This has come to the forefront in America since Covid and has become the reason why a lot of American’s (younger Millenials and Gen Z) can’t buy homes, beyond Gen Z being unable to find gainful employment (1/3 in unemployed). I think stating holes in their argument like “there are good landlords out there” or “what about this specific instance” is literally arguing against a rule with exceptions. That’s not what this post is talking about. They are talking about the “corporations” who are just some rich older person or couple that are buying one, two, or three extra properties and renting them out. Frankly that’s the biggest reason why housing costs have skyrocketed.
The US Federal Reserve is trying to curb this by keeping the Prime Lending Rate (PLR) high, but Trump is putting pressure on him because lowering the PLR would look good for him on paper because it would look like he did something immediate to alleviate the economic pressure we’re feeling in America, directly because of him and his policies. BUT, that would be catastrophic to us “poor” (people making less that $240K/year; 90% of Americans), and I think you can see why. Yeah, if American’s with large savings accounts (years ago the figure was (0% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings, so just imagine how it is now) all of a sudden saw that the mortgage on a house dropped from . . . lets just take the average cost of a “starter home” @$210K . . . $1,762.34/month to where it was prior to the pandemic at (~3%) $1,347.87, the rich Americans that were already buying those extra houses would just buy more extra houses and charge YOU, a poor American, that ~$1500/month and still charge you for any maintenance they have to do (depending on how your state renter laws are set up).
But even with all that, we still have the issue of how much houses cost. And because of the aforementioned “extra houses,” we have seen a skyrocket in the cost of houses. I won’t do a deep dive on it, but I will sum it up and link to a podcast you can listen to: an average home “should” cost ~$120K in today’s money, but because of the MASSIVE bubble created, that home now costs ~$400K. Why? because of people buying extra homes, and those same people who don’t have jobs being able to make it to zoning meetings to tell the planners they only want “big” homes in their areas to increase the selling price of their own home. That then has a cascading effect: let’s say this happens somewhere in California like a suburb of San Fransico. That means that people no longer can afford to live there so they move to let’s say Dallas. Now Dallas has less supply and more demand and the sellers jack up their prices arbitrarily because they want more profit. Then the buyer rents it out and keeps increasing rent prices so they can keep making more money.
This is what the X Poster is complaining about. Not an immigrant charging reasonable rent prices or “good” landlords, because the truth is, those aren’t the type of people typically renting out houses to poor people who couldn’t afford to buy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bajyEFHK0M&t=1198s Here’s another video that’s kinda related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc
I guarantee you that the guy who does existential comics includes ‘small business’ landlords in his formulation. He literally included them in that number.
The other landlord in this thread is rubbing all on you because you immediately diverted the conversation away from the core economic relationship being discussed.
Y’all are missing something imo. Landlords are artificial demand - they drive up the housing prices for everyone, including home owners.
The argument that it costs to maintain a home blah blah is BS - if it wasn’t profitable then the landlords sell it. They’re not being charitable. They make a profit and it comes out of poor people’s wages.
Does this still apply to the apartment building I once lived in which was built and run by an immigrant family as a long term family investment, and they charged a really reasonable price?
Just curious.
What are they expecting for a long term family investment?
OG family members die then children who see $800 a month and the expense of keeping things fixed change it to $2400?
Is it reasonable based on market or reasonable based on what people can earn in the local area?
Are they abiding by landlord tenant laws?
Are they under the tabling things?
Lastly how much impact are they having on the larger market?
This is a nuanced issue. We shape policy on the abusers in the market, then we curb financialization and big businesses out of the market, and lastly we strongly protect the people who could be homeless. Lastly if this family survives all the policy, lowering of future returns on investment, and being a law abiding reasonable landlord. Then they are cool.
Being a business leader/owner shouldn’t automatically put you above others so you can abuse others it should be a job in which you provide a service that can be competed against and shouldn’t lead to suffering. If the job you do leads to suffering of others at the profit of your self then it needs to be a subsidized or at service provided by the government or going back to pre 1970s a non for profit business. Although I don’t trust those right now because of our oligarchs abuse of systems.
Personally, it only applies to huge corporations OR to smaller landlords who are abusive. Just because being a landlord isn’t always shitty and evil doesn’t mean we can’t be upset about the scenarios where it is. How much of that $512B do you think is going to the good type of landlord you describe?
