I’m struggling to understand this. What class of human puts other people before their own income? I’m not a landlord and I’m not putting my income in jeopardy to help a hobo out.
X/Twitter post by user 🎇 K8 is a Danger to The Republic 🎇 @K84UnitedLeft reading:
"The point of class analysis isn’t to say that your landlord is a bad person, it’s to say that your landlord has class interests that directly oppose your own.
“They might not treat you like shit, but when push comes to shove they will put their income before your wellbeing.”
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That’s true of literally any transactional relationship. Everyone is trying to get as much as they can for as little as possible. Including employees trying to get as much pay for as little work. It’s normal.
Yeah. It also pretends like a landlords income isn’t related to their wellbeing. In some cases it might not be, but for most mom and pop landlords it directly is.
Also: I’m a renter with zero interest in owning real estate. I know many people with rental properties (who are therefore landlords) that I am significantly wealthier than. A lot of people are struggling to pay rent and I get that, but believe it or not so are a lot of these land owners. So there’s just a lot of unbridled rage towards against anyone they have to pay rent to, especially around here.
I think its clear that what we are seeing is the result of decades of exponential growth. No shit houses have quadrupled in price in the last generation or so, what do you think is going to happen with 10% ROI per year? That’s just how it works. Not the landlords fault at all. Idk who to blame or how to fix it but, well, uh, there it is.
There are a lot of leftists here. The focus is usually on exploitation, not on wealth (though, these are often correlated). A shitty small farmer may not be very wealthy, but him making a meager living off the labor of underpaid migrant workers and having them live in unsafe shacks is still exploitation.
Why should real estate have any ROI? Why should people be able to own and make money off property that they don’t use, but other people literally need to survive?
I, personally, don’t hate single-property landlords or whatever, I just hate the system. I do kinda hate larger companies because they are just machines to generate more wealth for the already wealthy, with no regard for anything or anybody else.
Because it’s an asset like any other and prices reflect the same fundamentals that drive everything else in the world. And when I mention 10%/yr ROI I’m citing the average annual return on equity, not even RE specifically. But since RE has a strong positive correlation with stocks and commodities there’s no wonder prices have increased exponentially along with everything else.
Everyone is trying to get as much as they can for as little as possible
That’s literally as rational as it gets.
Thanks for being yet another total fucking asshole on Lemmy. This place is by far the most toxic shithole I’ve ever been on the internet. You’re like the tenth person I’m blocking now. Incredible.
That’s just a good thing to remember in general: no matter how good of a relationship you have with someone, whether it be a coworker or a friend, at the end of the day, most of them will put their own interest over yours.
Where are all these single owner landlords? Everything here is owned by management companies and the ‘landlord’, more propertt manager, is an employee who gets a free rental unit to live in while they have the job.
In my country it’s bad in a different way - there are no single owner landlords that actually manage their lads, they all hand it over to a management company.
I miss the days where you could find a landlord who was an old Italian dude who would manage it all himself. My parents had multiple rentals that was like that. One of them the landlord lived across the street. And all of them the properties were well maintained and we could actually get stuff fixed. And half the time we’d end up staying there 2-6 years longer than the lease agreement.
Now you can’t find that to save your life, our current house, sure rent is comparatively low as we got in before the rental crisis. But they don’t fix shit and when they do, it’s half assed and dad ends up having to fix the fix.
The lack of communication and human connection between tenant and landlord results in problematic treatment and negligence. That connection honestly keept the landlord honest. We were friends with all our single owner self managed landlords, and any inspections we had usually meant cracking a beer in the backyard.
“They might not treat you like shit, but when push comes to shove they will put their income before your wellbeing.” Yes, you know, just like any business. Just like you do for them. Would you pay them extra rent to improve THEIR wellbeing? No? Why would you expect the opposite?
Just because you have a more personalized relationship with your landlord than the McDonalds down the street, why would you expect that they let you stay in their house for free when you lose your job? Do you expect McD’s to give you a free meal if you walk in after you’ve lost your job? For a month? For 6 months?
