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this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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It is an asymmetric relationship. The landlord only cares if a tenant can be trusted to pay rent and not trash the place. On the other hand, the tenant is getting a service (shelter and upkeep) from the landlord.
Like other service providers, an aggregate rating is probably more appropriate. Some people are fine as long as they have a roof and indoor plumbing while others rate 1-star if the water takes a minute to warm up. Some tenants care about kitchen appliances while others care about an updated bathroom. Some like to be woken up by the first rays of sun while others want a dark room to sleep in. It is important for tenants to both get a good aggregate of a landlord's quality but also understand if the landlord's faults are ones that they care about.
Being a landlord is morally wrong. Shelter is a human right, not a service. The service that they provide is not calling the cops to evict you so long as you pay them. They don't otherwise provide you with anything.
So, grocery stores are morally wrong? I mean, food is a human right, isn't it? What about hotels?
Providing a necessary service in exchange for money isn't morally wrong.
Not everyone wants to own property. It's a huge financial liability, and a pain in the ass, tbh. I actually know people who sold their homes and moved into apartments because they were sick of the time and money required to upkeep a house.
While there are absolutely landlords who are immoral, especially corporate landlords, saying that being a landlord is inherently immoral is just incorrect.
I do agree that grocery stores are morally wrong in some sense yes. People should not have to lend their bodies in order to eat. Hotels aren't morally wrong entirely, because they're only providing a place to stay temporarily. If they did provide long term stay and charged for it than yes that would be morally wrong. You'll note that I'm an anarchist.
There is no such thing as a moral landlord. And the people you're talking about downsized. The landlord does not do repairs, he hires handyman and trades workers to do repairs. The landlord collects a tax from you while giving you nothing in return. My rent is twice the monthly cost of a mortgage for a mini home in my area.
When you have a mortgage the money isn't gone when you spend it, it's used to pay off your loan. When you're done you own the property.
I will never own this property. None of my money is returned to me. It is taken by a person or entity who literally does not provide me anything.
I'll repeat, providing shelter isn't a service. What the landlord is providing you, is not evicting you so long as you provide them a taxation of your wages that goes straight into their pocket. If all landlords died overnight nothing would materially change except for all the people renting could now keep their wages, and hire the handyman to do the work themselves. Housing co-ops also cover the costs of upkeep by pooling money to spend. No, landlords are 100% immoral 100% of the time and your buddy who's a good guy and a landlord might be a good guy but it has nothing to do with his being a landlord. Some cops save dying animals and volunteer at soup kitchens I'm sure, they're all still bastards by participating in a system of militarized state violence.
For the record, I think most people confused about your position do not believe the basic principles your stance is based on, such as profit = wage theft. Would you say so, or am I putting words into your mouth?
You must know nothing about owning a home if you think rent just goes straight into a landlord's pocket.
Also, dealing with contractors is a service that's being provided. Having to hire a contractor is often a pain in the ass.
Having both rented and owned, renting is much less stressful. You apparently don't see any value in not having to worry about maintenance, taxes, massive debt, liability, insurance, etc. which is fine, but that doesn't mean paying for it is a scam.
My rent is 50% of my income I will never get back.
No, renting is literally incomparably more stressful than owning a home would be where I could sell it at any time and get a portion of my invested income back.
If I could opt out of my landlord calling the plumber when I need one, I sure as fuck would if it meant I could keep my money. No, my rent goes straight into his pocket every month and a fraction of a fraction ever comes out to cover upkeep. I'd happily opt out and pay it myself.
You sound like you're probably decently middle class. Which is fine and I'm not saying that you have no experience being a lower class renter. But you probably are not familiar with the same financial pressures we live under today.
Landlords should not exist. Nothing would be lost if we converted every apartment building into a co-op. We would all have much more disposable income and much more control over where we lived.
Is the landlord making a profit? That comes from rent going into their pockets.
Choosing to pay for it, sure. Most renters would rather own but can't because landlords have bought up a limited supply of a resource in order to profit off it. When scalpers do that they get vilified, but do that with something necessary for survival and for some reason it becomes an investment?
