this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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I mean yeah if they're assholes sure. And many (most?) are no doubt. Yet I have friends who are landlords and they're not fucking monsters or I wouldn't be friends with them.
I think this reductive take of yours feels good to type but if we want to address the problems of housing, I think a more nuanced understanding is needed.
If you're like a friend of mine, it's just a family that owns a couple extra houses (withholding judgment on that) and let's say the husband is out of work the wife makes like $50k/yr, and you're on the hook for two mortgages (say $5000) and now the sewer pipe to the sewer main needs replacing at a cost of $15,000, your car breaks and needs $1000 of repairs.
If it comes to it and you don't have the cash or credit to deal with it, nobody is going to prioritize the tenant's sewer over their kids having a house to live in and food to eat. When times are so desperate you have to choose, you're choosing your own family. (The assholes always choose themselves under all circumstances of course)
Idk wtf the answer is but housing is a human right and the idea that anyone should be unsheltered is fucked.
Both friends bought another house and rented their original. Some inherit a house. Because putting your money in savings like we used to in the 70s and 80s when you got rock solid perfectly safe 2-5% return hasn't been a thing for 20+ years.
Then you have corporations with the capital to be able to snap up houses after the 2008 predatory lending fiasco (thanks to unregulated capitalism). With low interest rates that ended up being the best play and then that ended up pricing out regular people.
Yeah we need more supply but the equation there doesn't really favor building affordable housing because reasons I don't understand well enough to try to talk to. Some claim too much regulation but that claim is usually the kind of bullshit that corpos/rich and their shills spout to be able to deregulate and better screw us peons. So I'm skeptical.
Idk what the solution is because I don't understand the very complex problem well enough. But I know that "landlords eat babies" isn't that helpful because the whole housing thing (rental, ownership) is a train wreck systemically.
If you can't afford to maintain a house you are renting out then you shouldn't be a landlord. Your friends could just as easily sell the house to a family and invest in a way that doesn't require them to maintain an asset they cannot afford, but instead they choose to keep it and profit as much as they can. Landlords are assholes.
This view kinda confuses me, I'm not a landlord don't worry! If people can't afford a house then what are they expected to do? It's all well and good saying if you can't afford the repairs then you shouldn't be a landlord but if you can't afford a house, what then, does the same sentiment apply?
It seems to me it's very much a problem with the 'system' . Aiming your hate at landlords in general makes no sense when they aren't the reason you don't own a house in the first place. Obviously some people do take advantage of others, that's not what I mean.
What is the solution here?
If I could wave a magic wand, I'd limit the number of houses people could own and how much wealth any 1 person could have...
But the problem still stands, people need enough money to get a house in the first place... So how does that work?
They are, in some cases, the reason people don't own houses. Not in every case of course, but certainly in some. I think there have even been "rent-to-own" scams by some landlords.
I honestly don't know what the landscape would look like without landlords, but that's not a prerequisite to hating on and moaning about greedy landlords and their greedy ways.
Landlords were not a problem 30 years ago and suddenly, they are. The problem is not landlord. Removing landlords won't magically fix everything for you. This view is radical and unproductive. This will lead the community no where near a real solution to this crisis.
Funny that, because I bought a condo and removed landlords from my life and it did actually fix everything for me.
The problem isn't just the landlords, it's a regulatory and policy environment that has shifted since Reagan toward the well off at the expense of everyone else in just about every facet of life including housing. People are pissed at this point because it's completely unaffordable to live while some of you (I'm going to assume you're a landlord because of your tone) are hording tons of houses to profit off of.
Landlords have always been horrible, you've just been able to insulate yourself from the experience.