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Can confirm, I work for a company that helps landlords finance the purchase and repair of rental properties. In certain very LCOL urban areas around NYC and Ph

Can confirm, I work for a company that helps landlords finance the purchase and repair of rental properties. In certain very LCOL urban areas around NYC and Philadelphia, we have individuals with tens of millions of dollars of property spread out among ~$150k buildings. They inspect their portfolio with armed bodyguards, and they very often own other businesses in the same neighborhoods that throw off money in small but regular amounts: laundromats, bars, clubs. An an interesting aside, these individuals are almost all involved with close-knit religious groups to which they contribute great deals of capital.

jessaustin 8y ago
...certain very LCOL urban areas around NYC and Philadelphia... That's "Low Cost Of Living", right? That's not a synonym for "poor", so I'm not certain such situations actually exist in those metro areas?
- coldtea 8y ago
  >That's "Low Cost Of Living", right? That's not a synonym for "poor" It is. >so I'm not certain such situations actually exist in those metro areas? Huh?
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I don't live there, but I've been to the places we're talking about. They don't have grocery stores, and the few stores that sell food cost a lot more than the stores I'm used to, for food that isn't so nutritious. The people there don't make exorbitant amounts of money, but they'd be better off if they had better access to affordable products. They are poor because the areas they inhabit have high costs of living. How is it that people don't know this?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      They are poor because they don't make enough money. And they can't arbitrarily move, because they can't find jobs just like that, or afford another place, just like that. They're not some middle class people who because poor because their only store is a Dean and Deluca.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        I never suggested that they move; that would have been presumptuous. It's still a fact that their income would go farther if they had access to the wide range of shopping options to which many other Americans have access. To which I and my neighbors have access, and many of them have very low incomes. Nobody here would ever consider any zip code in NYC to have a low cost of living. I guess I'll just be confused as to why we're so eager ITT to follow the lead of someone who admits to working for these landlords and continue to blur the distinction between "this area has a low cost of living" and "poor people live here". The words we use when discussing such issues matter, and this Overton window should go no further in this direction.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
Funny how we have two fresh accounts posting in this discussion, one of which insists that the study authors must have an "agenda", and another of which gives an "aside" that exploitative slumlords "are almost all involved with (((close-knit religious groups)))". Sounds like the ruling class is a bit agitated that we're noticing what's going on, and wants to misdirect our attention.
- krapp 8y ago
  I mean, one or both of those accounts could be your own alts, as far as anyone knows. I don't think the "ruling class" are so concerned about people "noticing what's going on" that they sent shills to create a couple of green accounts to post on Hacker News. That the rich exploit the poor is not exactly a shocking revelation to anyone. Certainly, you're not helping keep things focused by implying shills and saboteurs are at work here.
  - satokema 8y ago
    the "ruling class" would probably be not really interested in dealing with housing at all and would be more worried about people pointing out the lack of diversity at top C-level positions at major influential corporations.
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      That's... the exact opposite of how it works.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 8y ago
  On HN, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. In this case it led to a bad misunderstanding elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19470818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19470818). Also, could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? You've been breaking them, and we need you to fix that. One thing they ask you not to do is insinuate astroturfing without evidence, as you did in this comment here. Plenty of explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... More seriously, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. A certain amount of politics and ideology is unavoidable with many topics that appear on HN, but when this crosses into being the primary reason why someone uses the site, that user has left the realm of intellectual curiosity and shifted to the battlefield—exactly what we're trying to avoid HN turning into. For that reason, we ban accounts when they cross that line. More explanation on that if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
krapp 8y ago
>An an interesting aside, these individuals are almost all involved with close-knit religious groups to which they contribute great deals of capital. Before an edit, the above comment referred to "close-knit religious groups" surrounded by triple parentheses[0]. These are used by white supremacist and anti-Semitic posters to denote or refer to Jews. They are not, to my knowledge, an idiom commonly used in any other context. If you're going to go there, "kjbfojbejib," remember that editing your post doesn't also edit people's memories. I assume you were just trying to be funny but that kind of humor is not welcome here. Nor is that kind of prejudice, if you were being sincere. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses
- HyperTalk2 8y ago
  If you had just left the issue alone then everyone would assume his comment was referring to malevolent Christians. As a Jew I find it disappointing that you have chosen to echo the antisemitism he was smart enough to retract from the discourse. These ways of thinking need to be censored and entirely destroyed. Delete your comment immediately.
  - krapp 8y ago
    Calling out anti-semites or their methods is not echoing anti-semitism. I've edited the actual parens out but I'm not deleting the comment. People are free to flag it if they disagree.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      I agree with you. Calling out anti-semitic speech as "that's not OK here, even if you first flash it overtly and then make it slightly less obvious" seems to me to be the exact opposite of that accusation.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    Now wait just a moment - isn't pointing out things are "too white" exactly analogous? Yet that's somehow acceptable to say at almost any major media outlet [1]. You yourself implied his comment would have been okay if directed at Christians. Why should white people be the only group that's called out for over-representation? [1] E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/eu-is-too-white-brexit-likely-to-make-it-worse https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/eu-is-too-whit...
tetromino_ 8y ago
I have no idea about Philadelphia or the area "around NYC" that kjbfojbejib was talking about. But for NYC itself, here's the official landlord watchlist (ranked by number of violations and complaints) that was compiled by the public advocate's office: https://landlordwatchlist.com/landlords https://landlordwatchlist.com/landlords Good resource for finding where not to rent, if you have the option.

