NANCY BRIER: My name’s Nancy Brier (ph). I have four properties. The biggest property that we have is six units. So, you know, really small-time landlords. We sort of know all of our tenants. You know, so I’ve been doing this for 30 years now and have really seen every kind of housing situation that you can think of.
LUIS EDWIN SANCHEZ: Luis Edwin Sanchez (ph), born and raised in San Francisco. I’m 62 years old, journeyman union carpenter, retired. I had to take early disability retirement a couple years ago and had a pretty decent life until I got hurt (laughter), and things changed dramatically. But, yeah, so I know what the people who are sleeping on the city streets in tents right now are going through because I’ve been there - three times. And I’m not happy to say that it’s a very good possibility it may happen again. I’m currently on the Section 8 waitlist for a voucher. It’ll probably take me another 10 years, if I live that long. I mention that because of how huge the need is.
BRIER: Can I say one quick thing? My last Section 8 tenant just moved, and that family was in this unit for nine years. And I’m very happy that we were able to provide them with nice housing for all that time. But I swear, when that family moved out, I could hear the angels singing. I have another tenant I’ve had for over 20 years. The piece of paper that we have with our rental agreement is one side of one page. And for the Section 8 family that we housed, I have boxes and boxes and boxes of papers. It was insane. So, you know, maybe the reason that you can’t find a Section 8 house, which I wish you could, is because the system makes it too hard for somebody like me to give it to you.
Nancy, there is literally nothing stopping you from giving this injured homeless worker a place besides your own self interest.
Of course, American society will eat you alive if you don’t relentlessly pursue your self interest almost all of the time and all of us are just one illness and a few years of bad luck from being where Luis is at, but let’s just be honest about what the situation is here.
BRIER: If I could wave the magic wand, I would want the government to make renting housing less risky for small-time landlords. How can we provide housing that isn’t crazy expensive?
And If I could wave a magic wand the government would take all of Nancy’s non-residential properties from her and just start running them as free public housing with onsite social workers and maintenance technicians.
Also, they’d provide taxpayer funded nutrition support and education for anyone who wants it, including Nancy.
Four properties, max six units per property. She owns about between nine and 24 homes, each of which probably has multiple people living in (just because that’s what’s needed to pay rent in a lot of places). She probably owns the homes of 20-40 people
This really annoys me to because my dream at one point was to have a flat. Maybe as many as six. To live and rent out. That used to be how its done. A supplement but not your main job except maybe in retirement and you have it paid off which will make it easier to hire help in your old age for upkeep. But now its a business and people buy one and once they have another down payment buy another and so on and so forth. Flats were the person who owns it lives on the property are great but if they don’t then often times its worse than a standard apartment complex. It often becomes like slum landlords. And of course your seeing this with single family homes to with people owning a series like its an apartment building. Its sickening. If you want to own an apartment building then that is what you should buy. localities should treat residences rented out were the owner does not live there like apartments as far as taxes and regulation. With air BnB it should be treated like hotels.
