Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
Don’t take it personally, but landlordism is fundamentally parasitism. It’s a matter of fact that private property, whether it’s a townhouse or a factory, enables its owners to extract value from working people. If people personally resent landlords like your aunt, it’s probably not so much because that’s where the theory guides them as it is that almost everyone has had a bad experience with a landlord or knows someone who did. Landlords have earned a bad reputation.
No raindrop thinks itself responsible for the flood.
I’ve never heard this phrase before and I love it.
Quit exhaling! We have a climate crisis!
But this is my regulated breathing minute!
“Landlords provide housing like scalpers provide concert tickets.”
https://lifehacker.com/why-everyone-hates-landlords-now-1849100799
That said, I do think there need to be ways to rent housing rather than buy it, since many people need that flexibility. Looks like the answer to that might be community land trusts?
Or public housing
The answer you receive will vary based on which political ideology you ask.
I will answer from the perspective of an anarchist.
Your Aunt and her Husband are not committing the greatest of evils, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re a part of a bigger problem, one that they themselves would not even perceive, and in fact would have strong personal incentives not to grant legitimacy were it explained to them.
Anarchists, or libertarian socialists, are generally against the concept of private property in all forms. This is not to be confused with personal property, which are things you personally own and use, such as the house you live in, your car, your tools.
But private property is something you own to extract profit from simply by the act of owning it, and necessarily at the deprivation and exploitation of someone else.
Buy owning those townhomes that they themselves do not live in, they are able to exploit the absolute basic human requirement for shelter in an artificially restricted market, and thus acquire surplus value in a deal of unequal leverage.
You could argue they are justified due to offering below market rates, taking on the financial risk of owning and maintaining the property, and fronting the capital to own the investment.
But the issue is: their choice to become landlords is what in fact creates the conditions for which they can then offer solutions in order to claim moral justification.
For if we consider if landlordism were completely abolished, and people were only allowed to own homes they personally use, it would result in an insane amount of housing stock to flood the market, causing housing prices to plummet. This would in turn allow millions of lower income people to be able to afford a home and pay it off quickly, allowing them to actually build wealth for the first time instead of most of it going to pay off rent (remember, your aunt charging below market is the exception, not the norm).
Most humans would much rather pay off a small mortgage on a non-inflated home themselves, instead of paying off someone else’s artifically inflated mortgage and then some.
But that’s all assuming we have a housing market still. In an ideal Anarchist society, housing would be a human right, and every human would have access to basic shelter and necessities of life, like was enacted for a short time in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
Ideologies tend to sort people into a limited number of overly simplistic categories. This makes theorising easier but applying it to reality much harder.
Very few people could live in a capitalist system and remain pure. e.g. My pension fund is invested in the stock market so I very partially own thousands of companies. I’ve also purchased a small amount of shares in selected companies, a situation I had more agency in creating. Sometimes I subcontract work to other contractors who function as my temporary employees. And so on.
Is there an ethical way to try and ensure that I will have food, shelter and medical care as I age? In the US we can’t depend on the government safety net. Everyone isn’t as able in their 60’s and 70’s as they were in their 30’s and 40’s, so assuming that I’ll be able to work and make a reasonable income the rest of my life is wildly optimistic. Anyone working at a job for 30+ years shouldn’t be stressed about survival but that’s not reality. Putting money in a savings account at a credit union is good but I don’t think that will move the needle. Any decent pension or retirement plan is gonna put money in the stock market. Even with passive investing in index funds, you’re on of the stock holders that fucks like that UHC CEO was trying to appease. Given the state of the economy in the US today, buying and renting a duplex, triplex or small apartment building might be less evil than owning random stocks.
I’d say the only ethical way to be a residential landlord is if you are renting out the only house you own because you aren’t in a position to use it as a house - say you’ve brought a house, but had to move somewhere for a few years for work and intend to move back at some point.
The moment you own 2 houses, you are profiting from a system that only works because of inelastic demand - you could have put your money into the stock market and made it do something productive, but instead you are collecting rent, making it harder for others to meet their own basic needs, and profiting from a speculative bubble
What about families that need a place but don’t want to buy? Like if I’m getting a job in a new area and needed to move but know I’ll be leaving in 1-5 years. I wouldn’t want to deal with the paperwork. I wouldn’t be mad to rent a house.
