4 ms·

IMO it should be illegal to rent private homes for profit. It creates such a toxic cycle. In some places better wages in cities is completely absorbed by rent

IMO it should be illegal to rent private homes for profit. It creates such a toxic cycle. In some places better wages in cities is completely absorbed by rent extraction. And as an area sees economic prosperity, landlords collude to extract it. It also inflates the prices of homes, where a family wanting to live in it has to compete with those that want to rent it out, maybe even turn it into an HMO, yuck. As a society we should despise landlords and make them feel like the scum they are.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
if you cant rent homes for profit, everybody who cant afford to build or buy homes will be homeless.
- Voultapher 2y ago
  Indeed, there are no imaginable alternatives. The people who can't afford to build roads can't drive.. Suggestion, only the government is allowed to rent out homes to individuals. Many cities already have government owned homes that are rented out at 1/3rd the market price to people in need, like single parents and co. I see no reason why this couldn't work at scale.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    > Many cities already have government owned homes that are rented out at 1/3rd the market price to people in need, like single parents and co. I see no reason why this couldn't work at scale. Kekd. It doesn't work for the simple reason that if you don't have enough homes, no matter how you shuffle people around and divide costs, someone is going to get the short end of the stick in some way. There are many places with elaborate systems of rent control and social housing, usually the effect is waiting lines and discrimination. Yes, having to pay a lot for rent sucks, but you know what sucks even more? Applying for social housing and then being told that you should've started thinking of such things at the age of 4, now it's too late. That's how the Netherlands functions, despite having the highest ratio of government housing in Europe.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      it does work in vienna. almost 60% live in housing owned or subsidized by the city. there are waiting times, but not as bad as you think. for one you have to be already living in vienna for a few years to qualify (which is unavoidable, otherwise any EU citizen would qualify automatically). the option to pay a lot for rent still exists, but the average family can't afford that.
      - asdefghyk 2y ago
        One test of how good it is to rent in Vienna, would be, what is the vacancy rate? In my area a 3% vacancy rate is regarded as balanced market between demand and supply. Gives tennants a good choice of dwellings and promotes a level of competition and negotiation amongst property owners. I predict that once people obtain subsidised dwellings , they would be move less and or be reluctant to move. I predict that the supply of "new dwellings " privately constructed , is less than other places with the system that is implemented in Vienna does not exist. It would be interesting to see the management costs and loss of taxes experienced by the cities ownership of dwellings.
        em-bee 2y ago
        the supply of "new dwellings" privately constructed , is less than other places with from what i have seen, this is not the case because other places do not provide enough incentive to build new homes. vienna is growing faster than some other cities. it's not easy to find good numbers. maybe this helps: in 2021 in all of germany about 260000 new apartments were built. that's one apartment per 323 inhabitants. in vienna in 2015 11500 apartments received building approval. that is 1 apartment per 165 inhabitants. of these only one third were built with government support. while in the same year 100million euro of government support remain unused. but apparently, since 2020 it is not allowed to have more than 1/3rd of any new building project without government subsidies and rent control. unlike germany subsidies continue for the lifetime of the building and so they can't be used for speculation and thus ensure a steady supply of affordable housing. because of viennas growth i suspected that vacancy rates should be low. what i found is that from 900000 apartments in 2015 35000 were empty. that's 3.8%. this is from a statistic made by the city. others claim estimates from 80000 or even 100000. in 2017 9000 out of 2009000 city owned apartments were empty (4.3%). most of those empty places are available on the market. i could not find anything good on financing. apparently most of the money comes from rent-income, so it seems to be mostly self-financing, although critics claim that the city also does not spend enough on maintenance. the city can also save money because they already own the properties they build on. so it looks to me like a successful non-profit operation.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    America has failed over and over and over at building public housing. It costs more than privately built housing and Ive never seen the management run well.
khaki54 2y ago
Terrible take. I never had a problem with any of my landlords, and I always rented houses. If something went wrong, fridge stopped working, HVAC broke, washing machine stopped draining, etc. the landlord would have someone out that day or the next or have an appliance delivered. My roommates and I didn't need to maintain an emergency budget for these things or be responsible for annual maintenance of everything. I always had multiple roommates and we split the rent and happily had access to a much nicer home and neighborhood than we had any right to. One landlord I had lived just one street over, in a similar house, so his family wasn't getting rich by any means. Another was some SE Asian immigrant woman and she was just getting by but the rental house was her retirement plan instead of a 401k. When I eventually bought my first house at 26, I had a roommate come with me for a couple years until I had my first kid. Technically I was a landlord in that scenario, so does that make me scum too? I mean he was incredibly happy with the situation despite knowing I was turning some modest profit.
- underwater 2y ago
  You misunderstand. I was specifically addressing the post which was encouraging bad landlords think in business terms to stop their emotional antisocial behaviour. But in reality the ideal is that landlords are considerate and decent towards renters. And, for when that fails, there are enough protections that renters aren’t at the mercy of a petty and vindictive landlord.
- Voultapher 2y ago
  You are looking at specific instances. For me it's about the systemic, large scale effects of the system. People routinely partake in exploitative systems without ill intent. The examples you provide could be applied in spirit to child labour. Is every instance of child labour immoral? I don't think so. But using the example of, how you as a 15 year old mowed some lawns to defend systemic child exploitation seems to miss the mark for me. I believe not all instances of landlordism are bad, but as a whole its effects on society are very negative. And that remains true even if all landlords were friendly and full of good intentions. The systemic effects remain the same. This talk for example while focused on a different topic covers some of the large scale effects https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

if you cant rent homes for profit, everybody who cant afford to build or buy homes will be homeless.

