As Churchill put it…
Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains — all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is affected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist contribute, and yet, by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived…The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.
By the way, tomorrow’s already the fifth…
Rent-seeking behavior is unfortunately very common.
After dealing with 9-5s for many years, they deserve it. The worst category i’ve ever dealt with. I have death with rich and poor but OMG! 9-5s are the fkin worst.
I’m surprised so many people are running defence for landlords in the comments
My initial reaction was the same, to call OP a baby, etc. The problem isn’t rent. It’s landlord leeches.
I have an apartment in one country but moved to a different country, where I’m renting myself. I had two choices - either rent my first apartment to someone, or sell it. If I sold it, it would go not to a family in need, but to a BnB company or an “investor” (that’s the reality in my home country).
Instead I’m renting it to a family of Ukrainian refugees. They basically pay off my mortgage so that I’m not actively losing money on the whole thing.
They also pay rent to the housing association. This money goes to things like trash removal, hot/cold water, taking care of the green areas in the neighbourhood, cleaning the staircases, etc., etc.
Is this so bad and horrible?
A lot of these people are likely tech folks. A lot of tech folks get high paying jobs. They used that pay to buy rental property.
A lot of these guys are landlords and are trying to convince people that the rent they charge is fair, market rate, and a favour because they’re taking on “risk” while you pay for their mortgage.
Look I’ll be honest, as a renter, I’ve not heard a realistic alternative that I like better. Do I think landlords should be better regulated? For sure. Do I think housing should be a right, and free, high quality housing should be available everywhere to anyone who wants it? Yes, please!
I like the option to rent a place that’s even better than what the baseline option would be. I like that I can move around as I need to. I like that I can get a bigger, better, or just different, place when I have the funds. I like that I never have to deal with broken appliances or roof repairs and get to pick the type of place I want to live in.
Do it 1970s style. You own a home but pay less than half of what you do now. The extra savings go toward home maintenance and lifestyle improvement. You gain equity over time and actually get something for what you paid instead of lining someone else’s pockets.
Why would you prefer a landlord to just you save that money yourself? Like at best its probably a third of your income if youre working class? At worst its probably 60% or more. If you’re on any kind of social assistance rent is probably almost all of your income. Hurray! No food for you mister, the poor landlord needs that pittance you receive.
You would have effectively 133%-180% of the income you do now. For me that’s an increase of over a thousand dollars a month. I could afford all the appliances and roof repairs in the world with that kind of money. I would still walk away with so much extra money its a joke. You have been entirely misled about how much rent takes out of your income. They will steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from you over your life time, maybe even more depending on what you pay.
Renting exists because renters cannot advocate for themselves. It exists because people who become land owners escape the renting class and pretty much immediately turn their backs on it. No longer their problem. Because propaganda has taught them to not have solidarity with their fellow workers. Homelessness is an entirely preventable issue and is inseparable from the problem of landlords.
This is a comment by someone who went off the deep end, have you ever used a rent vs buy calculator in your life? If I had to bet my life on it, i’d say no.
Renting exists because renters cannot advocate for themselves.
That’s the condescending attitude that makes people hate leftists, I despise what you stand for, you make us look bad.
I am a homeowner and you know what, I do often consider switching to renting.
I know this will be an entirely new dimension opening up to you, but not everyone wants to own their own home.
In fact, I not only have an apartment I have an older house on a bigger lot and you know what? The idea that I become slave to my house and garden upkeep that I would have to cut grass during the weekends instead of having the freedom to do whatever I want frightens the fuck out of me.
In fact, I not only have an apartment I have an older house on a bigger lot and you know what? The idea that I become slave to my house and garden upkeep that I would have to cut grass during the weekends instead of having the freedom to do whatever I want frightens the fuck out of me.
You know what’s worse than “becoming a slave to [your] house”? Having to work as to not become homeless.
What kind of childish ass logic is that? Almost everyone has to work to not become homeless… even if you own 100% of your home and don’t have a mortgage you know you pay property taxes, electricity, water, gas, sewage, trash. those things don’t just magically appear in your house and disappear from them.
Almost everyone has to work to not become homeless.
That’s true. Let’s fix that.
And still: Do you pay 30 to 50% of your income in your own home for that?