I don’t think the responsibility is on the individual to provide housing for another but to advocate/agitate for a society where one doesn’t have to. One thing to keep in mind is that what is reasonable is relative to what can be done, and a post-industrial society doesn’t have to have necessities be scarce.
Don’t expect rationality in this thread.
Why do you think it’s been made so difficult to own a home? Long as you’re paying rent, you’re a cash cow. Also less likely to leave a crappy job.
LOL. Try owning a house. The mortgage is just the start of costs.
People always say this as if renting isn’t the exact same way but without the benefit of equity.
Whatever it is you’re paying for when it comes to your house, (Mortage, taxes, insurance, roof repairs, etc) the renter is also paying. Landlords do not “eat” any of the costs associated with owning a house. The renters pay for everything through rent.
I say this all the time as some who has bought/sold two houses and is currently a renter.
It IS really nice having the “forced savings” of buying a house, and knowing that if you pay off enough and SHTF you can always sell for a chunk of change, but holy shit, people VASTLY underestimate the maintenance costs.
Most people think: “Haha, I would rather have a $10K roof replacement every 20 years” or “I could handle a $1K water heater NBD”, but its not that. At all.
We had a pipe bust underneath our house that home insurance wouldn’t cover because it didn’t directly affect the house itself, and that was an unexpected $30K hit and digging under our home in multiple locations. People like to tout the foundation/roof being good, but I’m telling everyone, dont sleep on the hydrostatic leak tests. And if I ever buy a house again, that is something I’ll get done like every other year, because our pipe burst after we had owned the home for over 10 years.
Right now though, I am HAPPY knowing that the only “emergency” I’d have to cover would be vehicle issues, and my savings are going to largely stay my savings.
Building codes have changed a lot in the past 50ish years. Besides being cheaper to buy, houses also required more easily attainable tools/skills to build/maintain.
Also individual owners have become a liability for the insurance entities that guarantee the mortgages for the banks. Wages:COL has gotten so bad that it’s basically the sub-prime mortgage crisis but for people who actually paid down payments.
They built the system on property going up forever with only a small % defaulting. So they’ve gotta keep enough of us out of the market to ensure they can keep cashflowing their ponzi scheme.
If you all think landlords make that much money, why don’t you guys all get together and form a housing association? In fact there are plenty of housing associations that sell shares.
With building and repair costs at an all time high, being a landlord isn’t as profitable as it used to be.
And the high interest rates make it even less profitable. It’s more attractive to invest elsewhere. And impossible to pay off a mortgage with rent.
If more people were able to build apartments, we would be able to reduce the housing shortage and rent would go down.
The one thing landlords do that I would consider theft is lobbying (bribing) for NIMBY policies. Especially zoning laws.
Even with repairs and maintenance at an all time high a majority of rent is profit, either for the landlord if they own it outright or a bank if there’s a mortgage on it. The fact that a majority of the money being paid for housing isn’t going into building or maintaining housing and is going into the pockets of landlords, banks, mortgage backed securities holders is the main reason housing costs so much.
This is why the best solution to housing affordability is social/public housing. If you remove the profit motive and make it so all the money going into the housing system is spent on building or maintaining housing, then more homes would get built because there would be more money for them and you remove the rentier class constantly lobbying against new buildings to preserve property values.
Is it better to pay mortgage interest to a bank?
Generally yes, because you are also building up equity that way. Renting is just money wasted down the drain.
Generally yes, because you are also building up equity that way.
ok boomer. Houses are not appreciating any more. The Ponzi scheme reached it’s limit in 2022.
I pretty much agree with this. The economy has grown up to be for parasites made by parasites. The value of work should be way higher that it currently is. The economy should work on people actually doing things rather needing to own to become prosperous.
It wouldn’t be an issue at all we were paying to a normal person who’s got ex. To pay for their mortgage, for college debt etc. The issue is that we are paying evil corporations and not normal people. We are fueling gentrification and we can’t even boycott them
No, the issue is rent seeking parasites in general. If anything the ‘mom and pop’ landlords are even fucking scummier because YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH THEM KEEPING YOUR FUCKING HEAD DOWN AND DOING CUSTOMER SERVICE IN YOUR OWN FUCKING HOME YOU’RE FUCKING PAYING FOR
The level of fucking entitlement these people have to treat you literally however the fuck they want is unmatched.
Painting the hallway? Why bother saying anything? It’s my house. Oh, you got paint all over your brand new sweater? Lol. It hasn’t been 3 months yet so ‘if it doesn’t work out’ you’re out on the street same day! Haha!