Voultapher 2y ago
Indeed, there are no imaginable alternatives. The people who can't afford to build roads can't drive.. Suggestion, only the government is allowed to rent out homes to individuals. Many cities already have government owned homes that are rented out at 1/3rd the market price to people in need, like single parents and co. I see no reason why this couldn't work at scale.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  > Many cities already have government owned homes that are rented out at 1/3rd the market price to people in need, like single parents and co. I see no reason why this couldn't work at scale. Kekd. It doesn't work for the simple reason that if you don't have enough homes, no matter how you shuffle people around and divide costs, someone is going to get the short end of the stick in some way. There are many places with elaborate systems of rent control and social housing, usually the effect is waiting lines and discrimination. Yes, having to pay a lot for rent sucks, but you know what sucks even more? Applying for social housing and then being told that you should've started thinking of such things at the age of 4, now it's too late. That's how the Netherlands functions, despite having the highest ratio of government housing in Europe.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    it does work in vienna. almost 60% live in housing owned or subsidized by the city. there are waiting times, but not as bad as you think. for one you have to be already living in vienna for a few years to qualify (which is unavoidable, otherwise any EU citizen would qualify automatically). the option to pay a lot for rent still exists, but the average family can't afford that.
    - asdefghyk 2y ago
      One test of how good it is to rent in Vienna, would be, what is the vacancy rate? In my area a 3% vacancy rate is regarded as balanced market between demand and supply. Gives tennants a good choice of dwellings and promotes a level of competition and negotiation amongst property owners. I predict that once people obtain subsidised dwellings , they would be move less and or be reluctant to move. I predict that the supply of "new dwellings " privately constructed , is less than other places with the system that is implemented in Vienna does not exist. It would be interesting to see the management costs and loss of taxes experienced by the cities ownership of dwellings.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        the supply of "new dwellings" privately constructed , is less than other places with from what i have seen, this is not the case because other places do not provide enough incentive to build new homes. vienna is growing faster than some other cities. it's not easy to find good numbers. maybe this helps: in 2021 in all of germany about 260000 new apartments were built. that's one apartment per 323 inhabitants. in vienna in 2015 11500 apartments received building approval. that is 1 apartment per 165 inhabitants. of these only one third were built with government support. while in the same year 100million euro of government support remain unused. but apparently, since 2020 it is not allowed to have more than 1/3rd of any new building project without government subsidies and rent control. unlike germany subsidies continue for the lifetime of the building and so they can't be used for speculation and thus ensure a steady supply of affordable housing. because of viennas growth i suspected that vacancy rates should be low. what i found is that from 900000 apartments in 2015 35000 were empty. that's 3.8%. this is from a statistic made by the city. others claim estimates from 80000 or even 100000. in 2017 9000 out of 2009000 city owned apartments were empty (4.3%). most of those empty places are available on the market. i could not find anything good on financing. apparently most of the money comes from rent-income, so it seems to be mostly self-financing, although critics claim that the city also does not spend enough on maintenance. the city can also save money because they already own the properties they build on. so it looks to me like a successful non-profit operation.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  America has failed over and over and over at building public housing. It costs more than privately built housing and Ive never seen the management run well.

khaki54 2y ago

Terrible take. I never had a problem with any of my landlords, and I always rented houses. If something went wrong, fridge stopped working, HVAC broke, washing machine stopped draining, etc. the landlord would have someone out that day or the next or have an appliance delivered. My roommates and I didn't need to maintain an emergency budget for these things or be responsible for annual maintenance of everything. I always had multiple roommates and we split the rent and happily had access to a much nicer home and neighborhood than we had any right to. One landlord I had lived just one street over, in a similar house, so his family wasn't getting rich by any means. Another was some SE Asian immigrant woman and she was just getting by but the rental house was her retirement plan instead of a 401k. When I eventually bought my first house at 26, I had a roommate come with me for a couple years until I had my first kid. Technically I was a landlord in that scenario, so does that make me scum too? I mean he was incredibly happy with the situation despite knowing I was turning some modest profit.

underwater 2y ago
You misunderstand. I was specifically addressing the post which was encouraging bad landlords think in business terms to stop their emotional antisocial behaviour. But in reality the ideal is that landlords are considerate and decent towards renters. And, for when that fails, there are enough protections that renters aren’t at the mercy of a petty and vindictive landlord.
Voultapher 2y ago
You are looking at specific instances. For me it's about the systemic, large scale effects of the system. People routinely partake in exploitative systems without ill intent. The examples you provide could be applied in spirit to child labour. Is every instance of child labour immoral? I don't think so. But using the example of, how you as a 15 year old mowed some lawns to defend systemic child exploitation seems to miss the mark for me. I believe not all instances of landlordism are bad, but as a whole its effects on society are very negative. And that remains true even if all landlords were friendly and full of good intentions. The systemic effects remain the same. This talk for example while focused on a different topic covers some of the large scale effects https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A.