This comment illustrates very clearly that you are not a renter 😊 we do not have a choice! I cant just decide whether or not to own my own shelter. I am literally not given the choice. That is not how the system is designed. If youre disabled, youre screwed. If you cant afford a higher education, youre screwed. If you have debts, mental health issues, if youre a minority, youre absolutely screwed. You will rent for the rest of your life and it will almost entirely be spent paycheck to paycheck, certainly nowhere even close to daydreaming about owning any kind of home.
All the benefits youre ascribing to renting count for just owning the apartment or condo you live in. Bam. Done. Couldn’t give less of a fuck about grass. I can barely afford food! Think about how insane it is for you to complain about having to cut the grass when renters have to pick between fucking eating and having a place to sleep. Youre not a leftist, youre a bog standard liberal.
No i just live in a country that’s less batshit insane than the land of the “free” that is the USA…
Here you can actually get social housing, you know what they pay for rent? Like 30 euros.
It’s not my fault your country went to shit, doesn’t mean there aren’t other viewpoints than yours…
I’m not lol. .world is basically Reddit 2.0, warts and capitalists included 😆
You Tankies live outside of reality.
I also make up things about people.
I heard about your coma and recent miraculous recovery after being kicked in the head while fucking a sheep. My sympathy goes out to your family and I wish ewe well.
I’m an outspoken anarchist but go off king
Oh
Yeah, anarchists don’t like capitalism and rent-seeking behavior either. See this comment by another user quoting anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread (this is “the Bread Book”, and where “breadtube” gets its name from). (Kropotkin is not the first anarchist to come to the anti-property conclusion, and in fact it has been a staple of anarchist theory since Proudhon.)
Bugger off liberal swine. There’s other boots to be licked, hop to it.
Hey I’m not really worried, my landlord is actually really cool. The place I live in is actually better than the place he lives in. My rent is well well below market rate for what I should be paying. I lived in the same place for the past 11 years and he’s only raised my rent twice for less than $200 total. Not all landlords are bad, not all of them are in it just to get rich. And not all of us would be able to buy a house regardless of paying rent or not. And I’d much rather pay rent to somebody for a nice place to live then be living in a tent by the river.
Damn, you’re right. It’s like how I’m not worried about wealth inequality because I lucked out and have a steady 60k a year job with a nice employer. Not all employers are bad.
Or how I don’t give a shit about abortion because I made the stone-cold choice to not be a woman.
When things aren’t affecting me they don’t matter so why are people making a big deal about it?
Nope, gotta kill your landlord and then get in a shootout with the cops when they come to
hisyour house, you heard the tankies. Time to die for their utopia soldier!
I do not believe that which was created through collective labor should be able to be enclosed, so that the encloser can extort others for access.
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers–in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.
The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.
Moreover–and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring–the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved, lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.
A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day–a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation.
Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?
Kropotkin
Rent isn’t theft. It’s payment for a service. Whether or not that service is of value to you is a different story, but not everyone is interested in owning.
There are benefits to renting. You don’t have to be financially responsible for repairs, you don’t have to do maintenance or pay someone to do it for you, you have much less financial risk, and you can relocate much easier.
And not all landlords are rich people. I do agree that corporate ownership of residential property shouldn’t be allowed, though.
Spot the landlord
Owning a house isn’t a service.
This is one of the most capitalist takes you’ll ever see on lemmy. I wonder if this person is a landlord or has landlords in the family…
Rent isn’t theft. It’s payment for a service.
What service does the land speculator provide to the tenant? The landlord doesn’t develop the property, that’s the builder. The landlord doesn’t maintain the property, that’s done by contractors. The landlord doesn’t secure the property, that’s done by the state. The landlord often doesn’t even finance the property, as the property is inevitably mortgaged and underwritten by banks one step removed from the title holder.
Quite literally, the only thing landlords do is collect the check and transfer portions of it onward. They are, at best, payment processors. And even this job is routinely outsourced to a third party.
There are benefits to renting.
There are lower institutional barriers to renting than to owning, largely resulting from the artificial shortage of public land and public housing. Rents are the consequence of real estate monopolization and public malinvestment. Once the landlords themselves vanish, the “benefits” of renting vanish with them.
And not all landlords are rich people.
