Yes, but it isn’t fair to expect anyone to provide housing at their own personal loss. I agree that people need homes, and we’re on the same page there. However, consider it this way. If you could earn more by charging a higher amount, would you charge less out of generosity, or would you try to maximize your income? This applies to anything. If you’re selling a car, would you sell it for less just to be nice, or would you sell it to the highest bidder? People need cars too. You see my point?
Then don’t provide housing at all, let the market be affordable enough that people can buy housing. All rental companies provide is a funnel to keep the impoverished from saving their money to buy a home they can’t fathom according anyways. Same thing with house flippers. Buying a shit hole and giving it a paint job should not make it worth 3x the value you bought it at. Affordable housing is not the job of citizens, it is the job of the government and the government is doing its job making said housing, more attainable through rent caps.
If the government gets involved, the owners will just sell, making homeownership even more unaffordable and reducing rent options. What you want is less greed in the world, and that isn’t going to happen in its current state.
I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.
people don’t need cars the same way they need shelter and food. I’m sick of landlords acting like they’re providing some kind of social service when they financially benefit from the arrangement at the expense of the tenant, whom unlike the landlord has nothing to show for years of renting, where the landlord has now paid off their mortgage and has more capital to purchase further properties… Its an inherently self concentrating system - a renter will struggle more to buy a single property than a landlord does to add “another investment to their portfolio” through more favourable loan securitization and asset evaluation.
Landlords provide housing the same way scalpers provide tickets - considering they amass a huge majority of a working individual’s income despite contributing nothing themselves and sitting sedentary for their serfs to pay their wages, I dont really give a shit what income maximisation they pursue. Anything more than a dollar is a profit, and one which they are just as likely to have “earned” from inheritance as they are from any actual hard work and skilful property quisition.
If it’s so tragic and unprofitable to be a landlord, might I suggest selling up and getting the fuck out of the equation, instead of playing monopoly with the housing supply and acting like you’re a saint for refusing to fix the fucking mould problem, so I can pay for your ugly family’s next holiday instead of having a stable roof over my head.
I have no vested interest, as I’m not a landlord. My point is that people generally won’t settle for less when they can earn more. Regardless of how essential the item or service is, businesses and individuals will always aim to maximize their earnings if the market allows it. It would be a poor financial decision not to. Whether someone feels resentful because others profit off of them (which, by the way, is all of us in America when we buy foreign goods who use children for harvesting raw materials or other labor), it’s irrelevant to the situation. It isn’t going to change until God changes it.
if the market allows it.
That’s the point, the market works fine to incentivise me in choosing fruit loops over other cereals - but if the market is captured, monopolised, or poorly regulated, market forces don’t apply properly.
I don’t hold off renting because it’s a luxury I can do without, I rent because it’s an inelastic need for shelter, and I don’t have anywhere near enough capital to pursue ownership. The issue is that landlords are not just an enterprising part of that dynamic, they knowingly and maliciously gouge prices far in excess of any actual tangible value of their shitbox studio, because they know that if it’s difficult to move and everybody else is doing it, they can bleed their working single-mother tenant dry. At the end of that transaction, the mother has invested in the owner’s 4th mortgage and gets evicted when she falls a week behind, with less wealth than she had to start with. That’s why there was this article about capping RAISES to rent in an LA county.
Here in Australia (we’re not all american), it’s becoming a really significant problem - housing has been nearly entirely commodified since the millennium, while social housing and support services have effectively crumbled. My rent in Sydney is now 80% of my income alone - and that’s for a below average rent and an above average income - I’ve been fortunate, and I’m still at the point of having to sell assets to keep dry in the rain. The days of a single income blue collar family owning a home outright in less than a decade are long gone, and I know of 190k household couples now priced out of crappy suburbs.
It isn’t going to change until God changes it.
There is no god, so he won’t be changing it - but well written legislation might. The first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging there is one, and to that effect calling a spade a spade - of course it’s human nature for those who can to maximise their wealth, but I’ve also got the right to treat them like the parasites they are when they claim to be ‘providing’ anything after they hoard it all, then earn a living by exploiting multiple people’s need for shelter who, without multi-property scabs like landlords, would be buying and selling less affected by speculative values. Landlords don’t provide a service, they’re a cartel keeping house prices high.
