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?
The problem in Ireland is when big American moguls go and buy up properties in Dublin to rent out en masse, effectively just sucking money out of the country. We always need people to lend out property on rent free cheaper than a mortgage. Landlords are vital for those who cannot afford a mortgage. But these landlords are the smaller ones - like your aunt.
Ideally as well economically, the tenants should be people who are starting off or not intending to live permanently - like holidaymakers or students
I actually have a related question that I’m curious to hear takes on. I’m a leftist, and I own a 1-bed apartment where two good friends of mine rent the apartment right next door. Their landlord is planning to sell next year, and they don’t have the ability to buy it. So depending on who does buy the place, my friends could be out of a home. My sister and I could combine finances to buy their unit (with a mortgage), and ensure that my friends could stay where they are. This would be a bit of a financial burden but doable, and we would need to charge rent to pay back the mortgage.
Would this be a net good or a net evil? I feel very conflicted about potentially being a landlord (especially for friends) but also don’t want them to need to move.
If you take out a loan to purchase the apartment, then have your friends pay just enough rent to pay off the loan without attempting to profit yourself (perhaps a small amount extra to cover any recorded time spent in administration responsibilities, for a reasonable hourly rate). After the nortgage is paid off, you could then give them the deed. That would not be immoral at all, and would, IMHO, be a net good, as you’d be rejecting the profit incentive and giving your friends a very rare opportunity.
Only do this if you have the means to pay that mortgage yourself, imo.
You and your sister are taking all of the risk here. Your friends could lose their job or simply just move after a short time and then you are on the hook to find more tenets. I suppose you could just sell it if they move but you may lose money.
You would be a great friend to do that for them so that you could essentially lock them into a fixed rent for many years, but understand that it is not without risk.
Wouldn’t you be benefiting from your friends? It’s ok for a little bit, but if they live there permanently then they will pay off your mortgage and have nothing to show for it themselves. That sort of thing might build resentment long term. Though in the short term you both benefit.
But as I’m sure you’re aware, any money issues may sour the relationship. Even just having a formal contract with exchange of money could change the dynamic drastically.
The ethical option would be to give the deed to the friends after the mortgage is paid off.
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.
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.
You asking wether people making blanket statements have any nuance in their views?
In the most cases I’d say no.
That’s a pretty big blanket statement there buddy here have a mirror🪞
Except that if you read it again, you’ll see that it’s not, in fact, a blanket statement. I intentionally avoid speaking in absolutes, and I refrained from doing so here as well, buddy.
The post was about “leftists”
You opened your sentence with “people who make blanket statements”
??? okay buddy 😆
So the previous accusation didn’t quite stick so lets ignore that and start accusing me of something else instead.
Ideologies tend to sort people into a limited number of overly simplistic categories. This makes theorising easier but applying it to reality much harder.
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 would still consider this horizontal violence. That equity could be used to make the world a better place instead of extracting value from fellow workers to pay for their kids college and inheritance … and where the debts incurred buying 5 properties?
You’re right that they are good people, because no one sees themselves as the villain in their own story. That insurance CEOs wife isn’t lying when she says good things about him. Capitalism not only alienates you from your labour but also from your exploitation of others.
The sheer weight of human misery in your immediate surroundings is immeasurable and you never pay it any mind.
I think it depends. If your mortgage payment is $1000 and you’re renting the space for $500 then you and your tenant are both sharing the financial burden, and I don’t really see it as parasitism like lots of other people.
If you’re renting for $1,200 then yeah everyone is going to hate you, no matter how few tenants you have. Even more so if that’s your only source of income. Why should someone else be living your paycheck to your paycheck?
Let’s say the city proposes a bill to build public housing apartments next to your aunt’s houses. This will guarantee reducing the rent and potential tenants your aunt collects. Now, because your aunt took so much loan from the bank and can’t pay it back, they will have to foreclose on the houses. Do they vote against the bill? You bet your ass they will.
I can see the evil in what these large corporations are doing but I have rented in the past when I was neither prepared for the burden of home ownership nor planning to stay in that location for a long time. If I couldn’t have rented what would I have done? I would have been essentially FORCED into owning a home or what, living in the streets? And what if you wish to move but no one wants to buy your house? More you are forced to stay out turn evil by buying two houses.