There’s an old joke Donald Trump likes to tell, back in the 90s when he was underwater on his personal holdings. He’s driving through Lower Manhattan in a limo with his daughter and he points out the window to a homeless man. Then he quips, “I’m $800M poorer than that man”. To which his daughter replies, “If that’s true why are we in a limo while he’s out on the street?”
The key thing that the landlord handles is risk. If the roof is very expensive to fix, that is not the contractor’s problem. If the property does not generate revenue, that is not the bank’s problem. If the property is not worth the cost to build, that is not the builder’s problem. If the property is unsafe to live in, that is not the renter’s problem.
The landlord’s financial risk in the property (should) provide an incentive to maintain and make use of that property.
I’m not saying there aren’t other system of distribution people to homes, and I’m not saying that the capitalist system in the US is the best system to do it. I’m just pointing out that a core principle of capitalism is risk, and that is what the landlord provides, a single point buffer of risk for the other parties involved.
This is completely ignorant of the fact that landlords can get insurance for those things and often dont have to pay anything at all. And when they do have to pay themselves, they will pay the minimum amount possible to maximize their profits often resulting in degrading housing that people living in suffer the consequences for.
Housing is a human right. Capitalism commits violence against the people by denying them shelter. It’s a crime against humanity. Landlords exist only to profit off of this system. By your own exact definition all homeowners are the same point of risk mitigation, and therefore all renters would also be the same point of risk mitigation. Landlords have inserted themselves as a middle man to steal the labor of the working class. They profit off of the venture. Thats the whole point of them doing it.
Go and have a look at property prices over the last 50 years and see how risky it is.
Should hotels be illegal too? That’s basically renting out a room by the day. What if you cannot afford to buy a house, or only want to live somewhere temporarily? If you cannot rent any place to live, what would you do?
As with most things, it is a matter of degree.
Should hotels be illegal too?
If they’re monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
What if you cannot afford to buy a house
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer’s budget?
You posit that people can’t afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
In that article, the word “investors” is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter. Underhanded semantic maneuver. Within the same article:
While large institutional investors continue to get most of the headlines in the single-family rental space, small investors account for more than 90% of the market.
the word “investors” is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter.
Corporations are people, my friend.
Underhanded semantic maneuver.
Is ownership less virtuous in a partnership than a sole proprietorship somehow?
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil’.
Among probably many reasons that housing is unaffordable for many is that some persons or corporations are awful scumbags that want to maximize their profit beyond what is reasonable or fair.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Abuse of these things is a core feature of capitalism. How can you contradict yourself so quickly?
The world is not black and white. I don’t accept the validity of your claim.
The world is not black and white. But still you will 100% keep your claim. Again. Contradict yourself in two sentences.
Shelter is a fundamental human need, locking it behind an unnecessarily high and ever increasing pay wall is the epitome of abuse. Landlords are leeches.
Capitalism is most definitely bad tho, like come on.
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil
I think we’re a bit beyond good and evil.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Sure sure sure. Love the sin, hate the sinner.
All rent is bad and all forms of landlords are evil. They are a separate class with legal mandate to steal the labor value of the working class. They serve no function whatsoever and it is entirely conceivable that an apartment building’s occupants could pool money together for repairs when that is necessary.
Shelter is a human right. Housing is a human right. Landlords are not mechanics, they are not repair men, they are not construction workers, they are not laborers. Some Landlords may do some of those things, but it doesn’t change the fact that by virtue of stealing from the working class they are still evil. If they want to do repair work, I should be able to simply pay them for the repair work they do. If they want to do property maintenance work, I should be able to simply pay them for the property maintenance. They have a legal document enabling them to steal half of my income every month for no reason. They do not live in my home, I live in my home. If I stopped living there it wouldn’t be my home anymore.
There are 0 downsides to entirely rejecting the housing market. Housing is a human right, it should be fairly distributed to everyone. I couldn’t give a fuck about real estate markets, they could all dissappear today and no one would ever profit off of housing again and not a single tear would be shed. I’d really like it if everyone could have a fucking home. All Landlords are evil. There are NO exceptions. If they collect rent for someone else’s home, they are evil.
If I own a house that is too big for me, and I can’t afford the taxes and upkeep, so I rent out some rooms to make a little money.
I am now a landlord. Are you suggesting that I am evil? That it should not be allowed?
