881
'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
881 points (97.1% liked)
News
23670 readers
4492 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It helps remove the incentive to buy up all of the single family homes. The calculus is pretty simple -
Renting a home shouldn't cost enough for that cycle to be self sustaining.
I don't think it actually fixes that. Rent control numbers are in the hands of politicians who may just act as toadies for landlords. Maybe they'll control rent on the higher side some but ultimately they have an incentive to keep that cash flowing.
I work in municipal development.
100% of the single-family home projects that have been proposed in my area for the last year have been rental-only communities.
Like - they don't even want to give the houses individual water meters. They want to hook them all together, which means they can't even be converted down the line to something else without digging up all the damn infrastructure.
I've visited some friends in those rental only neighborhoods. The lawns are all trashed. The neighborhood was less than three years old but it was already sliding toward a slum because of the clear lack of ownership by the occupants.
Honestly I can't believe that part of the rent didn't go toward neighborhood wide lawn care.
The only way rent covers mortgage is if a double rental unit.
Having money gets you no PMI and better interest rates. It's cheaper for someone well funded to buy a house than someone who isn't. I'm not saying that it's a slam dunk rent is covered, but it can be a lot closer than you'd expect.
It's not without risk though. The renters could damage the house. There will be broken appliances and roof replacements. You still have property taxes and maybe HOA fees.
Even if it's half a house for free, that's a pretty strong addition to your wealth management.