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And landlording is a terrible thing to do
by dangerwill 4y ago
And landlording is a terrible thing to do
- californical 4y agoAs someone who is renting right now and doesn’t want to own a home currently, where would I live if not for a landlord? Government housing? What in the heck is wrong with someone renting out something that they own?
- yazzku 4y agoSome find it immoral, especially when the landlord has multiple properties, or when, like in the article, they hold up the apartments vacant until their conditions are satisfied. There are also people who are basically social parasites, living off of rent and the work of those who actually contribute to society.
- prepend 4y agoSome find any profit immoral. That doesn’t make them right.
- yazzku 4y ago
- bilvar 4y agoGrown-ups don’t throw tantrums like you do.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments repeatedly. Would you please stop? We ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
- dang 4y agoYou can't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that post this way, so please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Gigachad 4y agoIsn’t holding a unit empty somewhat similar to workers striking until unjust conditions are resolved? If the government is forcing rents to remain under inflation, eventually something will break.
- dangerwill 4y agoYes, government owned and managed housing. Across the more-left leaning parts of Europe this is not controversial at all. It's mostly a US/UK/Canada thing that "government housing" = "scary and full of drugs" because these governments only ever adopted policies for the very bottom of society, and then left these projects to rot over time.
- tomcam 4y agoWhere is this happening in Europe?
- bilvar 4y ago[flagged]
- tempestn 4y agoOK, but that option doesn't exist here currently. So in the actual situation we're living in, are you actually saying that you think it's wrong/evil for a person to choose to invest in a rental property? IE buying a house for the purpose of renting it out? Because I know a lot of people renting and looking to rent who wish more people would do that.
- pxmpxm 4y agoThat's a bit of an inane, edgelord take, no?
- dangerwill 4y agoIt's my honestly held belief that private landlords (both private individuals and even more so corporate) are systemically pushed to provide the least amount of maintenance, repair, and amenities for the most amount of money. Having a market based system for a necessity, especially when the market is allowed to get as incredibly distorted as it has (in the US and Western Europe), is a moral travesty. I have just given up trying to be nice about this, despite HN's capitalist slant
- prepend 4y ago> Having a market based system for a necessity, especially when the market is allowed to get as incredibly distorted as it has (in the US and Western Europe), is a moral travesty Markets for food work pretty well. And for loans. Markets are pretty efficient. That doesn’t mean you don’t regulate them.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago> Markets for food work pretty well. Please look up how much subsidy is given to the American farmers. It's probably more than you think it is. > And for loans. Might have agreed more with you, but then 2008 happened.
- pxmpxm 4y ago> systemically pushed to provide the least amount of maintenance, repair, and amenities for the most amount of money That argument can literally be applied to any product or service, yet here we are. There is a peculiar correlation I have noticed with these views - it tends to be (white) upper middle class suburban upbringing Americans that profess them. Principal agent problem of sorts, I guess.
- tomcam 4y agoHow much property are you renting at a loss to assist others?
- sokoloff 4y agoHow dare some people put up the money long-term to provide housing on a short-term basis to others who need it; what assholes!
- amrocha 4y agoLandlords don't provide shit, the housing is already there they just charge a tenant money to use it
- sokoloff 4y agoThink through the money flows. Developer buys land. Spends all their money on land and building a house. Investor comes along and buys the house to rent it out. Developer now has money to buy another lot and build another house (and other developers notice that they can build houses and get paid to do so). Without the investor money in step 2, developers build a lot fewer houses in steps 1 and 3.
- amrocha 4y agoYou literally admitted it, landlords provide nothing, all they do is finance private spending. Once the property is paid for the landlord gets to keep an appreciating asset and generate cash flow from it by stealing from the tenant's paycheck. Literally leeches on society.
- tempestn 4y agoIf the landlord isn't there to buy the house, it won't get built in the first place. Not everyone can afford to buy a house, so someone needs to provide that capital in order for the housing to exist. No one is stealing anything; the tenant is paying the landlord for the service of lending them the house to live in. The landlord is being compensated for the funds they have tied up in the house, that they can't use to invest in (buy) other things. Like, literally, if there were no landlords, by definition there would be no rental properties. So people who couldn't afford to buy a house outright would have nowhere to live. That can't be what you're advocating?
- technion 4y agoI bought my apartment a decade ago. I needed to move to another area so I rented it out. I regularly see these takes hn and I don't get what's so assholeish about my situation. I know that my tenant is on a temporary visa. Are we arguing that ethically he should have bought my property?
- Ekaros 4y agoCapitalism is general is. Extracting money from others with zero labour put in. We really should socialise everything and ban private ownership.
- bilvar 4y ago[flagged]
- refurb 4y agoThe decades of absolute failure of that model and the need to enforce it through state violence don’t concern you?
- bombcar 4y agoThis time it’ll work! The sad thing is that people don’t bother digging much into it and take simple answers like “greed” instead of figuring out exactly where the monies are going.