this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/nostupidquestions
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you're aware of public and social housing then why are you asking how community ownership and management works?

In any case, yes, of course all rental housing should be publicly owned. Vienna's Gemeindebauten and Singapore's HDB, among others, have proven that pretty definitively.

I'm not certain that all housing should be public, though. Privately owned primary residences are probably fine, in the grand scheme of things. But rental housing for profit should obviously be abolished.

[–] enbyecho -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

First up, so it's clear, I actually agree with you. But I also don't think this is an easy thing.

If you’re aware of public and social housing then why are you asking how community ownership and management works?

Because there is a hiccup in your logic as far as I can discern it.

On the one hand you say: "of course all rental housing should be publicly owned."

And on the other, "I’m not certain that all housing should be public"

So how does that work?

  1. How does the housing become public? That's trillions of dollars worth of property. I actually got the figure of US$7 quadrillion but I don't believe it. What's more, 70% of the 19.3 million rental properties in the US are owned by individual investors, meaning you'd have to either confiscate or buy from millions of individuals. I mean, it wouldn't make sense to just build all this housing if it's already there. Maybe a combination? But where on earth does that money come from? And how do you convince people invested in a $1.4 trillion market to give up that income?
  2. So let's say somehow #1 happens over some period of time. How then do you meet ongoing demand? I get what your saying - there are examples of this working (for some values of "work") on a small scale but over the entire rental market?
  3. If the public via governments has paid for all this housing at current prices, how do we then ensure rents are low? Over time yes, we can forgo all but the bare minimum rent increases to match inflation, but initially we have to foot the bill somehow. Because presumably that money has to be borrowed and we have to pay interest on it on top of ongoing maintenance, etc - there are real costs involved.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

This is just a long-winded way to ask “how do we pay for it?” The answer is taxes. That’s always the answer.

Let’s call it 10 trillion total: 20m rental properties x 500k average home price. If we allocated half the annual military budget—400bn—to buying private rentals and making them social housing, it would take 25 years to get through the whole market.

The financial scale of the solution is not so large as to be insurmountable. The US government’s priorities simply lie elsewhere.

[–] enbyecho 0 points 1 day ago

Well yeah, taxes. But...

The US government’s priorities simply lie elsewhere.

No, the American people's priorities. And until that changes, we're dead in the water