What? You’re upset at the pile of cat shit that’s been in your bathroom for a whole day because I don’t give my FIVE cats litter boxes? You’re going to talk to me like that?? Pack your bags, loser! My parents were rich!
Speak, cowards. I see your sullen angry downvotes. Do you have anything to fucking say for yourselves or not?
Why wouldn’t it be a problem paying rent to a normal person? Being a slave in Rome 2000 years ago, you were a slave regardless of whether you were owned by a small owner with just a few slaves, than one with 200.
Lets translate that
“If you can not buy a house in cash, you should live with your parents or be unhoused.”
Let’s translate yours: “I cannot conceive of a social housing system similar to that of social healthcare, in which people are guaranteed housing at affordable prices by law”
Umm this is against rent at all. As in ANY rent. So an affordable price is still against this statement.
This wasn’t “some rent is theft”
Even if you misinterpret the argument that way, social housing could be provided for free at the point of use, with no rent to be paid. The main distinction is whether the housing is owned and controlled by private or public entities; the former will necessarily demand a profit to be made, the latter can operate at net zero spending or even “at a loss” by spending taxpayer funds as a social service.
That’s not a misinterpretation. This wasn’t a call where rent limits are set by a locations minimum wage.
This was the abolition of rent.
Which does go along with the elimination of ownership. If all housing was state owned that would eliminate the potential for price gouging and allow for the distribution of housing based on pure need. An empty space + a person = housing
Not many people are calling for the end of homeownership.
The problem is that in your original comment, you are presenting a false trichotomy: people need to pay rent, or own a house, or be homeless. There is indeed a fourth option of providing social housing, free at the point of use.
Not many people are calling for the end of homeownership.
It depends on what precisely is meant by “ownership”, but maybe I am.
Personally I’m in favor of some modified version of the chinese system where almost everyone “owns” a home, but their children can’t inherit it. I think technically the state owns all the housing, and provides people with a cheap/free lifetime lease of some kind. There should also be a limit on how many properties a single person can own, and renting those places out should be banned.
And then as a compliment there should also be some excess state-owned social housing. There are edge-cases where for one reason or another you can’t/don’t want to own.
So yeah in general I think we need to abolish the concept of homeownership as it exists in the west.
I have relatives with multiple properties in China and they certainly own it as much as their multiple properties in the US. Owning multiple properties in both they feel quite positive about BOTH systems working as intended.
Maybe someday they will be in for a rude awakening but i have no reason to disbelieve them currently.
The post: “rent is a tax that poor people pay TO RICH PEOPLE[…]”. The problem is obviously private landlordism, not social housing in the form of rent
I thought that they were simply reclassifying anyone who owned property as rich.
I have seen that argument made in good faith.
Wait till you hear about loan interests and collateral. Maybe even covenants down the road.
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.
I hate this type of posts. There’s nothing wrong with renting or paying rent. Most of American rent problem is because of high rent, not rent itself.
I hate these kinds of comments. No shit we’d be okay with cheaper rent but they’re not going to make it cheaper out of the goodness of their heart. We have people’s who’s whole job is to “sELL hOuSES” and profit from it
Nah it’s more like the reality outside america where people outside of affluent class own multiple properties too, and corporate isn’t involved in property renting scene. So our rents are lower per square feet for same property, than in the west.
How’s there nothing wrong with paying rent? Why is someone else appropriating the fruits of MY labor just because they happen to be lucky enough to inherit a house?
The important part in this equation is that you can choose not to rent from them.
Yes, you can choose to die on the streets instead. What’s your point?
At the same time, if you choose to live in an economy where you don’t pay rent, you will barely find anyone outside your family willing to lend you a home.
And replying to your previous comment, idk about America, but in other parts of the world, people outside of affluent class have homes, and rent is close to or less than 4% of property value annually, not 6-8% Americans are used to. That’s likely because corporates don’t buy property here at scale they do in America.
you will barely find anyone outside your family willing to lend you a home
Yes, that’s why housing ownership should primarily be socialized, and access to affordable rent should be a right guaranteed by the public administration as much as healthcare and education.
rent is close to or less than 4% of property value annually
That’s still a worthless metric, though, rent should be proportional to construction costs + maintenance, not subjected to markets.
You’re fundamentally asking for a different society. To be very honest, the Idea is great, I just don’t see how it’s gonna be implemented. Also you gotta be happy with pretty minimal houses, but I guess people in twenties who are just starting with life, this could be all they need.
