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No one is forcing these property owners to "rent units below cost;" they set the rents on their houses and apartments. The issue is that many of these people bu

by HillRat 11y ago

No one is forcing these property owners to "rent units below cost;" they set the rents on their houses and apartments. The issue is that many of these people buy properties that are out of code with no intent to improve them, and then rent them anyway. Yes, it's not economically-rational to rebuild them. No, it's not the government's fault that the slumlord's business model depends on flouting code and safety violations. The simple answer is that if I can't afford to maintain a minimal level of environmental and residential standards, I'm not allowed to rent out my property. Likewise, I can't buy an empty lot, fail to maintain it to code, and then offer a defense that it's too expensive to keep it up. Governmental police powers are quite adequate to compel compliance. All this is quite separate from the other point you bring up, which is that affordable and decent housing is going to require socializing costs. In fact, there's no reason government shouldn't engage in more public-private partnerships to help fund affordable housing as part of mixed-income residential planning. But I don't buy the argument that minimal living standards are an unwarranted intrusion on the liberty of rentiers -- and I dont think you do, either. If payday loans can be deemed predatory, can't "environmentally hazardous" rental units also be?

gozur88 11y ago
>The simple answer is that if I can't afford to maintain a minimal level of environmental and residential standards, I'm not allowed to rent out my property. That's all well and good, but what happens to the people who are renting there, and what happens to the people who can't afford a place with "minimal level of environmental and residential standards"? Will those people be better off sleeping rough?
- gradstudent 11y ago
  > Will those people be better off sleeping rough? Everyone should have access to basic housing. If they do not that's a failure of government to provide a sufficient social safety net.
  - mantas 11y ago
    What is basic housing? Today's poor housing would look like a damn luxury 100 years ago. Today's luxury housing will probably look bellow standards after 100 years
    - jernfrost 11y ago
      Adam Smith, father of free market economics, pointed out already 300 years ago the fallacy of this argument. He has a passage about how an Englishman was expected to wear leather shoes while a frenchman could walk barefoot without being ashamed. Further he talks about how in his day a linen shirt if considered a necessity even for the poor while the ancient greeks and romans could do well without it. So the point is that following your reasoning there is really no end to the depravity you can reach and somebody would still be able to claim that is all fine, because only rich people in the stone age could afford such luxury. The point Smith made was that poverty is always a relative phenomenon. What is a necessity is always defined in terms of the society you live in. There is no such thing as a universal definition of necessity. I had an interesting conversation about this with my wife's American parents. Despite the fact that her parents were noticeably better off economically in their childhood than my parents, they felt a severe stigma of poverty my parents never felt. My parent grew up in a country where they were much the same as everybody else. In fact a little better off. They did not feel poor at all. They had a happy childhood both of them. But one of my wife's American parents had a bad childhood, plagued by a strong feeling of being lesser than everybody else. Never having people over on visit out of shame over their own poverty. She was used to seeing everybody else being better off and internet the idea they they were somehow lesser people. Today my home country is richer than America by GDP per capita but comparisons of wealth and of people's feeling of wealth or poverty is difficult. Many of my american relatives enjoy bigger houses and cars than I do, but one always gets the feeling that their life is much more of a struggle than mine. I live in a smaller house and have no car. But I have no financial worries like them. I have long vacations, I am not constantly overworked. I don't worry about health care insurance, saving for college education to my kids, getting fired. So I think one should have some respect for the desperation and despair the poor in America feel. Knowing that a surprising car repair or medical bill could send you onto the street in no time. Even poor in much less wealth western countries have to deal with quite that level of insecurity.

by HillRat 11y ago

gozur88 11y ago

>The simple answer is that if I can't afford to maintain a minimal level of environmental and residential standards, I'm not allowed to rent out my property. That's all well and good, but what happens to the people who are renting there, and what happens to the people who can't afford a place with "minimal level of environmental and residential standards"? Will those people be better off sleeping rough?

gradstudent 11y ago
> Will those people be better off sleeping rough? Everyone should have access to basic housing. If they do not that's a failure of government to provide a sufficient social safety net.
- mantas 11y ago
  What is basic housing? Today's poor housing would look like a damn luxury 100 years ago. Today's luxury housing will probably look bellow standards after 100 years
  - jernfrost 11y ago
    Adam Smith, father of free market economics, pointed out already 300 years ago the fallacy of this argument. He has a passage about how an Englishman was expected to wear leather shoes while a frenchman could walk barefoot without being ashamed. Further he talks about how in his day a linen shirt if considered a necessity even for the poor while the ancient greeks and romans could do well without it. So the point is that following your reasoning there is really no end to the depravity you can reach and somebody would still be able to claim that is all fine, because only rich people in the stone age could afford such luxury. The point Smith made was that poverty is always a relative phenomenon. What is a necessity is always defined in terms of the society you live in. There is no such thing as a universal definition of necessity. I had an interesting conversation about this with my wife's American parents. Despite the fact that her parents were noticeably better off economically in their childhood than my parents, they felt a severe stigma of poverty my parents never felt. My parent grew up in a country where they were much the same as everybody else. In fact a little better off. They did not feel poor at all. They had a happy childhood both of them. But one of my wife's American parents had a bad childhood, plagued by a strong feeling of being lesser than everybody else. Never having people over on visit out of shame over their own poverty. She was used to seeing everybody else being better off and internet the idea they they were somehow lesser people. Today my home country is richer than America by GDP per capita but comparisons of wealth and of people's feeling of wealth or poverty is difficult. Many of my american relatives enjoy bigger houses and cars than I do, but one always gets the feeling that their life is much more of a struggle than mine. I live in a smaller house and have no car. But I have no financial worries like them. I have long vacations, I am not constantly overworked. I don't worry about health care insurance, saving for college education to my kids, getting fired. So I think one should have some respect for the desperation and despair the poor in America feel. Knowing that a surprising car repair or medical bill could send you onto the street in no time. Even poor in much less wealth western countries have to deal with quite that level of insecurity.