Ideally houses that aren’t used by anyone would be cared for collectively, and would be free for anyone to use for as much time as they need it.
That assumes that housing is a human right, and that adequate housing exists with a small surplus in most societies (and considering there are more empty homes than there are homeless in the US right now, that would be a feasible thing to achieve were capitalism not creating intense conflicts of interests).
Real question, do we have a surplus if we take out community housing options like apartments? Would everyone be able to have their own house?
Dense community housing would still be optimal for cities and towns, especially if housing was a human right, as it’s much more efficient and uses less resources. They would still exist as cooperative housing, where each tenant owns a share of the complex. Those already exist today quite successfully, they’re just not the norm as it doesn’t generate profit for a landlord or realestate investor.
Individual houses would likely still exist in the countryside, though I think it would be pethaps unreasonable to expect communal maintainence if they are remote, in which case it would likely just be up to the individual using it.
What’s the difference between profiting from stocks or profiting from rent? Either way, I’m increasing my spending power
People need a place to live, they don’t need stocks to live. By owning more properties than you need you are contributing to a scarcity and inflated pricing for a basic necessity.
Your stocks do not deprive anyone else of an essential human need, while owning and renting out a house you do not personally use artificially deprives another of buying that house, which further raises housing prices, making an essential human need, an investment vehicle.
Using a different analogy, if you lived in an area with scarce water resources, but happened to purchase land with a particularly abundant spring, you could then profit handsomely by selling that water to the thirsty at an extremely high rate, exploiting the human need for water, and depriving those who cannot afford it in exchange for your own enrichment.
If you buy stocks, you’re essentially just hoping to find someone who is willing to pay more for the same thing. If you own property and rent it out, you’re providing a service to someone who needs it. In the latter case, you’re creating value.
As noted above, this isn’t completely true. You can also buy stocks for dividends.
Putting money in the stock market isn’t making it do something productive. It’s not like your average person is able to participate in IPOs and fund some new venture. If I buy shares of company, the company already got the money years ago; I’m just speculating that someone else will want to buy my shares for more in the future. And then if I buy stock in Shell Oil or United Healthcare, that’s pretty evil. But I also don’t have the time and skills to actively manage a portfolio to meet some bare minimum ethical standards.
I’m just speculating that someone else will want to buy
No, not entirely. Lots of companies pay dividends. Buy stock in those, and you’re speculating that they’ll continue to be profitable enough to pay dividends.
don’t have the time and skills
I’m not sure I can agree on this point, either. The time, maybe. The skill? If you’re skilled enough to use Lemmy, you’re skilled enough to set up a brokerage account and click “buy” on whichever companies meet your criteria. It’s not actually any more complicated than online banking IMO.
I mean, the technical buying and selling is easy but knowing what to buy and sell and how to time it isn’t obvious. Automatically buying low cost index funds is super easy and generally yields the best outcome for most consumer investors. Managing a balanced portfolio of B corps and the like without taking on too much risk and ending up broke is not trivial.
Also, dividends don’t change the fact that buying stock isn’t investing in a business. Buying stocks is giving the previous owner of the stock some money and maintaining or increasing the value of the stock which impacts executive compensation.
Treating a basic human need as an investment is, and has always been, abhorrent. It has royally fucked over economics as a whole by making people’s retirement funds dependent on housing costs going up infinitely.
On the other hand, rented homes has lots of demand, and that is only possible if someone else owns it.
Landslords provides a service that people need. Although not all landlords does it well.
Landlords being parasites isn’t even a leftist sentiment, it’s common sense. Here’s Adam Smith:
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
They are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind"
The only landlords I see that add any positive value to the world are those who run and maintain apartment complexes. If you own multiple single family homes to rent them out or hoard parcels of land just to try and sell for a higher price: you’re a parasite.
Alternatively, those apartment complexes could be cooperatively owned, cutting out the landlord without any loss.
big facts, also if you live in a densely populated area there may be one of these cooperative communities near you! you could in fact be the change you want to see in the world 💃
What about condos? Is there something that prevents converting all apartment buildings and having owner-occupants instead of tenants?
Renting allows those without the needed capital to access a resource.
Backing out from that, one should question why shelter is a resource that someone cannot access on a minimum wage salary.
So, fundamentally, landlording isn’t inherently evil, but it’s presentation in the system is inherently corrupting. As in, at any moment that someone retains an excess of shelter they do not need, and instead rent it out, they are constraining the market for their own gain, at the detriment of others who in need shelter.
