Any useful function landords provide would be better provided by an organization like a tenants union. All landlords do is restrict the supply of housing and drive up prices.

Landlords are asking for six months' rent in advance.

Fuck these people.

See, what bothers me the most about people like that are the pseudointellectual, pseudoeconomic justifications. I hope that if I ever end up buying a place to rent out I would have the honesty to say "these rent control laws keep me from making the most possible money, and I frankly don't care much about other people's problems affording rent."

Just say it! It's not illegal.

If you wear a Fugazi shirt long enough it transmogrifies into an Eagles shirt.

It took me exactly one year, but I finally saw Oxygen's comment for 5 stars.

Landlordism is just inherently immoral because all it does is extract wealth from the populace by owning and controlling a finite resource necessary for survival. Just because some of them do it politely or efficiently doesn’t change those facts.

Landlords don’t add or contribute anything to society that could not be provided by a well-run government entity at a significantly lower cost.

Yes, let's revoke all housing property from ordinary people and entrust it to the American government, who has traditionally managed housing projects in a responsive and unbiased way.

ok sounds like a great idea

Yeah I got no problem with that either.

You want to own your own home or apartment, great.

You want to buy 20 homes to rent them out? Landlordism.

Or even better, a local tenants union. There's no need to get the state involved, we can just take the housing ourselves.

Hey, Two Jar Slave.

Nobody is saying you can't buy a house to live in.

But people are getting sick and fucking tired of rich assholes buying up all the houses so they can let some sit empty then rent out the others at exorbitant prices.

Then there are the assholes kicking people out of their apartments so they can convert them to Airbnbs fucking over their former tenants AND hotels

Well, Jeez Louise, ALL resources are finite, and "controlling" vital resources can also be spun as "providing" vital resources. Traditionally, rental properties has been one of the ways working class people have accumulated wealth.

And now the same system is preventing many working class people from owning even one home.

We have more empty houses than we do houseless people. Several times more.

The only thing forcing people to sleep out on the streets is the greed of the rich.

>>>>We have more empty houses than we do houseless people. Several times more.

This was the only objective fact (I'm guessing, haven't checked it.) either one of you guys had to offer along with a whole raft of unproven assumptions.


>>>The only thing forcing people to sleep out on the streets is the greed of the rich.

Really? The ONLY thing? Is there nothing else that contributes? How about the wholesale gutting of mental health programs?

I once had a landlord who was helping us get rid of some bad tenants who were terrorizing all of us in the building, and he faced them down and got thrown through a plate glass window. There are things in heaven and the earth that are not dreamt of in your philosophy.

My rent has been supplemented by HUD for almost 20 years now. It's a lot more efficient and politically expedient than the guillotine.

You have a nice landlord and the government pays some of your rent, therefore the system is fine?

god that's the most pathetic "fuck you, got mine" I've ever seen in my life

On the micro-level, rent subsidies help people get housing. At the macro-level, it's a money transfer from the public to the landlord owner class.

Really, Crackersmack? In your WHOLE LIFE? Must be a nice life.

>>>You have a nice landlord and the government pays some of your rent, therefore the system is fine?

Yes that is exactly what Im saying. ("Jerk off" gesture.)

>>>On the micro-level, rent subsidies help people get housing. At the macro-level, it's a money transfer from the public to the landlord owner class.

There are two reasons why your language is misleading. One is that it's misleading to separate the transfer of money from the shelter and improved quality of life and economic growth that money is exchanged for. Just about any economic activity is a way of transferring money to someone. And its misleading to separate "the landlord class" from "the public".

Did anyone ever doubt that JHM was Evil Homer?

I've always had my suspicions.

The number of homeless folks in the US is currently estimated at 552,830.

There are OVER SEVENTEEN MILLION EMPTY HOMES.

And yeah, the gutting of mental health resources is also due to the greed of the rich.

Stop looking at symptoms, go for the cause.

We also produce about 40% more food than is needed to feed the entire world, and yet about 9 million people die every year from hunger alone.

Only because those at the top of our economic system have decided that it is insufficiently profitable to feed them.

>>>>Stop looking at symptoms, go for the cause.

So people being homeless is just a symptom, and the cause is people like me who refuse to be sufficiently sanctimonious about it. Its hard to see how you're offering a solution other than more sanctimony.

What are you solving with #NotAllLandlords?

Or not particularly interested in solving anything because as mentioned earlier, got yours?


Sanctimony at least brings attention to an issue and pushes for change, because amazingly enough there’s no way for an individual to solve the housing crisis.

Who were the people saying Boomers weren't the worst, most entitled generation?

So you're doubling down on sanctimony as a practical solution? What a perfectly SolRo thing to do.

Unlike SolRo, Readers of English will note that I suggested government help with the rent as a practical way to get people into homes, a practical. I didn't bring it up to suggest that I have a place to live, so there is no housing problem anywhere. Anyone who got that from my words is not a good reader of English.

If you want to line up all the landlords in front of guillotines, just fucking say so, and THEN you'll have a practical solution to sell, because sanctimony every week isn't going to change anything. Say what you like about the guillotine; it changes things.

I live in a shabby attic apartment thats so hot in the summer I have to put the air conditioner in the kitchen, and sleep on the kitchen floor for half the year. I don't have a car. I wheel around 50 lbs of.cat litter using my dead friend's
wheelchair, which is a.bitch to carry up the stairs.

I'm not complaining, but I think it's telling how easily I become the entitled, the privileged in this discussion.

No one here assumed you’re living on the high on the hog while qualifying for rent assistance. Not everyone in your position is fortunate enough to get that assistance, any many more make just slightly too much to qualify for assistance (that’s without being in right winger state that doesn’t even offer assistance).

There are lots of nice people doing things that are immoral and damaging to society just to make excessive amounts of money. It’s easy being nice when you’re leaching wealth from society.

This is "trickle down housing" and it relies on developers building so many homes in a given market that the market price actually goes down, but the developers then continue to build housing that they will agree to sell at below-previous-market rates, something that has pretty much never happened in American history.

In reality this idea is pushed by real estate developers that are cynically seeking to exploit housing shortages to get legislators to deregulate housing construction so they can build more investments for rich people, it has nothing to do with increasing the affordable housing supply.

What we need is steep disincentives on secondary home ownership. It shouldn't even be legal to rent out a home that you have a mortgage on. "Vacation" homes should be taxed as if they have a full-time market-rate tenant occupying them, etc.

Not to mention, in built up city neighborhoods the only way to build new housing is to replace existing housing. That lowers the housing stock during construction and displaces everyone living there. Usually the “dense” modern high rises aren’t any more dense than pre-war row houses due to parking, elevators, mechanical rooms, lobbies, and amenities. They certainly can’t be any cheaper because of the cost of maintaining a hvac plant and an elevator, and all the communal spaces like halls and lobbies.

Modern highrises aren’t dense because they’re built as luxury apartments. Shit, the rich are converting multiple floors into one “apartment” for the ultra rich.

And then the developers go begging for deregulation and tax credits to build more of the same useless shit

There's a huge housing problem in my city, and I'm living on the current gentrification line where "luxury apartments" are pushing everyone out of a lower than average income neighborhood.

There was a local building that got torn down, and what looked like a new apartment building going up. Oh great, more overpriced luxury apartments!

The building was finally just completed, and turns out it's even worse! It's not an overpriced luxury apartment building, it's an overpriced luxury HOTEL! Absolute cheapest rooms are $ 240 a night. In the middle of a lower income suburban neighborhood.

It's straight up Monopoly shit. Tear down enough houses, and you get to replace them with a hotel intentionally priced to drive others to ruin.