It’s ok to love your aunt. She didn’t make the rules she’s just living by them. If there’s a problem with the system, start at the top.
Some people need to rent, that does not mean individuals need to horde houses to rent out to them for profit.
They may be what YOU are saying, but that is not what MANY here say. I’ve seen it many times that profiting on something essential for life is wrong/evil.
Yes, profiting on something essential for life is wrong. I have not said anything to the contrary.
Exactly, buying and selling homes is a lot more time-consuming than ending and starting a lease. Also as an owner you have responsibility to declare/disclose any major problems to the buyer. If you’re just moving out of a rental you may never even meet the next tenant. Rentals are always going to be a necessity, and people like your aunt are often the nicest people to rent from.
I also know at least one person who prefers to rent an apartment because he doesn’t want to mow the lawn or fix a faucet. He just called the superintendent.
There are lots of kinds of “leftisms” with lots of different attitudes toward landlords—but to take Georgism as a concrete example that exclusively focuses on land ownership:
Georgists would say that the portion of the rent equal to the market rent of the unimproved lot—including the value generated by the presence of the surrounding community and infrastructure—should go back to the community, but the portion of the rent contributed by the presence of buildings and other improvements should go to the owner of the improvements.
Lots of good answers here, so here’s a fact that might help you understand why people have these positions:
I love how the fact checker rules the original post false… because there are fewer homeless people and more homes than the original Facebook post? Meaning that the waste is even more egregious than claimed? 🤔
Right? 😂 Never fails to get a chuckle from me when I go to cite it.
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’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.
If we lived in a dream where housing was somehow always provided, sure. But we don’t. So what to all the people who don’t have savings for a down payment do if the only option is to buy? Not live anywhere?
If you buy stocks, you’re essentially just hoping to find something 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.
Rental income is just a dividend on a real estate investment. Even if you own the house you live in, you get that dividend in the form of not having to pay rent to a landlord.
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.
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.
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.
if the rents > mortgage, or youre doing some mostly non-existant rent to own plan, then parasite. Fundamentally speaking, its pretty fucked up that fundamental basic needs are treated as investments. At least with food, theres virtually always alternatives to get something cheaper, but that doesnt exist with some of the other forms of basic needs, and shelter is arguably the most important one of them.
The stock market was meant to be the location where people put money into investment. it’s just housing got lucrative that parasites decided to pool their money into that instead of business. A consumer has the power to refuse to fund a specific business, they have very little control over keeping a roof over their heads, which is a huge problem.
You can be less of a leech against people by of course, like you mention, charging less, but using property as an investment is part of the reason why the system is fucked to begin with.
For example, even if you’re charging less for rent vs other players, landlords are still likely voting against the public favor in terms of local measures in order to get places cheaper, in order to protect their “investment”. It’s a system designed to keep some people in while keeping others out.
So as always, it depends and there is a spectrum. The scum of the scum are slum lords, i.e. landlords who buy property, do not fix up or maintain it, fill it with any old tenant that is desperate enough to take it, well evict someone at the drop of a hat, and constantly charge exorbitant amounts on property the own outright because the protest value went up this year. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that bad, but people that buy property simply as an “investment”, i.e. get passive income from people with less money than them to buy property, are leeching off the less fortunate. There are certainly scales of badness to that, but that idea is simply immoral.
But there are other situations where one may be a “landlord” and it’s not really a moral problem. For example, a cousin of mine had to work overseas for a bit over a year and was put up in a hotel during that time. He didn’t want to sell his home, as he would be returning to it later, but also didn’t want it to sit empty. He ended up signing a year long lease over to a couple students, charged them little more than the mortgage (enough to cover the mortgage, taxes and any minor repairs that may be needed afte they left) and returned home to a house that was still in decent shape, hadn’t had any break ins, infestations, or damage from the elements, and the students got some inexpensive housing for the year. No one was taken advantage of and he wasn’t just milking poor people for profit. Everyone won. That is clearly different.
