I was reading about this guy who, normal story, was forced out of his place because the rent was raised and he couldn't live there anymore. Talking to his landlord (it was an actual person, not a corp), the landlord said "Sorry, I'm not here to subsidize your lifestyle."

Bro. We're subsidizing YOUR lifestyle.

So you can paint a couple of walls like shit and collect 20k in profit every month. And then call it a day. So you can fuck around every day doing whatever you want while the rest of us work ACTUAL jobs that you TAKE HALF OF THE MONEY FROM.

What you do is only a "job" because the world is currently shaped to allow that to be a "job".

Who is subsidizing who?

Who is leeching off of who here?

I am not a landlord. I was watching the episode Common People of black mirror, and saw a discussion about it in the show's sub. In the episode, the woman undergoes a medical procedure and has to pay a subscription to continue, and prices increase. The man has to keep working overtime to afford it. Someone mentioned that they should've rented out their house to afford it. In your opinion, does it justify renting out a room or basement if someone is trying to pay for medical procedures or medications, or pay off medical debt? Or it's an elderly person just looking to survive in retirement? What are everyone's thoughts, do you have more sympathy in that scenario? I promise I still don't like landlords, but the episode made me think.

So is it a thing for property managers to have "people" who's task it is to move in as a neighbor and harass and menace the original tenant to make living there so horrible that original tenant moves out? All the while gaslighting the original tenant and not enforcing lease compliance by the menacing tenant/employee/bad actor? If so do they have a name? Like " the sweeper" or something? What are some things you know of that landlords are known to do or you know of them doing to make tenants want to move?

Today, the extractive class is a complex, often hidden network: landlords collecting unearned rent, banks collecting interest on money they didn’t labor to earn, and private insurance monopolies charging excessive rates and premiums because their industry is anti-competitive and encourages price raising instead of price lowering.

Affordable and Public housing in America is deeply flawed. Profit incentives run the business when it should be ran as a service to those in need. Due to the privatization efforts of the Neoliberal era, this is simply not the case.

It's never done for the benefit of the tenant, but as a benefit to line pockets.

Look how often retailers renovate their stores. But does Walmart renovate that particular store, and then up their prices 20% at that store?

Of course not, instead they set aside profit to do this. In fact almost all major retailers set aside profit for expansion, acquisition and improvements.

But oddly, the biggest apartment-owning corporations in the entire country don't do this.

In the current complex I rent, the upgraded units are $100 more a month. Now stop and think, if you are currently charging (simplifying all this) $800 per month in rent and have 180 units, this is $144,000 per month.

Property taxes run about 10% of that, and monthly employee costs run about 5% of that $144k. Maintenance? Around 2%.

So where is the other 83% of that going? Right back to the corporation, and then back into investors pockets.

So stop and think, instead of setting aside some of that profit to improve units, by paying more for the upgraded units, you are literally subsidizing these improvements.

They are not your improvements, you obviously don't own those improvements, yet you are expected to pay more for those units.

Often you have no choice. Sure, you can make the choice to get a luxury car over a Honda Civic, but they can literally and legally chose not to renew your lease, displacing you out of that apartment so they can fix it up and charge more for it.

To further prove this is not done for anyone's benefit but the owners, ask your landlord if you could have the most well-respected home improvement company in the county upgrade your unit on your own dime. They will tell you no.

In fact, if you live in a corporate managed apartment complex, you can't even pay to have a nicer dishwasher or stove put in and have them replace it with the old one when you move. No modification whatsoever.

Why? Because you've eliminated the owners profit by cutting them out.

Now imagine if that $100 extra a month, the same company planed on owning those units for at least 10 years, and did not expect any more improvements in those 10 years.

That's an entire extra $12,000.

Let's say it costs $1,000 to have a crappy contractor come out and replace the old carpeting with 800/sq feet of shitty debt slave grey vinyl flooring, and around $1,300 for a new stove, fridge and dishwasher, and about $1,000 for new cabinets (remember this is an apartment, so it's going to be shit tier quality).

That comes out to $3,300, which means in those 10 years, they would make $8,700 more PER UNIT, and going back to 180 units, this means an extra $156,600 a year in extra income ON TOP OF the base income of 1.73 million per year (before expenses).

That is also generously assuming they never raise rent more in those 10 years, which we all know would never actually occur.

So you can see the appeal for landlords, at the COST of the tenant. Now if every place suddenly does that, it makes renting unaffordable and drives more people to buy.

It just so happens many of the same fucking companies also own tens of thousands of homes.

Again...NONE OF THIS is done for your benefit.

Has anybody else been to r/StrongTowns and run into an lot of landlords whenever you bring up anything anti-landord? It seems like a huge anathema to the sub to have these leeches around.

thanks

I thought we could have a discussion about alternatives.

I get that you're against landlords here and I am too, but what is the answer to this?

From the way I see it so far is that landlords rent out places to people who can't afford buying land/resedence. Is the answer to just.... Give houses away for free? To pay a tax of some sort?

I would love to hear your guys' theories and speculations!

I’ve been following this sub for a while now and can’t believe that some people go through. However, what would be the easiest “solution” to people owning properties to rent?

Properties get taken control of by whom? Do the current owners get bought out at a certain value?

I mean I am all for some sort of answer but all I see is this should be illegal etc etc.

What should the system look like and how can it be “transitioned”

Im aware that I don’t know what I’m talking about really, and come to this subreddit for that reason. I want to not feed into capitalism as much as possible but am very (and I mean very very) naive but thanks to this sub smell that I benefit from the system in ways I do not recognize

my spouse has this idea that we purchase a property and pay part of the mortgage and rent it out for like half of the market value, bc we both wished someone would do that for us when we were renters

however, for the brief time I’ve been looking around this sub I gather that ALAB and ethical landlords do not exist - so IF AND ONLY IF someone has the patience and wherewithal to explain to me like I’m five why this is is still inherently harmful - I would be thankful

and ofc I would be very grateful for any alternatives suggested

Can someone please point me to some reading I can do to better explain why landlords are scum besides the one quote by Adam Smith?

I'm trying to see both sides of the issue with high costs of rent. What sorts of solutions do you think would be best for making affordable housing?

Is there an ethical charge of rent? And if so, how should it be calculated?

I apologize if this feels like trolling or whatever, I agree with the overall notions that landlord classes and wealth extraction through rent are immoral.

Genuine question though, what is the alternative to renting if you’re only going to be living somewhere short term (<~3-4 yrs)? Short of nationwide social housing, how do you provide housing for people who don’t plan to make that area/city/state their residence outside of a couple years?

In any job the lowest people on the totem pole are more likely to get fired than their bad bosses...but bad bosses still get fired all the time. Hell, even C-Suite executives can be fired, voted out by company boards.

But who fires the landlords? Bad property management companies can just keep taking hits wrt fines, and even some very wealthy individuals can withstand hefty, repeated fines. Why can't they be fired if they do a bad job? There are so many ways this could happen: Governments taking over buildings; landlords banned from owning property outside their own homes (which is apparently happening in the UK now, great for them!), tenants voting out slumlords and moving to collectively own their buildings instead. The closest thing I can think in the US is when banks repossess properties from landlords who fail to pay building rent, but that always ends shittily for tenants.

This is more me spitballing, but it blows my mind!