Yes, but it isn’t fair to expect anyone to provide housing at their own personal loss. I agree that people need homes, and we’re on the same page there. However, consider it this way. If you could earn more by charging a higher amount, would you charge less out of generosity, or would you try to maximize your income? This applies to anything. If you’re selling a car, would you sell it for less just to be nice, or would you sell it to the highest bidder? People need cars too. You see my point?
Then don’t provide housing at all, let the market be affordable enough that people can buy housing. All rental companies provide is a funnel to keep the impoverished from saving their money to buy a home they can’t fathom according anyways. Same thing with house flippers. Buying a shit hole and giving it a paint job should not make it worth 3x the value you bought it at. Affordable housing is not the job of citizens, it is the job of the government and the government is doing its job making said housing, more attainable through rent caps.
If the government gets involved, the owners will just sell, making homeownership even more unaffordable and reducing rent options. What you want is less greed in the world, and that isn’t going to happen in its current state.
I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.
people don’t need cars the same way they need shelter and food. I’m sick of landlords acting like they’re providing some kind of social service when they financially benefit from the arrangement at the expense of the tenant, whom unlike the landlord has nothing to show for years of renting, where the landlord has now paid off their mortgage and has more capital to purchase further properties… Its an inherently self concentrating system - a renter will struggle more to buy a single property than a landlord does to add “another investment to their portfolio” through more favourable loan securitization and asset evaluation.
Landlords provide housing the same way scalpers provide tickets - considering they amass a huge majority of a working individual’s income despite contributing nothing themselves and sitting sedentary for their serfs to pay their wages, I dont really give a shit what income maximisation they pursue. Anything more than a dollar is a profit, and one which they are just as likely to have “earned” from inheritance as they are from any actual hard work and skilful property quisition.
If it’s so tragic and unprofitable to be a landlord, might I suggest selling up and getting the fuck out of the equation, instead of playing monopoly with the housing supply and acting like you’re a saint for refusing to fix the fucking mould problem, so I can pay for your ugly family’s next holiday instead of having a stable roof over my head.
I have no vested interest, as I’m not a landlord. My point is that people generally won’t settle for less when they can earn more. Regardless of how essential the item or service is, businesses and individuals will always aim to maximize their earnings if the market allows it. It would be a poor financial decision not to. Whether someone feels resentful because others profit off of them (which, by the way, is all of us in America when we buy foreign goods who use children for harvesting raw materials or other labor), it’s irrelevant to the situation. It isn’t going to change until God changes it.
I don’t hold off renting because it’s a luxury I can do without, I rent because it’s an inelastic need for shelter, and I don’t have anywhere near enough capital to pursue ownership. The issue is that landlords are not just an enterprising part of that dynamic, they knowingly and maliciously gouge prices far in excess of any actual tangible value of their shitbox studio, because they know that if it’s difficult to move and everybody else is doing it, they can bleed their working single-mother tenant dry. At the end of that transaction, the mother has invested in the owner’s 4th mortgage and gets evicted when she falls a week behind, with less wealth than she had to start with. That’s why there was this article about capping RAISES to rent in an LA county.
Here in Australia (we’re not all american), it’s becoming a really significant problem - housing has been nearly entirely commodified since the millennium, while social housing and support services have effectively crumbled. My rent in Sydney is now 80% of my income alone - and that’s for a below average rent and an above average income - I’ve been fortunate, and I’m still at the point of having to sell assets to keep dry in the rain. The days of a single income blue collar family owning a home outright in less than a decade are long gone, and I know of 190k household couples now priced out of crappy suburbs.
There is no god, so he won’t be changing it - but well written legislation might. The first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging there is one, and to that effect calling a spade a spade - of course it’s human nature for those who can to maximise their wealth, but I’ve also got the right to treat them like the parasites they are when they claim to be ‘providing’ anything after they hoard it all, then earn a living by exploiting multiple people’s need for shelter who, without multi-property scabs like landlords, would be buying and selling less affected by speculative values. Landlords don’t provide a service, they’re a cartel keeping house prices high.