I think you are conflating slum lords and greedy corporations with any and all people who have rental properties. Something, something… deals in absolutes.
You are not a landlord if you are sharing your home, you would be a roommate. If you are charging them rent, then yes you are a landlord :) no should ever profit off of housing! Housing is a human right! No one should ever have to sleep in your home, everyone should be able to have their own shelter that belongs to them! This is an absolutely conceivable reality homelessness is entirely a manufactured byproduct of capitalism. We have millions of empty homes and wasted infrastructure that could be used to house people.
False equivalency fallacy
You’re intentionally leaving out that the landlord maintains the property and appliances. That’s no small thing.
There are absolutely bad landlords who will do as little as their tenants will allow them to, for sure. Landlords aren’t like cops though, the continuing existence of bad landlords is not enabled by good ones like how “good cops” do.
The landlord uses my rent money to pay others to maintain the property. It’s an entirely middle man position of zero value to society
You can own a property and pay landscapers and handyman for less than the cost of renting. Hell, I’ve had landlords pay property managers to handle even that.
Good landlords will only be as good as they need to be, to continue renting. In a housing shortage, that means they will keep getting worse over time, doing little and hearing little from their tenants who have only ever dealt with predatory landlords.
They will almost always charge as much as they can, not doing anything to help the renters.
The exceptions to this will be invisible on the market, because renters will do everything in their power to never move out or change their situation.
Long time renters are trapped, because they are paying nearly as much as a mortgage, and getting no equity from it, unable to save a down payment to get out of it.
Renting to seasonal, temp workers or students is about the only exception where renting is a necessary service, but currently its way over priced, so its not a great value. So still predatory.
Keep dodging.
This “landlords are purely evil and rent is stealing” discourse doesn’t do any of us any good. It’s dishonest and makes people with sense not want to join your cause. If we actually want to make housing better and more available, we can’t be wasting our time throwing with this.
Landlords are purely evil, they are nothing but a drain on society, and if you disagree you’re my enemy and we have no common cause.
Which of my statements are false?
What service does the land speculator provide to the tenant?
The ability to live somewhere that otherwise would have been reversed?
I am lucky enough to be able to own a home. I can live here, and nobody else. But if I decided to rent my home out and they paid me rent, they could live here instead!
They could also live there if you sold it to them.
Only if they can afford its price.
Who gets to originate the claim on property? Who gets to set the price and collect on the sale?
As mentioned elsewhere, owning isn’t necessarily for everyone.
Freedom isn’t necessarily for everyone has also been mentioned throughout time. Slavery has existed all through history.
That doesn’t make it ok but anyone who is an enslavery or aspiring enslaver is going to argue some people want to be slaves.
Removing and restricting the agency of others is never ok. When it’s for economic gain, it’s always exploitation.
The big difference being that one thing being owned is completely inanimate, and the other is a literal human being against their will 🤷♂️
The ability to live somewhere that otherwise would have been reversed?
The land speculators do not provide access to the tenant, they prohibit access. That’s what inclosure is. You’re blocking people from the land on pain of injury and death.
I can live here, and nobody else.
Until the state decrees otherwise, sure.
But if I decided to rent my home out and they paid me rent, they could live here instead!
There are three people and three houses. How do you decide which of the three people owns all three houses and which of the other two pay that first person rent?
Clearly you are much smarter than myself. Can you tell me why renting land/a home is different than any other object that can be owned? Obviously shelter is a greater need than a chainsaw I could rent at Home Depot, but I thought the basic concepts should still apply?
And again, maybe I’m not smart enough to understand what you’re saying, but it seems like land owners (or “speculators”, if that’s the correct term now 🤷♂️) prohibit access to everyone except for tenants, and tenants instead have rights to use that property?
People need homes.
You buy a pressure washer, and rent it out, thats a good business. Theres no shortage of pressure washers. I can live without one. I can biy my own relatively easy. Choosing to rent or own is a question of how often I expect to want to pressure wash something.
You can only rent a home that you buy. Which means you had to take it off the market. You can also only rent a home (or room) that you aren’t living in. Which means you need somewhere else to live. You’re taking more than you need, to charge someone else who also needs it, to cover your cost of owning it, maintaining it, and presumably profiting from the difference.