I own a 2nd house across the street from mine that I rent to my parents. After I pay mortgage, taxes, and insurance, I probably lose about ~$100 each month in that arrangement. (This is cash flow. Increasing equity means I’m making money overall, but not a ton). I charge them $3000 per month which is actually below market rate here and they have good retirement savings so they can easily afford it.
If they were a normal tenant and they quit paying mortgage I would lose $3k out of pocket each month. $18k if they didn’t pay rent for 6 months. $36k if not for a full year. For my parents I would just eat those costs. It would hurt, but I would get by. Do you all expect that I should do that for any random person I’m renting the house to? Should I also continue working for my boss also if he quits paying me? Do you pay rent for your neighbor if he loses his/her job?
I really don’t get the landlord is evil view. The landlord has an asset (a building and property) and they’re renting it out. It’s a business, just like if they’re a restaurant or a construction company. Unless they have a monopoly on the land and buildings in your area, I don’t see how they’re any more evil than the other businesses you’re dealing with every day.
Landlords individually may not be evil, but the landlording class is opposed to the working class. Like you said landlording is a business and they will try to get as much rent out of you as possible, and in turn the tenant will try and pay as little rent as possible. This is class conflict. Any person, or structure or system your in conflict with over basic necessities like housing you may call evil, if your inclined to the good and evil morality view.
The critique of landlords is that they are a small, wealthy and powerful class extracting wealth from a larger and poorer class while not actually producing anything. They don’t produce housing, they just use their capital to buy it and then rent it out. McDonald’s may be taking money from the poor but at least they’re producing the burgers they sell.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m on the side of the landlords here, but I don’t think individuals who own and rent out a few properties are part of the problem. In fact, there should be more people like that.
I think it’s the large corporations owning tons of properties across multiple cities or even countries that are the issue. Houses shouldn’t be treated as financial products or investment vehicles for massive entities, they are places for people to live. It’s insane to have more empty houses than homeless people, there is no justifying that. I think requiring companies to have local offices in the cities they have properties would go a long way to address this.
I’m currently trying to convince the company that manages my current place that yes, they do have our insurance and to please stop charging us fees. They want insurance with both my wife and I 's names on it. I’ve submitted it 3 times over the last couple of months, and I swear they only read the top name on the paperwork and reject it.
Something like 3/4 of houses are getting bought up by instant cash offer corporations who sell in bundles to venture capitalist backed renting corporations.
So yes. They have an effective monopoly. Oh and they’ve also been caught working together to raise prices. Nobody is mad at the landlord renting out the second place at cost.
Where are you getting your numbers? At best corporations buy up 25% (according to online statistics), but the statistics say “investors” buy up 25%, not corporations. For example, i bought a 2nd house to rent to my parents so that would be considered “bought by an investor” I think. I think the boogieman investor-purchases are overstated from what I’ve seen. Do you have anything you can point at that can back up your numbers?
I rent my house to a woman who worked as a server in a restaurant until Covid. When restaurants were forced to close she offered me half of the rent as that was all she had. I told her to keep it, not worry and stay safe. This was when there was still a lot of uncertainty. After 3 months she started paying me again without me asking. Do you think I’m a terrible person?
Your missing the point, this is about structural incentives and class interests not individuals. The structural incentives of landlords are to keep or even raise rents, even during times of hardship. You are incentivised to take her half rent or even charge ther full rent and put her in debt because you can and it would give you the most money. You chose not to act on those incentives because your not evil but relying on people to not be horrible for an issue as crucial as housing is not a good system. We need to remake the system so these perverse incentives don’t exist, and that will require getting rid of landlords because they as a class, not individuals, have bad incentives tied to their place in the system.
You are a terrible landlord. I would have evicted and found somebody who could pay full price, and kept her security deposit to cover the transition. I doubt you are as successful of a landlord as me because you make foolish business decisions.
