to label themselves as savvy investors. God damn it. Rant over.
why don’t you just buy a house?
My president just consolidated the three branches into one so I’m holding up in case I have to flee.
I tired to rent an apartment once. I had 100k in liquid in my bank account. I showed them this but it wasn’t good enough. I’m 1099 and officially make very little money (it’s all above board and legal. I have a CPA.)
They needed paystubs. I don’t have pay stubs. I don’t even get paychecks.
It’s kind of a weird catch 22 for them. They’re ok with some bloke making 20 bucks an hours with nothing in savings as long as he can “prove” his income but someone with actually money is just too much of a risk.
Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.
Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.
Yes? I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to add here.
As if we’ll be allowed to flee, or that the dollar will be worth anything by then.
Not American
Learn skills that will be easily transferable across countries. Look for a country you would like to live in, learn the language if necessary, research where they are hiring.
Do it before Trump’s third term, there will be a lot more chaos then
I had a contract with yearly price adjustment that lasted 3 years. We updated the price on January and in February there was A LOT of inflation in my country so I did get “cheap” rent for that year. When the end of year was approaching we made the math and the new total was outside what we could realistically pay so we ended the contract (paying the respective fees) and she tried to guilt trip us saying how much she had LOST because we adjusted on January.
Good luck with that. I’m not feeling sorry for someone who sits on her ass all day and expects money to just show up on her account. She didn’t even fix shit that was going to cause permanent structural damage to the house
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart.
Renting is an essential part of the housing market. Not everyone wants or can commit to home ownership and all it’s unpredictable maintenance costs. A plumbing failure can be as cheap as $200 to fix or cost you $10,000+ for a full replacement and restoration from the biohazards of black water damage.
The reason why the housing market is fucked is because poor regulation allows corporate landlords to buy up tons of investment properties and control the housing costs and supply.
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
Based
Ozma always is!
Socialized housing isn’t an overnight project. It starts with regulating the current housing marketing and prioritizing the take down of corporate slumlords. It starts with revising zoning laws, promoting higher density housing and multifamily homes, and creating walkable and accessible neighborhoods for all.
I get the idealism from Lemmy, but this is also it’s pitfall. Anything less than a leftist utopia is not worth working towards, and so we sit in righteous inaction.
It’s not a utopia, housing has been nationalized successfully in several countries, with the result of the abolition of homelessness, extremely affordable rent (think 3% of monthly incomes), and evictions essentially not existing.
I’m all for revising zoning laws, enacting rent caps, and other transitional measures, but the end goal should be the collectivization of housing, which would eliminate the parasitism altogether.
History is path dependent. Not every country has the same literacy rates, civic participation, income inequality, intergenerational wealth, social inertia, and so on.
What is rational and common place in one country is radical progressivism in another.
You can do what is ideal, or you can do what works. You can deny a reality of systemic barriers to affordable housing, or accept that they are real and must be tackled one at a time.
In an ideal world, yes, there would be no landlords. In the real world, property, laws, the economy, and people are so deeply intertwined that to propose the elimination of landlords is about as facetious as eliminating bankers because of exploitation in banking.
I don’t know why you keep bringing up the word “ideal”. Marxists are opposed to idealism, we’re staunch materialists. Saying that “things change over time and place” doesn’t automatically negate historical examples , and following those historical examples doesn’t imply not achieving progressive victories over time.
You claim to follow the path that works, but that’s what the western left has been following for the past 50 years and look where that led us.
Housing is a human right, not an investment.
Yes and yes 1000%
Nationalize housing
Fuck no.
do you have any actual argument for why it’s bad?
Based on human nature over thousands of years the prevailing history shows us that “we” do not want to administer what we build. Governments worldwide forever have struggled with Capex vs Opex.
For that reason, I do not want government getting into the habit of owning shit. Look at Russia or anywhere in the eastern block for the infrastructure that is literally crumbling. It’s all because we do not do Opex. We never have and nothing tells me we ever will. Working in corporate I can tell you it’s a struggle there too. Human nature does not prioritize Opex.
So the question is, how would this be any different?