When this is done at scale, you have owners skewing the market to make it harder and harder to buy.
They make more money, buy more properties and make it worse. While renters, and young adults get trapped i to renting because they have no options.
That is what makes it so much different.
Can you tell me why renting land/a home is different than any other object that can be owned?
For starters, you can’t own much if you don’t own land. So it becomes a prerequisite for accruing any other objects.
If you’re locked out of owning land, you’re locked out of owning anything.
it seems like land owners (or “speculators”, if that’s the correct term now 🤷♂️) prohibit access to everyone except for tenants
Speculators (or, “land owners”, as you’re calling them) aren’t required to host tenants. They can leave their property vacant without regard to social need.
And landlords can evict tenants for any reason or no reason at all - or raise rents so high that an eviction is inevitable.
A question you need to ask is why the landlord possessed the land to begin with. What allows a landlord original access to property?
Been renting the last 20 years, and I can rightfully say FUCK YOU!!!
Can you agree it’s at least exploitative?
It can be exploitative, but it’s not automatically so. Both parties benefit from the agreement in different ways.
I don’t get how this above conversation isn’t just /thread.
7 people who downvoted, care to explain? Genuinely curious what your take is.
Of course it’s exploitative, that isn’t a question. The entire purpose of rent is to exploit. The down voters are people who recognize that it’s complete nonsense to suggest housing rental could ever not be exploitative.
Last I looked into the difference, (in my area) if you planned to stay longer than three years, owning was the cheaper option. Less than that you’d be better off renting. Assuming no big house repairs of course, and no crazy house value changes.
both parties benefit
I don’t mean to be shocking, but this feels very much like “she orgasmed when I molested her”.
The other option is homelessness. You rent at the barrel of a gun. How could you possibly call that consent?
I dunno man. When we moved into our apartment we got a new water heater, new washer/dryer, new kitchen sink, and HVAC repaired within the first couple weeks. We’ve gotten multiple smaller things fixed as well including exterior tuck pointing to fix a leak.
Sometimes I lament not owning, but that would have all been out of pocket if we had bought a property as is with those issues. Didn’t cost us a dime.
There are undeniable benefits to renting. I rent. It’s still a for-profit business in the end, though, and per capitalism, they’ll fuck you as hard as you let them.
But I also fuck them as hard as they let me. And in my city and state, which have very strong tenants’ rights protections, my fucking goes a long way.
It’s important to be aware of the fact that as long as we allow landlords to exist, they will work tirelessly to get rid of all of these regulations. They have the money and power to do so, and their condition depends on it.
Good on you.
It’s hard for most people who see rent rise faster than salary. Which is the case for most of the United States.
It’s hard for most people who see rent rise faster than salary.
You say that as if the cost of home ownership isn’t also increasing faster than salary. This is not a function of landlords/renting.
Agreeing: Appliances, repairs, taxes, HOA fees, and utilities are all going up in cost faster than salary. The only homeowner cost I can think of that isn’t going up is my mortgage, which is fixed-rate. With a variable-rate mortgage, even that could be going up.
Rent isn’t theft. It’s payment for a service Sure there’s a service and the owner has costs, but it’s actually quite unrelated to the rental price in most places. I think the question is about the regulation of markets for basic life requirements. Alternatives aren’t very appealing IMHO: social aids (taxes on the rich), charity (by the rich), or persistent homelessness.
In the interest of pedantry, technically you are correct.
Land ownership is theft, rent is just the symptom.
By that logic owning anything is theft.
Mostly, yeah. In the western world, anyways, pretty much everything we have was gained via theft. So it isn’t earned and we shouldn’t treat property like it’s gained via merit.
Part of the payment is for services, but it doesn’t make sense overall to call it a service because the cost is only in small part determined by the value of upkeep etc. being handled, there is no option to do this yourself instead and not pay. The main thing driving the cost of housing is the supply of housing, the desirability of the location, and who owns it all.
Think about mobile homes; how well built a mobile home is, or how well it is maintained, ultimately doesn’t matter that much and it will still depreciate if it is located on rented land, because the real driver of housing value is the value of the legal right to live in that particular location, and that right is ultimately controlled by the owner of the lot. Same goes for any housing; what matters most is the land, being able to safely and legally sleep there, and the ability of the property owner to control who can do that.