"People with more money than sense would rather pay someone else to do it" is not a good argument for forcing everyone else to also pay someone else to do it.
I agree with you by principle but there are those who have no interest in ever having a house of their own, either by personal or professional reasons.
Maintaining a house entails expenses, from current maintenance, to taxes and the eventual full overhaul because someone decided to trash the place.
I don't want to see people exploited to have a roof over their head and I'm a hairs width away from starting to actively trolling stupid people that think their busted places are gold plated to ask fortunes. But I don't want to see people be deprived of what is theirs and/or see it trashed by others that consider because they are there just for a limited time frame any concern for consequences is out the window.
Where are you writing from? Tenants have pretty strong protections where I live and an eviction is not a trivial matter here. And if people actually knew how to read, the law is pretty explicit on what is licit, both for tenants and owners (the word "landlord" sounds too much like feudalism to me to use it). Rent prices are high here but a poorly kept place can backfire so badly to the owners that they can see the rent not being paid in place of having work done on the house by the tenants.
A landlord-tenant relationship isn't the only way to solve this, though. A more humane way would be housing coops.
The primary purpose of rent isn't maintenance, though; it's profit. The concept of making profit by mere ownership is even called "rent-seeking".
Well, I'm deprived of 30% of my wages. Why does my landlord need two houses, anyway?
Wow, what a classist statement. Not everyone has the time/ability/resources to take advantage of laws protecting the tenants (guess who usually has more resources for lawyers; it's the one with more capital).
Also, you ignore the inherent power dynamics. My current landlord demands more rent than what is actually legal where I live. I didn't bring it up, because if I did, I would have risked having to look for a different appartment.
It fits the congept of a feudal society quite nicely, though.
I wonder how much of the concept of tenants "trashing" the place is actually occuring. It seems to me like the occurence is highly exaggerated.
the fact that most of the rent goes to pure landlord profit becomes obvious with municipal housing here in sweden, where we basically only pay for maintenance.
suddenly the rent is so cheap that the americans i've told it to just wanted to cry, 400€/month for a small apartment that's plenty big enough for a single person, and full on family apartments can be had for as low as 600€/month if you look around for a while.
I have municipal housing in my town. Rent is, at most, 15€. That is affordable even for the poorest of the poor.
You're awfully lucky then. That's a form of socialism, assuming that your government is intervening and ensuring affordable rent even for homeless and those on assistance. And what are the quality of those rentals? Have you lived in one personally?
Lived, no. Went there a few times and have coworkers that grew up there and their parents still live there.
The housing was purpose built to house a wave of immigrants that returned to the country in the 70's. It was built with money from a state-funded development initiative to foment building of new houses in the very early 80's, by the municipality, and was overhauled to add external insulation and improved windows somewhere between two or three years ago.
The rents are reviewed yearly by the city hall. On average, rents are around €10. Central government does not interfere.
But homeless people can't be forced to live there. We have had cases in our country where homeless people were housed and simply left some time after. Where I live, to my knowledge, there has been no such cases.
We also have a program - nation wide in this case - where extremely vulnerable people can resort to our Social Security to get aid in finding housing. I know a few cases of single mothers, elderly and even entire families being housed, with the rent being assured by social services, either by directly sourcing a house and paying the rent or providing the monetary support for the people to find one by themselves.
Lately, these programs have even started to relocate these cases inside the country to move population from high density urbam areas, more problematic usually, to low density areas. This creates a flow of people and money to less populated areas.
The reason we don't have federally funded municipal housing in the US is that the Clinton Administration capped the number of units the federal government is allowed to fund
Co-ops? How do those work? I've known co-ops for building purposes, not for renting.
Wasn't aware such concept existed.
I'm deprived of my income through various means as well and don't like it but I have to trade my money for other things I require to live. Hopefully, we can shed this system but I risk with a good amount of certainty I won't be alive to see it.