I personally believe the government should be building more housing not the market because the market wants money and some things like starter homes do not make money. That does not mean I want the government owning and administering homes. Build them, sell them in the market and let the people who own it decide what to do.
Do not let non-citizens or businesses in any way own anything.
Government should be putting in place the rules and enforcing them but that’s it. The problem is they don’t want to enforce shit.
There’s the other issue. People are lazy AF and what’s worse is most people refuse to acknowledge it which means most people are hypocrisy too lol
Why not though? The experiments done in housing nationalization have been extremely successful in abolishing homelessness and guaranteeing access to affordable housing. In Cuba, if you study in (completely free) public university, the state assigns you a flat at no cost. In the Soviet Union, housing used to cost 3% of monthly incomes back in the 1970s.
Imagine the possibilities that we could get with 50+ years of technological and industrial development if we nationalized housing in the west…
Social housing in Vienna
Ok? That’s not all housing which to me is nationalizing. All countries have some concept of co-op or subsidized housing which is owned and administered by the government. It can and does exist in parallel. Should the government be doing more of it? I would argue yes.
Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.
One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they’d be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.
Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.
I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I’d need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.
The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.
Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I’m sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I’ll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I’ll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still…
Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart
Your comparison is valid, but it works against your interests. Your local grocer, as a business owner, is every bit against rising minimum wage as Walmart is: both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased, so the class relations between them and their workers make them support anti-worker-rights policy.
In the same manner, your local landlord has every reason to be as opposed to measures such as rent caps or rent freezes as BlackRock.
Yes, rent should exist as an alternative to home ownership, but the housing for rent should be publicly owned and rented at maintenance-cost prices as has been done successfully in many socialist countries before which managed to abolish homelessness. As an example, by the 1970s rent in the Soviet Union costed about 3% of the monthly average income. Can’t we do better than that 55 years of technological progress later?
both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased
But one doesn’t have to act in the shareholders best interest.
My friends are renting in an apt from a mom and pop landlord who hasn’t raised the price in years - they roughly play half of what market price is at this point.
So sure, the direction of Mom and pop landlords interests may be the same as a corporate landlords, but that are under much less pressure to leverage that.
Whether or not a small business owner is for or against raising wages depends entirely on their own ethical compass, and whether that compass is strong enough to turn away from the temptation of extra profit. It’s rare that individuals are so altruistic to be able to fully turn off the impulse for profit incentive and personal enrichment.
In contrast, a worker owned coop would not have that issue, as all workers would have equal incentive to raise wages as much as is reasonable while still maintaining the ability for the coop to thrive. Their individual ethics or moral compass wouldn’t factor in nearly as much.
Thanks for your insightful responses to the replies of my comment, I won’t respond to them because you already perfectly explained it. Good work, comrade
Cheers :)
Worker owned coops equivalent for housing is a housing coop complex, which I believe is the most sustainable model of housing.
However, I’m not sure how that would apply to single detached houses.
EDIT: I didn’t really address the original point.
The comparison was between Black Rock and Mom and pop landlords. You can bet your ass that black rock is trying to squeeze out profit. That statement does not hold as true for Mom and pops, because there are other reasons why they may be renting out.
In a theoretical socialist society, people would not be allowed to own multiple single family homes, only the one they’re currently using, since renting an essential need creates a power imbalance.
As a stop-gap, all currently rented single family homes (as in renting the entire house, not just a room in a house), could be converted to rent-to-own contracts, so that at some point that power imbalance ends and the renter is no longer being exploited.
Who maintains the homes that no one is living in?
Could you elaborate what you mean?
That’s all well and good, but how likely is that to actually happen?
The original commenters point was that corporate landlords are driven only by profit as they buy up rental property everywhere. Even preventing that is highly unlikely, if we’re being honest, but it is far more likely to happen than all rented houses being forcibly turned to rent to own contracts.
We all want the same thing, but there’s a tradeoff between grandiose ideals and feasibility. It does not seem wrong to support pushes for less radical but more realistic methods of improving housing if your goal is to improve housing.
None of what I suggested is feasible to achieve within a political framework that is ultimately captured by capital. A handful of small particularly ethical landlords may support reform, but most will not, and the bigger corporate landlords will actively fight it with millions of dollars in lobbying, which the politicians have proven time and time again they are only too willing to accept.