jessaustin 8y ago

...certain very LCOL urban areas around NYC and Philadelphia... That's "Low Cost Of Living", right? That's not a synonym for "poor", so I'm not certain such situations actually exist in those metro areas?

coldtea 8y ago
>That's "Low Cost Of Living", right? That's not a synonym for "poor" It is. >so I'm not certain such situations actually exist in those metro areas? Huh?
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I don't live there, but I've been to the places we're talking about. They don't have grocery stores, and the few stores that sell food cost a lot more than the stores I'm used to, for food that isn't so nutritious. The people there don't make exorbitant amounts of money, but they'd be better off if they had better access to affordable products. They are poor because the areas they inhabit have high costs of living. How is it that people don't know this?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    They are poor because they don't make enough money. And they can't arbitrarily move, because they can't find jobs just like that, or afford another place, just like that. They're not some middle class people who because poor because their only store is a Dean and Deluca.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      I never suggested that they move; that would have been presumptuous. It's still a fact that their income would go farther if they had access to the wide range of shopping options to which many other Americans have access. To which I and my neighbors have access, and many of them have very low incomes. Nobody here would ever consider any zip code in NYC to have a low cost of living. I guess I'll just be confused as to why we're so eager ITT to follow the lead of someone who admits to working for these landlords and continue to blur the distinction between "this area has a low cost of living" and "poor people live here". The words we use when discussing such issues matter, and this Overton window should go no further in this direction.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

Funny how we have two fresh accounts posting in this discussion, one of which insists that the study authors must have an "agenda", and another of which gives an "aside" that exploitative slumlords "are almost all involved with (((close-knit religious groups)))". Sounds like the ruling class is a bit agitated that we're noticing what's going on, and wants to misdirect our attention.

krapp 8y ago
I mean, one or both of those accounts could be your own alts, as far as anyone knows. I don't think the "ruling class" are so concerned about people "noticing what's going on" that they sent shills to create a couple of green accounts to post on Hacker News. That the rich exploit the poor is not exactly a shocking revelation to anyone. Certainly, you're not helping keep things focused by implying shills and saboteurs are at work here.
- satokema 8y ago
  the "ruling class" would probably be not really interested in dealing with housing at all and would be more worried about people pointing out the lack of diversity at top C-level positions at major influential corporations.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    That's... the exact opposite of how it works.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dang 8y ago
On HN, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. In this case it led to a bad misunderstanding elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19470818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19470818). Also, could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? You've been breaking them, and we need you to fix that. One thing they ask you not to do is insinuate astroturfing without evidence, as you did in this comment here. Plenty of explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... More seriously, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. A certain amount of politics and ideology is unavoidable with many topics that appear on HN, but when this crosses into being the primary reason why someone uses the site, that user has left the realm of intellectual curiosity and shifted to the battlefield—exactly what we're trying to avoid HN turning into. For that reason, we ban accounts when they cross that line. More explanation on that if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

krapp 8y ago

>An an interesting aside, these individuals are almost all involved with close-knit religious groups to which they contribute great deals of capital. Before an edit, the above comment referred to "close-knit religious groups" surrounded by triple parentheses[0]. These are used by white supremacist and anti-Semitic posters to denote or refer to Jews. They are not, to my knowledge, an idiom commonly used in any other context. If you're going to go there, "kjbfojbejib," remember that editing your post doesn't also edit people's memories. I assume you were just trying to be funny but that kind of humor is not welcome here. Nor is that kind of prejudice, if you were being sincere. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses

HyperTalk2 8y ago
If you had just left the issue alone then everyone would assume his comment was referring to malevolent Christians. As a Jew I find it disappointing that you have chosen to echo the antisemitism he was smart enough to retract from the discourse. These ways of thinking need to be censored and entirely destroyed. Delete your comment immediately.
- krapp 8y ago
  Calling out anti-semites or their methods is not echoing anti-semitism. I've edited the actual parens out but I'm not deleting the comment. People are free to flag it if they disagree.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    I agree with you. Calling out anti-semitic speech as "that's not OK here, even if you first flash it overtly and then make it slightly less obvious" seems to me to be the exact opposite of that accusation.
- deogeo 8y ago
  Now wait just a moment - isn't pointing out things are "too white" exactly analogous? Yet that's somehow acceptable to say at almost any major media outlet [1]. You yourself implied his comment would have been okay if directed at Christians. Why should white people be the only group that's called out for over-representation? [1] E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/eu-is-too-white-brexit-likely-to-make-it-worse https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/eu-is-too-whit...

tetromino_ 8y ago

I have no idea about Philadelphia or the area "around NYC" that kjbfojbejib was talking about. But for NYC itself, here's the official landlord watchlist (ranked by number of violations and complaints) that was compiled by the public advocate's office: https://landlordwatchlist.com/landlords https://landlordwatchlist.com/landlords Good resource for finding where not to rent, if you have the option.