Even the best monarchs do not justify monarchy; it is a position inherently created for abuse. You may have a good king, or two, or ten - even kings who WILL put your wellbeing before their own interests - but invariably they will always be outnumbered by those who seek the position for the sake of abuse, or who succumb to the structure of the position which encourages abuse. Likewise with landlording. The problem isn’t with individuals, the problem is with the system.
It’s way worse than that. Any dictator (monarchs included) has to balance interests to keep their head. They literally can’t distribute wealth more freely without their top general taking over.
No king rules alone. So yes, a dictator has to keep his key positions happy. Money spent on useless citizens is money not spent for your ruling infrastructur. And uneducated hungry citizens make bad revolutuonarys.
I like this answer - succinct and to the point, but the last sentence is vague because “bad revolutionary” could mean “incompetent revolutionary” or “evil revolutionary” (am I missing a third meaning?). I’m assuming you didn’t mean evil, but even so, an “incompetent” revolutionary could have issues with the execution of the revolution (eg. lack of courage) or with the desired outcome (eg. rallying behind a populist cause blindly). Would you care to clarify?
I believe they were paraphrasing part of a CGP Grey video, and if so, then “bad revolutionary” would mean a revolutionary not fit to revolt. Either by hunger, general weakness, or incompetence.
It’s a persistent myth because the institution is set up to perpetuate it. Everything bad is the nobles, the lords, the boyars, the merchants. But if the king, all-powerful and distant, only KNEW about these abuses…
If I can make decisions unilaterally, I’ll be more efficient not having to seek as much agreement from stakeholders, as long as we assume I’ll make good decisions.
I think benevolent dictatorship can exist but only for a couple generations at best, and that is also probably exceedingly rare.
Greed being a virtue these days and corruption running rampant probably lowers these odds.
And all rulers grades are still subject to whatever constraints and opportunities their situation places them in. Without Philip investing in army and drill, Alexander could never have done what he did. Also I’m sure having an external enemy to loot and enrich your people’s is a big lever too.
I think the more interesting modern question is about democracy versus single party rule like CCP. If the big benefit of democracy is we get more and better ideas and efficiency through private industry, how does the Internet making all information globally free and the global economy change that? I fear democracy loses a lot of inherent advantage in the same way Chinese companies steal IP or copy other products.
They also have the efficiency similar to the dictators. They can much better execute 40 year plans without having to switch parties and priorities every decade. How does democracy beat that in the information age?
Yeah. Benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient government type. The only problem is the odds of getting benevolence plus the impossibility of keeping it.
are you trying to meme on its efficiency or the long odds of keeping that efficiency? It’s obviously more efficient for me to just decide things than go ask you your opinion and ‘sell’ you on it. The time I would spend getting your buy in, I can spend making more decisions. For the long odds, just look up ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’
Of all the anti-landlord arguments this has to be one of the dumbest. Of course a person is going to try to protect their income. I’m not a landlord but I’m not going to let anyone jeopardize my job.
Because landlord isn’t a job, and many don’t go through the effort of even pretending it is.
If they’re a landlord that also does carpentry jobs on a house, that’s what they are. The landlord part isn’t a job.
If they just collect rent and occasionally pay contractors, they’re just as unemployed as a welfare collector that occasionally pays for a therapist or prostitute.
How is it a dumb argument? The fact that protecting your income means potentially pushing people out of their home and onto the street is not good, that’s a problem with the system.
I don’t have excess money at the end of the month, but i still give it whenever I can. How is that relevant to landlords evicting people to save money? There shouldn’t be homeless people in the first place, let alone homeless families. But when a tenant misses rent, the landlord wont bat an eye and kicking the tenants onto the streets - that is a bad thing that shouldn’t have to happen. This has nothing to do with the landlords personal choices, or how “good” of a landlord they are, our system puts them in a position where making someone homeless is the rational decision.
Now, can you tell me what was so dumb about the original argument? Do you want to explain to me how this isn’t a systemic problem?
It’s dumb as fuck. The original argument is if a landlord doesn’t take on the financial burden and give their property to someone for free then they are somehow evil. It’s so stupid. And I don’t know what the law is where you are but in the UK a landlord can’t evict without a court order and that takes time.