Yeah Ik this is core communist ideology, I don’t have anything against communism. I just am saying what you are asking is very different from what society is today.
Well, yes, I’m a communist, but seeing the housing in literally every western capitalist country suffering from the same issues, I have 0% of hope that the issue of housing will be solved within capitalism. Capitalists are in power and they’re the ones owning the housing, so they simply will prevent legislation from passing unless forced by worker organizing.
I don’t see why communism is equated with minimal houses though, housing size is more or less proportional to the wealth of the country and less so to ideological stuff. The USSR is famous for small socialist flats because most were built during industrialization in a post-war condition. East-Germany flats from the 1980s, for example, are much larger.
Basically whomever runs for president needs to announce building out - nationwide concrete apartment complexes construction program on a massive scale.
Offload at least 30-40 mln people demand. Housing costs gonna drop insanelyUnfortunately as that would gain votes. It would also prevent votes as it would be basically announcing to anyone that owns a house that their retirement nest egg is going to shrink drastically. One of the perks of owning a house right now is it’s worth a lot of money and is going to be worth more in the future. So I don’t see anyone who currently owns a house voting for this . It’s a shitty situation but i don’t know the solution. Well government housing is the solution but they’re going to have to sneak it in somehow and it’s going to piss off a whole lot of people. I think 99% of millionaires are millionaires by real estate or some crazy number like that.
Why concrete?
It’s energy intensive (~& polluting), unhealthy, and does not last.
Various other options are available now. Lime hempcrete, and various myco-based solutions, for a couple examples.
With various suppressed technologies, if de-secreted and availed, we could even be building giant forest arcologies, and even linking them up to create vast forest arcologyscapes, increasing the carrying capacity of earth into the hundreds of trillions. Not saying we should, just saying we could, and that we have so much headroom without these crooks, these rentiers, seeking to keep others down just to maintain their power over others, even if it means making themselves worse off than what they could be in real terms, in egalitarian freedom and abundance.
Also, I hear there are already sufficient number of empty housing to house all the homeless… but the hoarders do not want to avail that for good use. They want to remain complicit in the manufactured scarcity to increase their return on investment, keeping the bubble growing.
Lime hempcrete, and various myco-based solutions
AFAIK, those are replacements for insulation. They have like 1/10th the compressive strength of concrete
A more immediate solution than building khrUShchevkas would just be to announce broad rent caps and implement rent assistance programs. Perfect no, but the logistics of building that much housing would be… insurmountable in any reasonable timeframe.
Both can be done, though. There’s more demand for dense housing in cities than there is availability. Simultaneously build millions of housing units for social rent and cap existing prices or directly expropriate rented housing.
I think at a certain point this line of reasoning devolves into “the US should become communist” and while yes that would be a solution it’s not exactly a practically achievable one in the short term.
However, the US already already sort does this - there were ~6 million total subsidized housing units in the US as of last year, and roughly 7 million total Khrushchevka apartments built across the USSR. The US is behind the soviet statistics here, having a higher population and lower subsidized housing count than the USSR at it’s peak (and should absolutely be doing better to be clear), but it’s not like this is a completely neglected concept - and there are real, practical barriers to implementing a similar policy of mass construction: the US largely already being urbanized and building modern codes being the two biggest (look into the state of the foundations for a Khrushchevka if you ever want to see why extremely time consuming site prep steps like soil surcharging and foundation curing are critical (soil hydrodynamics is a shockingly modern discipline in structural engineering)).
Things like an unoccupied home tax (as someone else mentioned) are an immediately workable solution, and have had excellent results thus far. Hopefully they can continue to be adopted, though I fear there may be a brief pause on any kind of beneficial social progress while we have a small civil war in the US.
edit: clarity
Source for the 7mn Khrushchevki? That number seems entirely too low. Maybe you’re not counting Brezhnevki? Because I remember figures of more than a million housing units being built yearly.
While “US becoming communist” is not achievable on the short term, “regulatory policy to improve rent under capitalism through reform” has even less of a background if you ask me. Like, housing is getting worse everywhere under capitalism, and better nowhere. What makes you think reformism is a more likely scenario?
What makes you think reformism is a more likely scenario?
