6 ms·

You could make the exact same point towards the renters who were banking on their job to pay the rent. One is called a mortgage while the other is called rent.

heavyset_go 6y ago
There's a difference between working to eat, and investing. Investments have inherent risk, and if you can't bear that risk, don't overleverage yourself.
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
  Reading the article, the owners aren't exactly rolling in it and are also depicted as mostly working class. If it wasn't for a global pandemic, most would have been fine and they would have thought to have invested very conservatively. In my mind, it's just that it's convenient/expedient to make them eat the cost of unpaid rent -
  - buescher 6y ago
    There are plenty of investments that are much more conservative than taking out a loan to buy real estate. Most of them don't even come with mortgage payments.
  - door100 6y ago
    > depicted as mostly working class. What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that the article calling them "working class" is deeply misleading. They certainly aren't working class in the way that most NYC tenants are.
    - refurb 6y ago
      I love it. Too poor to invest in property? Working class. Have enough money to invest in property? No longer working class. It’s attitudes like this that prevent the working class from participating in the generation of wealth through capital. As soon as they dip their toe in, they’re now “rich” and get the rug pulled from under them.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        I mean, the ownership of property - particularly land - and the use of that property to derive one's income is exactly what differentiates the working class from the ownership class. Landlords are pretty unambiguously in the latter; rent-seeking is not work.
        bigmattystyles 6y ago
        Having known someone who owned and personally maintained a small apartment complex, you are wrong. My FIL is the hardest working person I know.
        door100 6y ago
        Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        > My FIL is the hardest working person I know. A landlord's wealth derives from being a middleman between the tenants and the property, not from the landlord's own labor. That wealth is quite literally the whole point of being a landlord in the first place; if the income from rent didn't significantly exceed the value of the labor your FIL performs as "maintenance", then why would he bother with dealing with all the headaches of property ownership if he could instead just be an employee of the tenants themselves (said tenants forming e.g. a housing cooperative)? That is: there's nothing a landlord does that the tenants couldn't do themselves (whether directly or by hiring someone to do it on their behalf). It is therefore not labor alone that defines the relationship between a landlord and one's tenants. Your FIL may be "the hardest working person [you] know", but he's still a middleman in the ownership class.
        refurb 6y ago
        Sure the landlord is doing something I can’t, as a tenant, can’t do myself - if all I have is an income of a few thousand a month and I need housing, the landlord is providing me housing I couldn’t otherwise afford.
rob74 6y ago
The difference being that you can choose to take out a loan and buy a house, but you can't really choose not to pay rent (unless you want to be homeless of course, but that's not an option I would recommend to anyone)
- jimbob21 6y ago
  Except now people are literally choosing not to pay rent. And there are no consequences. So who wins in this scenario? The landlord is screwed over, and the house is taken by the bank. Then they sell it at a loss cause its filled with a useless nonpaying tenant and that bombs all the housing prices in the neighborhood. Millions of dollars will be lost, corporations will come out ahead, and everyone is worse off. Brilliant, this moratorium.
  - rob74 6y ago
    Excuse me, but if a libertarian website tries to paint the landlords as victims by giving some extreme (but still anecdotal) examples, I'll take that with a grain of salt. Especially the first example: >Gao discovered that one of his former tenants had given her keys to a friend who had moved in without permission. Gao has never met the squatter now living in his house and is afraid to contact this person out of fear that he'll be sued for harassment. So it's not that the tenants were forced to stop paying rent, someone who doesn't even have a rental agreement has simply moved in, so the landlord would have every right to get them evicted, but chooses not to for... reasons?!
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Did you read the rest? He can’t get the eviction because of squatters’ rights and courts being shut down.

heavyset_go 6y ago

There's a difference between working to eat, and investing. Investments have inherent risk, and if you can't bear that risk, don't overleverage yourself.

bigmattystyles 6y ago
Reading the article, the owners aren't exactly rolling in it and are also depicted as mostly working class. If it wasn't for a global pandemic, most would have been fine and they would have thought to have invested very conservatively. In my mind, it's just that it's convenient/expedient to make them eat the cost of unpaid rent -
- buescher 6y ago
  There are plenty of investments that are much more conservative than taking out a loan to buy real estate. Most of them don't even come with mortgage payments.
- door100 6y ago
  > depicted as mostly working class. What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that the article calling them "working class" is deeply misleading. They certainly aren't working class in the way that most NYC tenants are.
  - refurb 6y ago
    I love it. Too poor to invest in property? Working class. Have enough money to invest in property? No longer working class. It’s attitudes like this that prevent the working class from participating in the generation of wealth through capital. As soon as they dip their toe in, they’re now “rich” and get the rug pulled from under them.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      I mean, the ownership of property - particularly land - and the use of that property to derive one's income is exactly what differentiates the working class from the ownership class. Landlords are pretty unambiguously in the latter; rent-seeking is not work.
      - bigmattystyles 6y ago
        Having known someone who owned and personally maintained a small apartment complex, you are wrong. My FIL is the hardest working person I know.
        door100 6y ago
        Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        > My FIL is the hardest working person I know. A landlord's wealth derives from being a middleman between the tenants and the property, not from the landlord's own labor. That wealth is quite literally the whole point of being a landlord in the first place; if the income from rent didn't significantly exceed the value of the labor your FIL performs as "maintenance", then why would he bother with dealing with all the headaches of property ownership if he could instead just be an employee of the tenants themselves (said tenants forming e.g. a housing cooperative)? That is: there's nothing a landlord does that the tenants couldn't do themselves (whether directly or by hiring someone to do it on their behalf). It is therefore not labor alone that defines the relationship between a landlord and one's tenants. Your FIL may be "the hardest working person [you] know", but he's still a middleman in the ownership class.
        refurb 6y ago
        Sure the landlord is doing something I can’t, as a tenant, can’t do myself - if all I have is an income of a few thousand a month and I need housing, the landlord is providing me housing I couldn’t otherwise afford.

rob74 6y ago

The difference being that you can choose to take out a loan and buy a house, but you can't really choose not to pay rent (unless you want to be homeless of course, but that's not an option I would recommend to anyone)

jimbob21 6y ago
Except now people are literally choosing not to pay rent. And there are no consequences. So who wins in this scenario? The landlord is screwed over, and the house is taken by the bank. Then they sell it at a loss cause its filled with a useless nonpaying tenant and that bombs all the housing prices in the neighborhood. Millions of dollars will be lost, corporations will come out ahead, and everyone is worse off. Brilliant, this moratorium.
- rob74 6y ago
  Excuse me, but if a libertarian website tries to paint the landlords as victims by giving some extreme (but still anecdotal) examples, I'll take that with a grain of salt. Especially the first example: >Gao discovered that one of his former tenants had given her keys to a friend who had moved in without permission. Gao has never met the squatter now living in his house and is afraid to contact this person out of fear that he'll be sued for harassment. So it's not that the tenants were forced to stop paying rent, someone who doesn't even have a rental agreement has simply moved in, so the landlord would have every right to get them evicted, but chooses not to for... reasons?!
  - SilasX 6y ago
    Did you read the rest? He can’t get the eviction because of squatters’ rights and courts being shut down.