Why can't you own more than one house? Let's state, for the purpose of the argument, you inherit a house. You already have one. Do you sell the other? For what reason? And for what price?
This is a self appointed criticism. I had to read the law to explain it to others and it is not hard to understand.
Again, I speak based on my reality; this applies to my country. A quick search on the internet gave me pointers to which articles to read and then it was just a question of time (think of two bathroom breaks for a relaxing #2) to read and relate law with specific questions.
There are no legal limits in my country; if one part asks and the other accepts, it's legitimate. What exists is the notion of fair rental values, which are established by the government.
Does not imply I have to like and abide the use of the word.
It's a hard thing to gauge. I've seen my share of houses completely destroyed by occupants: destroyed kitchens, bathrooms, walls covered in filth, tobbacco smoke and whatever it may have been, besides other damage.
On one, I helped the person move out and I was horrified. On others, I helped cleaning.
https://www.wohnungsbaugenossenschaften.de/genossenschaften/how-cooperatives-work
I'm against wage slavery in any form.
Just because you're pessimistic, doesn't mean we should stop criticising currently occurring injustice.
Because I don't need more than one house for shelter. The other house could enter a usufruct property relation with the community. The accumulation of generational capital is one of the main drivers of economic injustice in the world.
Let's ignore the fact that you can't make that statement for every juristiction and that not every country has as good tenant protections as yours. Doubling down on the classism, are we? The whole power imbalance is unjust (the whole "justice" system is).
You also didn't understand what I meant with power imbalance.
Then you have a problem with accurate descriptions. That's your problem, though.
Yeah, sure. I'm guessing: selection bias.
Edit: you weren't aware that landlords seek profits? O.o
I work for a salary, like anyone else. The same way I like to earn my money, others do as well. Do I earn enough to live? Yes. Could I earn more? Yes. Are salaries too low for a decent living? Most. But that sentence as been reduced to a non sequitur and I won't engage it beyond this.
Allow me my pragmatism; a deep systemic change to completely upturn the current operating societal norms would only be achieveable through a massive uprising, which would probably lead to serious conflict. I prefer to never see it but make my best efforts to foment change for others to enjoy it.
I'm starting to get a sinking feeling. You have two houses. You decide to start a family. You have a child, maybe two. Each child gets one. Where is the generational wealth? At best, you give the next generation an easier entry into adulthood. Is that wrong?
I am pretty confident I was speaking from my own experience, which implies it may or may not be transferable.
Which you seem to be giving more value than it is worth.
What do you need to know? That I worked with a moving company and was inside dozens of houses, in order to make my statement more "valid"? Or that family of mine worked as house cleaners and the things they saw should never be writen?
Try reading Wealth of Nations, and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, both written by the "Father of Capitalism," Adam Smith. Those are where the concept of rent-seeking comes from.
Once you are thoroughly enraged by the fact that we were never supposed to get this far into crony capitalism, then you'll be prepared to read Karl Marx and Trotsky.
I'm already left leaning. You don't need to preach to the choir.
Knowing more of the theory is good so that you have the arguments you need to convince the centerists in your life
Oh, regardless the latest onslaught of right-wing screwballs let loose, my country is very much left leaning. I'm safe on that front.
And the last time we had to deal with right wingers, we used force and settled the problem in a day.
We're famed for spending our time sleeping but when we do wake up, things get messy. Fast.
I'm guessing somewhere in Scandinavia, leaning towards Finnish?
Portugal
Oh my sweet summer child.
We'd all love to live in a socialist utopia where a house to live in is the right of all citizens, but sadly that's just not a reality here on planet earth.
"Shelter" may be a right, as in if you're destitute you'll get food and something to keep the rain off, but a nice house to live in is not a right.
Ultimately landlords are providing capital, which you need to pay for a nice house. Providing said capital is not in itself immoral.
I wonder why so many people dismiss a better world as imaginary, when the thing that prevents such a world is, in fact, imaginary. We made up money. It is fake, imaginary, not fucking real. I can prove it too. You go into nature, and find me money. You can't. You can find currency, but not money. No animals have a damn mint. We made that shit up, and we can collectively decide that it doesn't matter.