The second paragraph is only true under most laws in the world
The nuanced take is always controversial here. Lemmy generally doesn’t like speaking against the hive’s directives- so it’s refreshing to see something like this in the positive.
That’s the most brainrot thing I’ve read this week.
These days it is hard to own a house, its like the system is designed to cater to the burguoise - because it is. Regular people cant have their own personal ownership because capitalist leeches known as landlords exist.
The system feeds on the profiting of others misfortunes.
Or more like we let companies own private homes and that fucked the market together with Airbnb
I’m very lucky to have my own house. The number of spam calls I get from randos trying to buy houses is staggering. Some are obviously from call centers. I don’t understand how it makes financial sense to pay people to cold call every fucking homeowner in the US constantly in the hopes that they catch someone looking to sell quickly (and cheaply?). WTF is their endgame?
I kinda want to get everyone on board with refusing to sell single family houses to anyone who isn’t going to live there as their primary residence. Back in the not so old days, people would refuse to sell to “undesirables” because they didn’t want to tank property values, which would also carry significant reputational harm. We need to use that energy for good.
In theory, developers who would replace single family houses with multiple houses, townhomes or condos would be OK. We do need more housing in general. Although, IDK if real estate developers are a trustworthy bunch.
In theory, developers who would replace single family houses with multiple houses, townhomes or condos would be OK. We do need more housing in general. Although, IDK if real estate developers are a trustworthy bunch.
Trustworthiness of developers is a moot point because exclusionary zoning laws prohibit that replacement in the vast majority of urban areas anyway.
That’s what so many people in this thread don’t get: the law, designed to give even more privilege to already-privileged single-family homeowners, creates literal housing shortages (in the places people actually want to live, because housing is not fungible between locations), and then they somehow confuse that government mandated distortion of supply vs. demand as “capitalism.” They keep blaming “foreign investors” and other scapegoats, but they’re not the real cause of the problem.
A liberal’s conclusion would be: No rent without representation.
Coop housing! It works.
Coop housing is for chickens.
This is undeniable.
I can’t stand other people, let alone have to share my home with one. Hard pass on coop.
k, American, what if I tell you that cooperative can also consist of SFH built by said cooperative? I get it, other people are hard, but landlords are worse then having a say in what gets built for you.
Nobody should give a fuck what people like you want, and I’ll tell you why:
The real problem in America is that people think they’re entitled to a detached single-family house so they don’t have to “share,” and politicians indulge that selfishness by making exclusionary zoning laws that attempt to force an oversupply of single-family homes, but actually just create a shortage of every other type of housing.
This fails in two ways:
First, it does not result in everyone who wants one getting to own a single-family house, because even though they’re oversupplied compared to other housing types, they’re still scarce in places people actually want to live because the land they sit on is itself scarce.
Second, it drives up costs for everyone, from renters, to homeowners of expensive houses in inner suburbs, to owners of cheaper houses in the exurbs who “drove till they qualified” and now have extreme commuting costs, to everybody who has poor quality of live due to car-dependency. To add insult to injury, it fuels speculative bubbles because prices are so high normal people can’t afford to participate in the market anymore, so it creates an opportunity for exploitation by investors instead.
So yeah: you’re welcome to dislike dense housing all you want, but unless you’re prepared to actually pay for a single-family house – without being subsidized by exclusionary zoning, meaning that you’d be fairly competing on the open market with developers who would put the land to a higher and better use – you just have to fuckin’ deal with it anyway. You "are not entitled* to have your selfish wishes enforced government policy at everyone else’s expense.
How strongly would you believe that if all your housemates were MAGA, AI Startup CEO, and an ICE member?
If you say they wouldn’t be, then you’ve identified the limitation of the proposed solution.
It seems unlikely anyone would be all three, as you propose, but as long as the housing policies are democratic based on who lives in the building, I’m not sure how their political beliefs apply.
Well I the CE agent by default is probably Maga, but I was talking about 3 separate people.
As for not understanding how their political beliefs would apply… You must either be a white American or incredibly naive.
My hot take, you shouldn’t be allowed to rent out single family homes under 2k sqft. Larger homes and multi family buildings are fair game for real estate investors. Lots of holes in my opinion. Maybe it would incentivize building more apartments. Are homes under 2k sqft being built anymore?