The many recent examples of mucipalities and states passing regulatory policies to improve rent under capitalism are the primary one I’m using here. People are doing things to address housing,
Maybe you’re not counting Brezhnevki
I’m not, no - nor stalinkas (not that those were all that prolific comparably though). It’s a limited measurement, obviously USSR social housing policies do not compare to the US, but the initial suggestion was specifically about rapidly-constructed slab concrete buildings and nothing typifies that better than a Khrushchevka. If you have a better source I’d love to see it, I approximated that off the average apartment size of 46m and the total constructed of 2,900,000,000 sq m, which is the best approximation I could get from the wikipedia sources and I may well be missing some reports.
The many recent examples of mucipalities and states passing regulatory policies to improve rent under capitalism
Can you tell me generally big examples of places where this has happened and things have gotten better? As a European, the only cases I know of are the Berlin referenda for rent caps and expropriation, and both have had no lasting effect because higher courts have sabotaged them and declared them illegal (I don’t understand how a referendum can be illegal).
the total constructed of 2,900,000,000 sq m
Are you sure this is flat-area and doesn’t need to get multiplied by number of flats per building?
Can you tell me generally big examples of places where this has happened and things have gotten better?
That’s a really specific request, but sure: Vancouver empty home tax, California Tenant Rent Cap.
Are you sure this is flat-area and doesn’t need to get multiplied by number of flats per building?
As far as I can tell this number is accurate, again if you can find a better (or more clear) source than what’s given on wikipedia I welcome it since this is a composite number pulled from housing reports originally written in a language in which I am functionally illiterate (and can only barely speak) so I’m relying heavily on the translations since I cannot go and find the primary sources.
Tax on second (or more) homes, tax on unoccupied by owner homes, should both be astronomical.
Oh god yes, my municipality just implemented an unoccupied home tax and the change has been night/day - the tears of AirBNB owners watching their property values plummet have been absolutely wonderful to watch, too.
@zedgeist How about rent of things, as opposed to rent of living space? I’m specifically thinking of the hardware I’m renting for this Fediverse server. A network connection, power, and cooling come with it. In my view this is more acceptable than having to rent a house or car. (Related topic: is having a car moral? Related to that: Is there a moral argument to be made for our against living away from a population center? And related to that: why the Hell do people refuse to wear masks during a pandemic?)
Is my renting that hardware more paying for a service than straight rent? There’s certainly the aspect of my not being able to afford the hardware cost up-front and just renting space, network, and power.
Ideally I’d just run the server in my cellar, but I live in the woods and trees fall on the power lines all too often. (Loop to the question of the morality of living away from population centers.)
Rental of land is unique because land ownership is made by drwing line on a map and drawing up a contract with the state. Equipment rental is the product of labor that has transformed natural resources into something people can use.
Land ownership is inherently a violent act in that paper agreements are a surrogate for establishing territorial dominance. End of the day land ownership is enforced though force.
Renting objects on the other hand is rooted in mutual benefit. Tool creation and use being separate skills creates a natural opportunity for cooperation.
All ownership is inherently backed by violence. If someone wants to take away your things without giving anything back you either give up ownership or use (the threat of) violence to defend your ownership. That threat of violence might be deferred and abstracted to a legal system, but in the end it is all rooted in force.
Someone created the house. The house didn’t grow there organically…
Can’t argue with that. Or connect it to the current topic. Care to elaborate?
Guys, y’all should read up on Henry George. It’s so logical that it is accepted by both sides in politics.
Meh. I’m a commie, and it’s just a half measure. It attacks the problem of landlordism, sure, but it doesn’t fight concentration of wealth in other forms, such as financial capital, capitalist ownership of media and means of production, or even climate change.
Moreover, it doesn’t provide any means for organizing and actually carrying out the policy, which is why it never happens. Ideology and politics aren’t exclusively a theoretical field in which we can democratically test every policy without disturbance, and Georgism doesn’t answer the simple question: why would the landlords in power allow the workers to tax them our of power?
See there’s an issue you want a one size fits all that’s never going to happen. Focus on fixing one thing that will help the population astronomically.
why would the landlords in power allow the workers to tax them our of power
Well through public ridicule or at gunpoint I’d imagine
See there’s an issue you want a one size fits all that’s never going to happen
It’s happened historically in several countries, whereas georgism has happened in a total of 0.
Well through public ridicule or at gunpoint I’d imagine
Great. Now, who are the people organizing and agitating the workers to gather the numbers and strength to do this at gunpoint? Hint: again, not the Georgists
… “both sides”…?