Next consider degrees of influence: large corporations buy up tons of units and exert inordinate power on the system. They systemically unbalance the purchasing ability of normal folk, due to process or sheer wealth. Fine, that’s the high water of corruption. From there it’s only shades of difference down to the mom and pop landlord. It’s up to you to decide where they land on the scale.
I’d say even your aunt is included in that. Don’t worry though, my mom is on the same list. They’re extracting wealth from someone else’s labor.
My grandfather was a landlord back in the 80s-90s. He owned several small homes and duplexes in a big city, and he did all the maintenance and upkeep on them himself. I saw him work his ass off, how would his tenants paying him rent not be compensating him for his labor?
I dunno about pricing back then but the issue is the amount of wealth that can be generated from a situation like that.
Like, hypothetically, let’s split your grandfather into two people. A landlord, and a maintenance guy hired to maintain those properties, getting paid a fair wage.
Would the landlord make money, after paying a mortgage and his maintenance man?
If the answer is no, then becoming a landlord isn’t financially beneficial, and your grandfather could’ve just been a handyman, and made a steadier income, his money not directly dependent on whether or not someone paid rent.
If the answer is yes, then your grandfather made more money than his labor was worth. While he earned money doing labor, the real issue is the money he earned by doing nothing. It’s likely your grandfather made quite a bit more money than his labor was worth, given the fact that property management companies live entirely off of the price difference from labor put into housing and the price they can charge.
Landlords are middlemen. They’re used car salesman for houses. Are there landlords that aren’t shitty? Yeah. My last landlord was awesome, he actually sold me the house I was renting, when I told him I was gonna buy a house and start my family. He was nice, reasonable, all those things. The total rent at the time (pre-covid, so a lot better than now, and split among 6 people) was 2250$, and my mortgage worked out to be 900$.
Did your grandfather put effort in? Yes. Did he make money doing nothing? Also yes, the difference between what his labor was worth and what he got paid.
That margin didn’t come from his labor or his smart investments, it came from other people trying to live, and potentially created hardships. If his tenants could’ve paid for the actual cost of housing instead of whatever your grandfather charged, that might mean another kid got to go to college, a father getting to retire earlier, a family that could’ve worked 1 job instead of 2.
Your grandfather is probably fine, he likely understood hardships and acted like a human being, but he still belonged to a class of people that are better off if they find ways to minimize the amount of money other people have. Some people judge others for taking what they don’t need.
It’s not a coherent argument, people just don’t like paying rent so they lash out in frustration. If you can’t own you have to rent, if you have to rent you have to rent from someone. It’s just a fact of life. Just like food is also a requirement to live and you need to pay someone for that too if you’re not self sufficient. There’s good people selling food and bad people selling food. It would be dumb to consider all food merchants evil in principle just as it’s dumb to consider all landlords evil in principle.
We mean all of them. Being a landlord is racketeering other people’s hard earned money for the human right of being housed, they’re all parasites that grabbed the housing market to a point nobody else can buy anything to actually live in.
Those buying up properties which prevent people from getting on the property ladder, not owning a couple. I’m left-wing; I bought land, built a small house (small as in the size of a one-bed apartment), current rent it out which pays for my rent in another place. The landlords I’ve had over the past few years have been great, they are also living in the same place they rent out, those people are good.
Sorry, parasite.
Only way i think it’s acceptable is one house per person, or renting out property you live at.
If your aunts partner has a place, unused, then sure rent it.
If your aunts property has another home on it then sure rent it.
I would argue that nobody should own a home they don’t actually live in. All renting out does is increase the housing cost overall because nobody would ever operate at a loss or to break even. This is the issue people have with say, Blackrock who buys hundreds of homes at a time and rents them out.
Your family aren’t bad people but the business they decided to take up is inherently bad by design. If the law changed tomorrow saying all multi homes must sell to non homeowners, everyone would watch prices drop and be able to afford it.
Using homes as an investment is at its basics, exploiting a need by interpreting it as a want or practical goods. Homes are for living in. The housing industry views homes like commodities as if people have a wide choice and selection when it’s really “Omg we can afford this one that popped up randomly, we have 12 hours to decide if we want to pay 50k more to beat others away” and then lose anyway after bidding to Blackrock who pays 100k over asking.
