this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
661 points (99.1% liked)

News

21872 readers
5131 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.


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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
  • A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
  • A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
  • RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
  • RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions

A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.

“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.

Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cynar 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There are times that a corporate entity of some description is extremely useful. The issue is for-profit companies.

A simpler solution is to add a tax, based on the property value for for-profit companies. For niche situations, the effect of this will be annoying but not devastating. For companies dedicated to sucking money out of housing, it will hurt them badly. Maybe have it tick up 0.5% of the property a year till it's 5%. Slow enough not to cause a massive shock to the market, but large enough to force a change.

An obvious example of a useful company owned housing situation is a set of apartments. However, here a non profit would work even better.

As for valid for-profit ownership, it does happen. E.g. I know of a veterinary practice that owns several houses. They used them to provide subsided housing to staff, close at hand. They also allow them to house mid to long term locum staff close to the practice. Everyone wins from this arrangement.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I dunno if I want my employer to also be my landlord. It might have worked well for that specific case, but it's easy to see how it could fall apart.

[–] cynar 1 points 5 months ago

If you're on a 3 month or so contract, it makes sense. It's too long to deal with hotels, but too short for proper rentals.

Basically, there are some legit cases for property ownership. The trick is to kill the leaches, without causing too much damage elsewhere.