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Rent is theft
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Rent isn't theft. It's payment for a service. Whether or not that service is of value to you is a different story, but not everyone is interested in owning.
There are benefits to renting. You don't have to be financially responsible for repairs, you don't have to do maintenance or pay someone to do it for you, you have much less financial risk, and you can relocate much easier.
And not all landlords are rich people. I do agree that corporate ownership of residential property shouldn't be allowed, though.
What service does the land speculator provide to the tenant? The landlord doesn't develop the property, that's the builder. The landlord doesn't maintain the property, that's done by contractors. The landlord doesn't secure the property, that's done by the state. The landlord often doesn't even finance the property, as the property is inevitably mortgaged and underwritten by banks one step removed from the title holder.
Quite literally, the only thing landlords do is collect the check and transfer portions of it onward. They are, at best, payment processors. And even this job is routinely outsourced to a third party.
There are lower institutional barriers to renting than to owning, largely resulting from the artificial shortage of public land and public housing. Rents are the consequence of real estate monopolization and public malinvestment. Once the landlords themselves vanish, the "benefits" of renting vanish with them.
There's an old joke Donald Trump likes to tell, back in the 90s when he was underwater on his personal holdings. He's driving through Lower Manhattan in a limo with his daughter and he points out the window to a homeless man. Then he quips, "I'm $800M poorer than that man". To which his daughter replies, "If that's true why are we in a limo while he's out on the street?"
Should hotels be illegal too? That’s basically renting out a room by the day. What if you cannot afford to buy a house, or only want to live somewhere temporarily? If you cannot rent any place to live, what would you do?
As with most things, it is a matter of degree.
If they're monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer's budget?
You posit that people can't afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
In that article, the word "investors" is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter. Underhanded semantic maneuver. Within the same article:
Corporations are people, my friend.
Is ownership less virtuous in a partnership than a sole proprietorship somehow?
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil’.
Among probably many reasons that housing is unaffordable for many is that some persons or corporations are awful scumbags that want to maximize their profit beyond what is reasonable or fair.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Abuse of these things is a core feature of capitalism. How can you contradict yourself so quickly?
The world is not black and white. I don’t accept the validity of your claim.
Shelter is a fundamental human need, locking it behind an unnecessarily high and ever increasing pay wall is the epitome of abuse. Landlords are leeches.
You gotta look at the nuance here. Yes, high and ever increasing rent is bad and it's because of the abuse and poor regulation of the system. And traditional lords of the land is pretty bad however you slice it. But small landlords now can be providing a needed service. It's a lot of work keeping a house rentable - even if you are 'just' organizing contractors, accountants, lawyers, etc.
Yes it is. But you and I both said it. It is abuse of capitalism.
I would support some idea that corporations cannot own property like single homes solely for the purpose of profit. And any single person should be heavily taxed on rental income, at least beyond a certain point.
And let’s use eminent domain to take back those empty houses and put people in them.
But there’s still lots of people who would prefer to rent than own.
The problem is not landlords. And the problem is not capitalism. The problem is unfettered greed. Greed is not good, despite what Michael Douglas said in that movie.
Capitalism is most definitely bad tho, like come on.
Well, it's a way to incentivize people to use their resources to provide services for others. It would be nice if people just did that on their own, but humans are generally too lazy.
Citation needed.
All rent is bad and all forms of landlords are evil. They are a separate class with legal mandate to steal the labor value of the working class. They serve no function whatsoever and it is entirely conceivable that an apartment building's occupants could pool money together for repairs when that is necessary.
Shelter is a human right. Housing is a human right. Landlords are not mechanics, they are not repair men, they are not construction workers, they are not laborers. Some Landlords may do some of those things, but it doesn't change the fact that by virtue of stealing from the working class they are still evil. If they want to do repair work, I should be able to simply pay them for the repair work they do. If they want to do property maintenance work, I should be able to simply pay them for the property maintenance. They have a legal document enabling them to steal half of my income every month for no reason. They do not live in my home, I live in my home. If I stopped living there it wouldn't be my home anymore.
There are 0 downsides to entirely rejecting the housing market. Housing is a human right, it should be fairly distributed to everyone. I couldn't give a fuck about real estate markets, they could all dissappear today and no one would ever profit off of housing again and not a single tear would be shed. I'd really like it if everyone could have a fucking home. All Landlords are evil. There are NO exceptions. If they collect rent for someone else's home, they are evil.
If I own a house that is too big for me, and I can’t afford the taxes and upkeep, so I rent out some rooms to make a little money.
I am now a landlord. Are you suggesting that I am evil? That it should not be allowed?
I think you are conflating slum lords and greedy corporations with any and all people who have rental properties. Something, something… deals in absolutes.
You are not a landlord if you are sharing your home, you would be a roommate. If you are charging them rent, then yes you are a landlord :) no should ever profit off of housing! Housing is a human right! No one should ever have to sleep in your home, everyone should be able to have their own shelter that belongs to them! This is an absolutely conceivable reality homelessness is entirely a manufactured byproduct of capitalism. We have millions of empty homes and wasted infrastructure that could be used to house people.
I think we're a bit beyond good and evil.
Sure sure sure. Love the sin, hate the sinner.
