sexist against landladies
All y’all need to read about Georgism.
I think technically people that own their own homes are landlords too, but I get what you mean.
From Wikipedia
A landlord is the owner of property such as a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate that is rented or leased to an individual or business, known as a tenant.
So, I’d say you’re technically wrong :D
We’d have a lot of empty houses and maybe cheaper houses.
Look. Personally, I love renting. Its fleksible.i can move whenever i want to and not think about selling. Also i can live in places where houses are practically unsellable and not worry that I can’t sell once I want to live somewhere else
Also, I don’t have to worry about repairing and maintaining the house. If I window breaks, I call the landlord. If a pipe breaks a leak, I call the landlord. For me, renting is great!
I’d be happy to rent if the value of houses didn’t double every decade.
Here in Australia you really just work so you can pay your mortgage. The wealth you accrue through your life is mostly the value of your house rather than the money you save.
Government housing
Have you seen what that looks like in the US? It ain’t pretty or comfortable.
That’s like buying something that’s “military grade” thinking it’s good. It’s not.
Sounds a little ironic in a solarpunk sub but works as a measure in the economic system we live in today I suppose.
@cosmicrookie @stabby_cicada you could still have rental houses in a system with no landlords
@cosmicrookie @stabby_cicada I mean for example with housing cooperatives
Just imagine paying the half of it, for supporting local workers for maintenance and fixups instead of a random nobleman’s holidays in paradise…
wow look at mister lives in the good part of town over here where landlords pick up the phone
I just add nuance to a point that all landlords should not exist.
We can have low-commitment apartments without landlords. Landlords are an unnecessary medium between you and a roof over your head. That doesn’t mean you have to be responsible for the roof over your head, just that the landlord is milking you for more than the roof is worth.
One way is we could just have a system where you sign up for the type of housing you want and the government gives it to you when one such becomes available. If you want to live in a detached home with 3 bedrooms where you’re more responsible for fixing stuff, you sign up for that. Maybe families are given priority for those. If you want to live in an apartment where you have to sign a waiver to put a nail in the wall, then you sign up for that. The landlord is only here to siphon money out of your pocket and into his. If the rent instead went to a country-wide pool that paid for house maintenance and new construction, rent would be significantly cheaper for everyone except maybe rural farms but that’s a weird case where exceptions can be made because farmers work the land they live on so it’s different.
The point is: your landlord is useless. It might seem like a good deal if you can’t think beyond the systems we live in, now, but it isn’t.
My brother in Christ you’re the one paying for those repairs and more yourself, it’s not like the landlord does it personally. Some might to save a buck, but you’re still paying the bill.
Oh and all those repairs are tax deductible so they will pay less than you will on taxes usually.
Oh and if they would have to pay taxes, you’re paying the taxes for them.
This is how everything you buy works. When you buy bread from the store you’re paying more than it costs to make.
My point is, that I am willing to pay the landlord, to handle these responsibilities and risks
Edit: and inconvenience
Exactly, but the difference is that you don’t buy anything from your landlord
These are basic principles dude. Just like you dont buy anything off a guy who mows your lawn or a taxi driver.
You buy a service. It doesn’t mean that it is not worth the money
You’re paying them for having had at the right time the capital to get hold of a limited resource that’s required by people to live, which they now block you from getting or using unless you pay them.
You’re paying a ransom, not buying a service.
If there were lots of houses available to buy at prices which were affordable to all and some people were landlords letting those who chose not to buy (for example because they were only somewhere temporarily) then, yeah, landlords would be providing an actual service, but that’s not at all the system we have and plenty of people who want to buy in practice cannot, so have no other option in order to have a place to live than to pay the ransom to those who do have the capital to buy (or did, back when it was cheaper) and used it to capture that resource that’s required by others.
Literally renting a home is not a service. Service creates something of a value, and adds it to the world. What is the property rent’s “service”? Did they replace furniture with gold in the recent years? Or given the rent hikes, did the gave you a blowjob or smthing, as a part of the “service”?
Look, I get the sentiment.
But conceptually, landlords do present a service.
There is time value in being able to call a singular person and say ‘my stove is broken’ and not have to do anything else.
Yes you can do it yourself if you have the time and skill, it is a hassle finding the right stove, at the right price, getting it delivered or picking it up, finding, hiring, and going under contract with individual people to do installation, managing warranties, etc.
A lot of people don’t want to do that, a lot of people are also comfortable paying a premium to have someone do stuff that they don’t want to do.
There is value in being a broker, and that is a landlords primary job, the maintenance and responsibilities are abstracted away to the renter.
I really hate to burst your bubble, but I am technically a landlord. I own a duplex, I rent out the other half to my brother and fiance, and we’re all paying the same amount into the mortgage, but for all legal purposes I’m their landlord.
In my experience as a renter and a landlord, if we’re talking about the convenience factor, it’s still easier to be a landlord.
That “one phone call to fix a thing”, assuming they bother to actually fix it, is one phone call for a landlord to just get some guy to do it. So that’s the same amount of effort.
Landlords usually have to put in even less effort, because there’s entire companies who’s job it is to be property management, so most don’t have to even make one phone call to fix anything.
As someone who owns a home now, it’s less of a pain than renting. I have been putting work into the house to change it because I can and don’t need permission from a landlord to do so. If something is broken I can have someone fix it without having to go through a landlord to decide whether or not to call someone.
So yeah, if there wasn’t a homelessness problem and everyone had a house, and some people didn’t want to bother with it, maybe I could see in that world a landlord existing like a hotel service or property manager for individuals, but when people are dying in the streets because some greedy corporations and selfish assholes keep all the housing and extort everyone who wants shelter, that’s fucked up.
People’s problem with landlords isn’t about personal convenience, and you should maybe look beyond yourself. It doesn’t matter if you find it more personally convenient, it’s part of a problem that’s killing people, and if you’re still cool with that because you think it’s slightly easier for you personally, you’re a selfish, horrible person.
Saying that you add nuance with that comment, is like saying anti-vaxers add nuance with their views.
It is proven time and time again that when something is done against landlords the normal people benefit. See Vienna for example, or the early ccp or the whole movement of and views of Henry George.
You can also see full video about the topic in Britain here
Sure. But no matter how many videos I watch or how many articles I read about how terrible landlords can be, it won’t change the fact that I dont want to own a property and also that there are people who are unable to buy. There are also people who are not in that stage of life where they want to have ties to a house.
Its not black or white.
Hence nuanced
I might be in the wrong place, discussing and interesting topic though.
You are having a false dichotomy here, it is not either no landlords or no rental properties.
That is the whole point, you can have all the benefits and more without landlords.
You might be right. I can’t see it though, besides public housing, which imo isn’t a long term viable solution. At least not to me.
The thus is, that I live in a country where landlords have been strictly regulated and there are rules to how much rent they can take, how much they can raise it and over what period of time.
public housing, which imo isn’t a long term viable solution.
Why not? And also where is the line between heavily regulated private sector and a public one?
Thing is, someone owns those houses and it’s certainly not poor people like me. Also we need more housing in most western countries and private entities are definitely not going to build it if they can’t rent it out. We need to figure out a way to force public entities like the state to build more housing.
A communist (or similar) revolution might take care of it, but that’s a lot more involved than “all landlords disappear”.
If all those people that have money to build houses were forced to give it away (taxes), we the people (the government) could just build the houses and not charge exorbitant rent.
The hard part is how to actually make the government do that. And ideally without turning your state into a stalinist or maoist dystopia.
We’d have more houses, they gotta live somewhere too
So a net positive…
In the number of houses available, yes