Grow up and stop believing in the money fairy
What a silly thing to say.
Try telling someone who is destitute that money is imaginary and see how they react.
Even if we could collectively decide that it doesn't matter youre still going to need some between now and then.
Can you explain your last sentence? I don't see how landlords are providing capital, at all. If anything, landlords are depriving you of capital, and using your money (rent) to gradually gain capital (increase in ownership of property, through mortgage payment) for themselves.
But maybe I'm misreading you somehow.
Because if you had the capital to buy a house, you would. A landlord has the capital to purchase the house and rent it to you under more favorable terms. I.e., not putting ~20% down and committing to a 15-30 year loan.
What is the alternative (besides a utopian society where everyone is provided housing for free or near-free)?
Sorry, I know you're not the original poster, but that doesn't actually answer my question. The question is "what capital does a landlord provide?" and the answer is, none, because when we talk about capital in this context, we're talking ownership of money or assets.
The landlord does not provide either of these things, and in fact only takes them in order to increase their own personal wealth.
Landlord lets tenant use their capital in exchange for rent.
That totally clarifies it, thank you. I was confused. Still, that does not increase the renter's capital, and puts them at a disadvantage, because as they lose capital, the landlord gains equity. That's where we were disconnected, but I see now how you were using the term.
The capital needed to buy the house which the renter either doesn't have, or doesn't want to spend.
I'm not even sure what you mean by this? The capital the landlord provides IS the money to buy the house and the asset (the house).
Just because the landlord makes money off the transaction? It's a transaction. The landlord is providing the risk of using their capital to purchase the home and the renter gains the ability to live there without having to extend their own capital to purchase the house (for whatever reason, maybe they don't have it, maybe they don't plan to live their long, maybe they are adverse to owning property, there's lots of reasons).
Why is it OK for any other business to make a profit from their risk and service they provide, but it's not OK for a landlord? The landlord is providing a service just like any other business.
I get the argument against large corporations buying mass amounts of land and driving up housing prices locking homeowners out of the ability to purchase land, but what is wrong with, if for example I have extra cash, am able to buy a home and rent it to someone who can't purchase a house for whatever reason?
Capital, as in ownership of money or assets that combine to a persons overall wealth -- A landlord does not provide this, and only takes it from the renter in order to increase their own capital. You can make an argument that a landlord provides a service, sure, but not that they provide capital, because they really don't. Maybe you mean they provide a means for a renter to accrue capital? Even then, that's shoddy, because you have to drill down to owners who actually care about their tenants vs those who charge as much as the market allows.
You can bring up risk, and sure, the landlord incurs risk. That risk is losing their property and becoming a renter. The "service" they provide is entirely dependent on their ownership of property, and I don't have much sympathy for a person who uses their ownership of property to exploit another person's need for shelter in the name of accruing more capital.
Those are kinda my quick thoughts, and I'm not totally prepared to defend the absolute shit out of them. My initial point was that landlords do not provide capital, and I stick by that.
To be clear, I don't think being a landlord automatically makes you a bad person, considering the economic system we live in. But I also don't think landlords provide a good, generally, to society. I don't think we need landlords, and I don't think they become landlords out of the kindness of their hearts, or that they wish to provide a home for someone. They just own more, and as such they can use that ownership to further increase their ownership. I don't think your example about you with extra cash is wrong in the context of the society we live in -- hell, I'm pretty much in that exact situation with my roommate, with whom I was renting before I bought a house. Sure, you could say I'm doing him a favor by letting him live in my house for a low cost, but mostly I am the one accruing capital at his expense. It doesn't make me a saint for doing that, it makes me greedy that I'm charging anything at all. That's part of the disgust I personally have for this system, is that we are all compelled to own more more more more. It's really not work hard and you'll succeed. It's own hard.
The alternative of everyone living in communist bloc apartments built by the lowest bidder sounds so good.