The key thing that the landlord handles is risk. If the roof is very expensive to fix, that is not the contractor's problem. If the property does not generate revenue, that is not the bank's problem. If the property is not worth the cost to build, that is not the builder's problem. If the property is unsafe to live in, that is not the renter's problem.
The landlord's financial risk in the property (should) provide an incentive to maintain and make use of that property.
I'm not saying there aren't other system of distribution people to homes, and I'm not saying that the capitalist system in the US is the best system to do it. I'm just pointing out that a core principle of capitalism is risk, and that is what the landlord provides, a single point buffer of risk for the other parties involved.
Go and have a look at property prices over the last 50 years and see how risky it is.
This is completely ignorant of the fact that landlords can get insurance for those things and often dont have to pay anything at all. And when they do have to pay themselves, they will pay the minimum amount possible to maximize their profits often resulting in degrading housing that people living in suffer the consequences for.
Housing is a human right. Capitalism commits violence against the people by denying them shelter. It's a crime against humanity. Landlords exist only to profit off of this system. By your own exact definition all homeowners are the same point of risk mitigation, and therefore all renters would also be the same point of risk mitigation. Landlords have inserted themselves as a middle man to steal the labor of the working class. They profit off of the venture. Thats the whole point of them doing it.
You're intentionally leaving out that the landlord maintains the property and appliances. That's no small thing.
There are absolutely bad landlords who will do as little as their tenants will allow them to, for sure. Landlords aren't like cops though, the continuing existence of bad landlords is not enabled by good ones like how "good cops" do.
The landlord uses my rent money to pay others to maintain the property. It's an entirely middle man position of zero value to society
You can own a property and pay landscapers and handyman for less than the cost of renting. Hell, I've had landlords pay property managers to handle even that.
Good landlords will only be as good as they need to be, to continue renting. In a housing shortage, that means they will keep getting worse over time, doing little and hearing little from their tenants who have only ever dealt with predatory landlords.
They will almost always charge as much as they can, not doing anything to help the renters.
The exceptions to this will be invisible on the market, because renters will do everything in their power to never move out or change their situation.
Long time renters are trapped, because they are paying nearly as much as a mortgage, and getting no equity from it, unable to save a down payment to get out of it.
Renting to seasonal, temp workers or students is about the only exception where renting is a necessary service, but currently its way over priced, so its not a great value. So still predatory.
Keep dodging.
This "landlords are purely evil and rent is stealing" discourse doesn't do any of us any good. It's dishonest and makes people with sense not want to join your cause. If we actually want to make housing better and more available, we can't be wasting our time throwing with this.
Which of my statements are false?
The ability to live somewhere that otherwise would have been reversed?
I am lucky enough to be able to own a home. I can live here, and nobody else. But if I decided to rent my home out and they paid me rent, they could live here instead!
They could also live there if you sold it to them.
Only if they can afford its price.
Who gets to originate the claim on property? Who gets to set the price and collect on the sale?
As mentioned elsewhere, owning isn't necessarily for everyone.
Freedom isn't necessarily for everyone has also been mentioned throughout time. Slavery has existed all through history.
That doesn't make it ok but anyone who is an enslavery or aspiring enslaver is going to argue some people want to be slaves.
Removing and restricting the agency of others is never ok. When it's for economic gain, it's always exploitation.
The big difference being that one thing being owned is completely inanimate, and the other is a literal human being against their will 🤷♂️
The land speculators do not provide access to the tenant, they prohibit access. That's what inclosure is. You're blocking people from the land on pain of injury and death.
Until the state decrees otherwise, sure.
There are three people and three houses. How do you decide which of the three people owns all three houses and which of the other two pay that first person rent?
Been renting the last 20 years, and I can rightfully say FUCK YOU!!!
In the interest of pedantry, technically you are correct.
Land ownership is theft, rent is just the symptom.
By that logic owning anything is theft.
Mostly, yeah. In the western world, anyways, pretty much everything we have was gained via theft. So it isn't earned and we shouldn't treat property like it's gained via merit.
You're almost there!
Spot the landlord
Sure there's a service and the owner has costs, but it's actually quite unrelated to the rental price in most places. I think the question is about the regulation of markets for basic life requirements. Alternatives aren't very appealing IMHO: social aids (taxes on the rich), charity (by the rich), or persistent homelessness.
Can you agree it's at least exploitative?
I dunno man. When we moved into our apartment we got a new water heater, new washer/dryer, new kitchen sink, and HVAC repaired within the first couple weeks. We've gotten multiple smaller things fixed as well including exterior tuck pointing to fix a leak.
Sometimes I lament not owning, but that would have all been out of pocket if we had bought a property as is with those issues. Didn't cost us a dime.
There are undeniable benefits to renting. I rent. It's still a for-profit business in the end, though, and per capitalism, they'll fuck you as hard as you let them.
But I also fuck them as hard as they let me. And in my city and state, which have very strong tenants' rights protections, my fucking goes a long way.
Good on you.
It's hard for most people who see rent rise faster than salary. Which is the case for most of the United States.
It can be exploitative, but it's not automatically so. Both parties benefit from the agreement in different ways.
I don't mean to be shocking, but this feels very much like "she orgasmed when I molested her".
The other option is homelessness. You rent at the barrel of a gun. How could you possibly call that consent?