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.
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.
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.
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
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.
If you don’t maintain a house, it falls apart extremely quickly.
Examples on my house. Plumbing leak. If it’s not fixed the house can become uninhabitable in a few weeks.
Gutters filled up with leaves. If you don’t clear them out, they’ll sag and fall off the house, and you’ll get creeping damp coming into the base of the house.
If you don’t repaint exterior trim as it ages, the wood/metal underneath will rot/rust.
If you don’t mow or maintain the green spaces, you’ll end up with a bunch of brush and plant material near the house which can be a huge fire hazard.
Trees near the house need to be trimmed and maintained to prevent large limbs from damaging the roof.
If the house isn’t lived in or maintained, animals will get into the attic, nest, urinate, and defecate, which will make the building uninhabitable.
Just a few examples there, literally there is an endless number of problems a house can have, and if someone isn’t around to fix it at least mitigate them, then the house will very quickly become uninhabitable. I’ve personally seen it happen in less than a year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance…
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.
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.
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?
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
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?
Sure.
If you don’t maintain a house, it falls apart extremely quickly.
Examples on my house. Plumbing leak. If it’s not fixed the house can become uninhabitable in a few weeks.
Gutters filled up with leaves. If you don’t clear them out, they’ll sag and fall off the house, and you’ll get creeping damp coming into the base of the house.
If you don’t repaint exterior trim as it ages, the wood/metal underneath will rot/rust.
If you don’t mow or maintain the green spaces, you’ll end up with a bunch of brush and plant material near the house which can be a huge fire hazard.
Trees near the house need to be trimmed and maintained to prevent large limbs from damaging the roof.
If the house isn’t lived in or maintained, animals will get into the attic, nest, urinate, and defecate, which will make the building uninhabitable.
Just a few examples there, literally there is an endless number of problems a house can have, and if someone isn’t around to fix it at least mitigate them, then the house will very quickly become uninhabitable. I’ve personally seen it happen in less than a year.
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.
Agree. We have a few housing coops in town and I recommend them to everyone I know.
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
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.
Yes and yes 1000%
Fuck no.
Social housing in Vienna
https://youtu.be/41VJudBdYXY
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.
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.