No Stupid Questions

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.

We mean all of them. Being a landlord is racketeering other people's hard earned money for the human right of being housed, they're all parasites that grabbed the housing market to a point nobody else can buy anything to actually live in.

I have several friends who could not possibly afford to own a home without renting out a room. I was in that situation myself for many years, having barely scraped together enough to buy the property for my farm. I mean without renting out a room I wouldn't have been able to eat, much less pay the mortgage.

But nope, apparently this makes us parasites judging from all the comments here, like this one:

"If you make a profit for allowing another person shelter (particularly if you don’t need that space for yourself and/or your own family), then you are a parasite."

Obviously there is some ambiguity around the word "profit" in this context. Owning land or a house is almost always "profit" but that "profit" isn't usually realizable except over very long time scales.

But hey, nuance I guess.

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, will evict someone at the drop of a hat, and constantly charge exorbitant amounts on property the own outright because the property 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 after 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.

An aside, but the "parasite" thing is not really a leftist talking point. We stole it from Adam fucking Smith, and his point about it is that extracting value from something on the basis of just, like, owning something that exists with or without you is inherently shitty personally, and economically.

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce" - Adam Smith

Just look it up. He crashes out on rentiers all the time.

Also, corporate land lords are a much smaller part of the problem than most people suggest. Like, yes corporate land lords suck, but most land lords are not corporate landlords. It's more complex than that. Source. So, Yes. Small "Mom and Pop" landlords are bad, and there is a moral dimension to even the people you personally know who own more than one home, and there will continue to be as long as there are others who do not have a house.

Sorry, parasite.

Only way i think it’s acceptable is one house per person, or renting out property you live at.

If your aunts partner has a place, unused, then sure rent it.

If your aunts property has another home on it then sure rent it.

Imo, what your aunt is doing is okay as long as she doesnt start hoarding more and more houses and acts fairly. There is some value in not having to deal with problems that come with owning apartment but uncertainty of the world burns that value away easily. As landlord you have a duty to take care of your tenants and if you cant do that then you shouldnt be allowed to own property like that.

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 rather than the landlord, but the portion of the rent contributed solely by the presence of buildings and other improvements should go to the owner of the improvements.

There is no exception to stealing housing from other people.

It would vary depending on who's saying it.