Edit: It will take renters standing up, creating tenant unions, and engaging in direct action to cause real change.
You could manage it with some kind of benevolent Home Owners Association! That always works fantastically!
From the perspective of the MBAs and economists, small landlords being nice like that is just an inefficiency that the invisible hand of the market will eventually sweep away in favor of cold efficient corporate management.
It seems to be that a local landlord is basically just a mom and pop shop that hasn’t closed down yet because it only needs to find one customer to buy its one service.
Renting is important to have available but it absolutely does not need to be at the level its at. The amount of people paying for someone else’s investment while wishing they could own something of their own is crazy and it’s insane that we’ve normalized that. And all the while they’re just hoping nothing goes wrong because it seems like even the “good” landlords are hit-or-miss when it comes to getting them to do literally anything. Mine’s usually pretty good but right now there’s a fucking hole in the foundation and getting them to properly address it is a hurdle I shouldn’t have to go through. In order for these buildings to be profitable the tenants need to not only pay for those issues you mentioned but now they’re also paying for someone else’s salary AND in the end that person gets to sell the building and keep all that money, too.
The reason the housing market is fucked in the US and Canada is becauss there are very few rent controls and a lot of the power sides with the landlords. In Montréal you have to be worried about going taking them to court because future landlords can just look up if you’ve ever done anything and deny you a place to live even if the problem was your current landlord is dogshit. Oh, and there’s a new law that’s around landlords being able to use necessary renovations as excuses to raise your rent! They have all the power and it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small, it’s a “business” that attracts the kind of people who don’t mind making easy money off of making you pay for their stuff.
Your landlord(probably) isn’t going to let you hit it because you’re glazing them on Lemmy. Stand up for yourself and others, even if you got lucky with a landlord who is considered good because they don’t throw a hissy fit when you ask them to do their fucking job.
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance…
Home insurance does not cover costs associated with maintenance and negligence.
Your sewer line failing because it’s 50 years old and made of cast iron is not a valid home insurance claim.
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Ok? A landlord is still no substitute for actual insurance
Nah. I’ve been renting where I’m at for over a decade. My landlord has been amazing. I’ve had times where I’m out of work and he’s allowed me to be 2 months late paying, I’ve had hard times and he’s helped out, he let’s me do what I want with the place and he foots the bill. He’s also only raised my rent in that 11 years by 125$. I’ve also seen his house, and it’s worse off then mine. My truck is better then his as well. Not all landlords are the same. Some actually do want to help as much as they can.
I’m genuinely happy for you getting a good landlord, but access to housing shouldn’t be conditioned by being lucky to get a decent and altruistic landlord (a minority in people’s experience, hence the massive upvotes of the post).
They’re still getting your money for little to no work. You’re helping house and feed them in order to have access to their private property. As in, you are creating value through your labor, and have to exchange some of that value you created with your landlord for access to private property. Your landlord granting you access doesn’t create value and yet you have to pay for it. At the end of the day, they still have a property that has an exchange value and you had to trade some of the value you created for nothing. It’s consumed. It’s gone.
You’re getting flack but you’re not wrong. When I moved into my current house I was a landlord for over 3 years adopting the basement tenant already in the house. Rent was well below market rate and I never raised it. We were both respectful. Ultimately I terminated their lease because I have kids that are getting older and I need the extra space as well as just not in the mental headspace to rent my basement anymore. I’ve since gutted it with the intention of making it a proper finished basement for us all to enjoy.
I gave them over 3 months notice. First month rent back and provided references.
Some of us just want to do good.
I’m glad you’re a human with empathy and good intentions, but tenants shouldn’t be in a position that their housing (one of the most fundamental rights of people) relies on the good will of whatever landlord they happen to be stuck with.
Adam Smith also pointed this out.
Unfortunately we live in a system that makes them necessay, like taking a shit is necessary.
And alas we don’t vote enough for folks who might like to try to chanhe things to something like Vienna.
Vienna isn’t a bad model but it’s progressively becoming less significant because in capitalism you have to be constantly fighting to maintain the little progresses you make.