This would incentivize only building houses that are 2,001 ft² or larger, so they can rent them.
my hot take is that no one should own more than one house
There should always be a rental market of all sizes.
I was thinking you should be capped at the number of residential properties you own regardless of size.
Maybe increase property tax rate of subsequent properties by a multiplier?
Second property, additional 10%, third property 15%, and so on. Maybe 10, than 20, then 30, etc… Whatever drives down ownership and home costs.
This is exactly why I own. Yeah it sucks dealing with maintenance and HOA bullshit, but, no. I won’t enrich some piece of shit for no gain.
My God, it’s so simple. Just buy a house!
What I don’t like is I worked 3 jobs during school, never went on trip and lived very frugal. I was able to save up and buy a property. I played my cards right and also got some level of luck and was able to leverage the first house to buy a rental property. I do my hardest to treat tenant with fair rent and safe place to live.
Yet on paper, I am a “landlord” and demonized because of some bad apples. I hate it because I worked hard to get were I am and now I’m a problem and don’t want to just hand out my hard work.
I think there needs to be an asterisk on these things because I agree there is generational wealth and billionaires are a problem but damn if I had bought a couple of franchises instead and did well that way maybe I wouldn’t be as hated.
Look man you sound like a decent person, but it’s not really the point. The system, laws, the entire concept that enable owning property and renting it out are barbaric, even if some landlords do their best to be fair and kind. Some slave owners treated their slaves well too.
In my mind, I’d demonise you just as much if you owned businesses instead, for profiting from the labour which others did, and not you, if it’s any solace. But I don’t really believe demonising normal people is really the point either. We’ve all got to live our lives and look after our families and so on. I don’t think anyone can legitimately fault you for that, it’s normal behaviour. But we should really structure things so that it’s simply neither necessary nor allowed for people to do either of these things, and anything less is fundamentally unjust.
For what it’s worth, I’d like to add that I work a regular job still 50hrs a week. I have a single other property and don’t consider myself a “landlord” because it’s not my career or something I base my sole livelihood on.
If the government wants to make housing a human right and take it over with some fair compensation I’d be happy to not own. Property management comes with its own set of trials and challenges with horrible tenants, bad people go both ways.
Nope too bad off with your head.
-Some dickcheesed tankie.
What if the rent is fair and the property owner is not a profiteering corporation? What if I just moved to a bigger house and want to rent the old one to someone who doesn’t want to own one?
Am I stealing from someone?
Most of the people that I have rented from have been pretty kind, decent folks. I lived in one apartment building, that definitely sucked, and one 3 level that was section 8 besides us, and that landlord was on the scummy side, but didn’t argue about fixing things. Other than that, just people renting their first house that was too small after a point and they bought another. And I bought my house from the last one 40k under market because we were good tenants and had become friends.
Are the people that sold me their extra house 40k off evil?
Exactly. You rent a house? You are the equivalent of Jeff Bezos!
What is a fair rent?
Why do you even use the word fair in an economic context?
A price that isn’t gouged?
What is a gouged price? This looks like it will be a circular argument.
There is no fair price. https://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Marx/German/me19_247.htm
I think number of home units should be strictly limited, but a world without rent entirely is a really stupid idea that only ever seems uttered and promoted by Tankies.
Anarchists are anti-rent too. See this user’s comment. Anti-rent and anti-property has been a staple of anarchist philosophy since Proudhon.
Really, any socialist worth their salt should be anti-rent.
I think number of home units should be strictly limited
We need way more home units, all of them free.
This whole platform is Tankie af
But money earned in labor can be converted into property, you see.
You can’t decide that YOUR labor money is more valuable than MY labor money. Maybe you spent your labor money on prostitutes. Maybe you spent your labor money donating to churches.
It doesn’t matter. I spent MY labor money on property.
See you are purposely ignoring the various entry barriers to property ownership.
- Not living paycheck to paycheck
- Having the down payment (or parents that can help you with that)
- Having the right credit score
- etc…
Instead you think people don’t own property cause they spend their money wrong, for example in prostitutes?
Get out of you echo chamber, I get is cosy and safe there but come on…
You are totally right. I was going to buy several properties, but I chose prostitutes instead.
My bad.
