“The United States boasts approximately 15.1 million vacant homes, a staggering number that accounts for 10.5% of the country’s total housing inventory.”
I’ll get the trains ready to forcibly move the unhoused to where to where an empty house is…you wanna start rounding them up, or are you still busy finding them a job they’re able to do so a bank will let them buy one of those houses?
Edit: the situation isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be. If it were, it’d been solved already.
Ok, that’s great. So are we confiscating them? Or are we forcing the owners to rent them out, and if so who’s paying? I’m serious - how would you approach this?
Landlords get 2 years to sell and after that if they still haven’t sold they go to auction and get whatever money comes from that.
And to counter your 2nd argument I don’t give a fuck how bad they get screwed. They should have thought about that before they decided to become leeches on society and profit from basic human rights.
Landlords get 2 years to sell and after that if they still haven’t sold they go to auction and get whatever money comes from that.
Are these just empty houses or all rental properties? Who are they selling the homes to? How will those people pay for them? Could those buyers, say, then rent out a room to help with the mortgage payments? And you say you don’t care, but should people who put their money into a home and left it empty, say because of a divorce or some medical problem be penalized too? What about people who rent out a home that they inherited and don’t want to sell because it has sentimental value? I assume in your mind this is a blanket forcing of people to sell or even forfeit an asset they paid for?
They should have thought about that before they decided to become leeches on society and profit from basic human rights.
I’m curious if your “leeches” characterization applies across the board. Logically if you think people who rent out physical spaces this should apply to anyone who rents out something of value… say their labor or a taxi driver or has a business where you pay to borrow something. Wouldn’t those be “leeches” too?
I agree that housing is a basic human right, but unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn’t. And that means we don’t have mechanisms for dealing with this and I’m troubled with some aspects of your ideas - it would be unfair to many. I know quite a few people who could only afford to buy a house by renting out a room or by creating an in-law apartment, backyard apartment and so on. They are landlords but I’m struggling to think of them as leeches. Would you call them all leeches?
Oh cool, so now the innocent tenants are homeless. Maybe, if they are lucky, they are now competing with other similarly evicted folks for homes they can’t afford, thus raising the already astronomical prices of housing even higher.
I mean the law wouldn’t just be “landlording is illegal” you have stuff in there to prevent these leeches from keeping them empty out of spite.
I would say that owning 3 homes for personal use is just fine and anymore than that is illegal. Also not hard to look at a landlord and see what properties they are renting out and what properties they live in and force them to sell the properties they use to rent out.
I don’t think you’ll see the results you want out of this. Instead what you’ll see is that the rental companies will shut down and divide up their properties among their shareholders so that each shareholder ends up with 3 houses (or whatever number you set as the limit). If there are too many houses and not enough shareholders then they will sell more shares until the numbers work out.
Not billions, but thousands to millions. Many, many investments are owned by pension funds and the like. You know, regular people’s retirement funds.
You keep wanting there to be a villain in this story but it’s just not the case. Sometimes societal problems are caused by collective action with misaligned incentives.
“The United States boasts approximately 15.1 million vacant homes, a staggering number that accounts for 10.5% of the country’s total housing inventory.”
There are enough homes for everyone
I’ll get the trains ready to forcibly move the unhoused to where to where an empty house is…you wanna start rounding them up, or are you still busy finding them a job they’re able to do so a bank will let them buy one of those houses?
Edit: the situation isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be. If it were, it’d been solved already.
Found the landlord
Ok, that’s great. So are we confiscating them? Or are we forcing the owners to rent them out, and if so who’s paying? I’m serious - how would you approach this?
Landlords get 2 years to sell and after that if they still haven’t sold they go to auction and get whatever money comes from that.
And to counter your 2nd argument I don’t give a fuck how bad they get screwed. They should have thought about that before they decided to become leeches on society and profit from basic human rights.
Are these just empty houses or all rental properties? Who are they selling the homes to? How will those people pay for them? Could those buyers, say, then rent out a room to help with the mortgage payments? And you say you don’t care, but should people who put their money into a home and left it empty, say because of a divorce or some medical problem be penalized too? What about people who rent out a home that they inherited and don’t want to sell because it has sentimental value? I assume in your mind this is a blanket forcing of people to sell or even forfeit an asset they paid for?
I’m curious if your “leeches” characterization applies across the board. Logically if you think people who rent out physical spaces this should apply to anyone who rents out something of value… say their labor or a taxi driver or has a business where you pay to borrow something. Wouldn’t those be “leeches” too?
I agree that housing is a basic human right, but unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn’t. And that means we don’t have mechanisms for dealing with this and I’m troubled with some aspects of your ideas - it would be unfair to many. I know quite a few people who could only afford to buy a house by renting out a room or by creating an in-law apartment, backyard apartment and so on. They are landlords but I’m struggling to think of them as leeches. Would you call them all leeches?
What? All they have to do is evict their tenants and just keep their building vacant. Presto: they are no longer landlords, just mere property owners.
Oh cool, so now the innocent tenants are homeless. Maybe, if they are lucky, they are now competing with other similarly evicted folks for homes they can’t afford, thus raising the already astronomical prices of housing even higher.
Brilliant!
I mean the law wouldn’t just be “landlording is illegal” you have stuff in there to prevent these leeches from keeping them empty out of spite.
I would say that owning 3 homes for personal use is just fine and anymore than that is illegal. Also not hard to look at a landlord and see what properties they are renting out and what properties they live in and force them to sell the properties they use to rent out.
I don’t think you’ll see the results you want out of this. Instead what you’ll see is that the rental companies will shut down and divide up their properties among their shareholders so that each shareholder ends up with 3 houses (or whatever number you set as the limit). If there are too many houses and not enough shareholders then they will sell more shares until the numbers work out.
Do you think there are billions of share holders? That is a non problem.
Not billions, but thousands to millions. Many, many investments are owned by pension funds and the like. You know, regular people’s retirement funds.
You keep wanting there to be a villain in this story but it’s just not the case. Sometimes societal problems are caused by collective action with misaligned incentives.
Cool, we can add a clause that prevents that.
Every problem you can think of can be solved.
This is how laws are made. People sit down and have discussions like this.