We’ve had better, such as the Soviet Union, where housing was a guaranteed right, rent costed 3% of the average income, and homelessness was abolished.
yeah, ‘protecting’ us from the very financial strain they create. truly the unsung heroes of our generation. what noble sacrifice.
Dead Kennedys have a great song about how to solve this
Oh yes
You can’t buy a house because $2.5k per story pays the mortage for the landlord and the rental property.
I think sometimes renting is a good option if you’re just living somewhere temporarily and don’t want to have the hassle of buying and then selling the apartment. And of course people and companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable. I think in many cases it would help to zone more apartment building.
the idea that renting isn’t a completely normal way to live your entire life is such a strange thing, here in sweden at least like a third of the population rents their entire lives and it’s perfectly fucking fine
If short term apartment ownership is unattractive because of the hassle of buying and selling, we should look to reduce that hassle, not replace ownership with a parasitic financial relationship.
It’s only a parasitic financial relationship when the rented property is on the hands of a private owner. We could totally have collectively/publicly owned housing rented at maintenance costs, which would 100% remove the exploitation and parasitism
Municipalities renting out apartments is really common where I live. I think this sort of differences are why the discussion about landlords seems often strange to me. Here renters have good protections and rights, there’s plenty of municipality owned or otherwise low-profit marging letting organizations and so on.
How would you reduce the hassle of apartment ownership? I’m thinking of the issues of having to make a large financial investment, find an apartment you’re happy to do that for and finding a new buyer for that apartment when you want to move elsewhere in a reasonable time and for the right time. And then there’s the worry about renovations to the building and other such (sometimes sudden and unexpected) financial burdens.
With renting you can just rent for a while, not comnit to anything and even use that time to look for the apartment you want to actually own. And if they find out that the pipes are in much worse condition than assumed, you can just say sayonara and move to next place.
I don’t know. I don’t know much about apartment ownership, it’s not really an option where I live, so I don’t know much about the process.
Do I need to have a solution for improving a process in order to recognize that the process needs improvement though?
I mena it’s good to know how hard such improvement might be. It’s like if soneone said instead of nuclear fission why don’t we just use nuclear fusion. Like yeah that’s better but not really a simple or quick solution to the problem right now
Sure, I’m not under the impression that the solution is simple or quick. Still worth working towards improvements anyways though, don’t you think?
You seemed to mention it as an alternative to renting. You didn’t mention a timeframe so fair enough.
No thanks. I’ve lived in 6 different US states in the past 6 years. I understand I’m an extreme edge case, but I’m a huge fan of renting apartments at this stage in my life.
Now maybe in this hypothetical society with better housing and whatnot, I wouldn’t have felt the need to hustle and grind and work my way up the corporate ladder and move around as much as I did… But for my situation, yea I like renting
companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable.
how about they build to sell??? Why do they need a stream of money in perpetuity for a one-time investment?
Companies do both. Whether it’s for renting or ownership can depend on municipal rules or some economics from the company, wouldn’t know that well. Renting might also be easier for the company, easier to find tenants than buyers in some situations
Yeah the price for rent should be the amortized cost of upkeep/renovation + some salary to the landlord that is reasonable for the actually work done (which is usually very little).
It should never be enough to pay back a loan the landlord took out to buy the property in the first place.
You’re describing the Soviet model of housing. Flats were often assigned by the union of the worker, and the rent dues were about 3% of the monthly income, which paid for basic maintenance. Homelessness was eliminated and housing was constantly improved through the construction of literal millions of housing units per year, more than any country at the time.
Urban planning was also cool, organized in so-called “Mikroraion” (microdistricts) with accessibility on-foot to basic services being the core of planning. Green spaces, health centres, childcare and social activities were all within a 15-minute walk (the neighborhoods in most Eastern Block countries retain these features with whatever services haven’t been dismantled in capitalism). Quality affordable public transit (e.g. Moscow metro) also ensured mobility.
That the landlord is well out of the way of harm is the most accurate part of this meme 😂
Ahahah thanks for clarifying 👍
The landlord is casting the grenade and knife rain spell on the child