No, you are misunderstanding. The point isnt that they are evil for not providing free housing, but that them pushing people onto the streets in order to protect their income is indicative a fundamental failure of our economic system. No one should be homeless.
The landlords don’t deserve that property anyways but what financial burden? Upkeep of the property that is anyways put upon the tenant? Taxes for the property that is anyways paid by the tenants rent? Repairs that are anyways paid by the tenants (even if you pay for repairs you would be using the rent money one way or another)
Or the financial burden of paying a mortgage for the property that well the tenants themselves could have gotten themselves (obviously if you are renting you probably don’t have enough up front money to get a mortgage but they sure as hell could pay the monthly sum)
The fact that you can even evict someone is awful enough doesn’t matter that there are barriers to it
The fact that protecting your income means potentially pushing people out of their home and onto the street is not good, that’s a problem with the system.
A lot of what you’re saying is true, but I dont see how any of this refutes what the OP says, and what i said previously.
I dont agree with that bit about a landlord being more vulnerable. if you’re being evicted, theres a good chance you wont be able to afford rent anywhere else. The landlord would ideally be able to sell extra properties to protect themselves and keep their home, renters dont usually own property. Where do you think people go when they can’t afford a place to live?
This is a systemic problem that wont go away unless we make housing more equitable. I mean, why should a landlord with a mortgage be able to take out multiple mortgages if a few bad tenants would actually make them homeless? No one should be homeless, banks dont need a house to live in. And as i said previously… “The fact that protecting your income means potentially pushing people out of their home and onto the street is not good,”
I dont care whether or not they like evicting people, neither do the people being evicted. The effect is the same, and people end up homeless.
The problem is capitalism, landlords shouldnt exist. Hence why i keep saying “Its a problem with the system” - the system is capitalism, which allows people to acquire more land than they need for their gain, while those who cant afford a home are exploited. I dont care how hard it it is for the landlord. I’ve listened to my mom talk about tenants she’s evicted, and no matter how shitty they are, they need a place to live. Thats the point of the post, not that landlords need to provide free housing. Its that they shouldnt exist.
I really only commented because the op in the thread seemed to be completely missing the argument of the meme, I’m not sure why that means i also have to solve Capitalism. But off the top of my head…
We could start by re-appropriating land, buildings, and housing thats is being sat on without anyone living on it, offer it to people who dont own a home at a fixed rate of some % of their current income, convert existing unused buildings to assist in the construction of social housing. We have the land, resources, and means to provide everyone with housing, it’s just an issue of distribution. Ideally, you would be provided with a home that fits your needs once a social housing system has been fully established.
I realize that I may be in the minority here, but I used to be a landlord. I never charged full market rate, and I always took care of my tenants. I never kept any security deposit money. One tenant had a breakup, and I showed up that evening with a locksmith to change her locks so he wouldn’t be a problem. That cost me some money but it didn’t cost her anything. I mean, they’re paying for service you need to provide service.
You did it right, but the only thing keeping most people honest is regulation. Until pro-tenant behavior is properly incentivized for landlords, most will remain shitty and selfish.
There are laws around renting. It’s not a free for all, at least, not where I come from. There are cases where humanity acts with generosity. This argument works both side and it’s unproductive.
Sincerely thank you for being a good person in a harmfully flawed system. You probably won’t get rewarded for it. Most likely you’ll be punished for it. But someone out there probably thinks you’re pretty cool for doing it.
And because of that, you made less money. A bastard landlord would make more money and be able to invest that money into buying more properties. Those properties would bring even more money, allowing them to buy even more property and so forth. This dynamic is why the vast majority of landlords (and capitalists in general) are bastards.
Capitalism is a system where the selfish and greedy will always triumph over the selfless and charitable. It is designed from the ground up to incentivize selfish behavior.
You’re assuming the market has other options for those tenants and that moving for a tenant is a viable option. Many many people live paycheck to paycheck for rent let alone saving up for down payments and moving costs
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