You must log in or # to comment.
Had an old landlord keep my deposit when I moved out just because they could. We left the apartment absolutely spotless and never damaged anything. In fact, we added value by fixing a couple small things. Didn’t matter.
Fuck landlords.
Yup, I’m at the point where I gave up on cleaning at all because I get screwed every single time.
We wet-vacuumed the carpets and everything. We were pissed. Never had any issues with the landlord and were always good tenants. They just decided they liked money over everything else.
They know they can get away with it and almost nobody will take them to small claims court.
I have to agree with those others who suggest that banning landlords is not the way to go.
However, the power dynamics should be significantly shifted. And if those shifts mean some landlords decide to exit the market? So be it.
- Tenants should not be able to be evicted for any reason other than: damaging the property, being significantly (maybe 6 months?) behind on rent, the owner or an immediate family member wants to move in, significant renovations are needed (with strong enforcement to ensure these last two are actually done, and not used as a fake excuse). No ability to use evictions as a reprisal for complaining about the conditions.
- Tenants should be entitled to treat the place basically as their own. That means any minor reversible modification should be permitted, including painting and hanging up photos.
- No restrictions on pets other than those which would normally come with local ordinances and animal welfare laws.
- Rental inspections every 3 months is absurd. Maybe the first after 3 months, then 6 months, then annually after that at best.
- Strict rules about landlords being required to maintain the property to a comfortable condition. Harsh penalties if they fail to do so, as well as the ability for the tenant to get the work done themselves and make the landlord pay for it, if the landlord does not get it done in a reasonable time.
And tangentially, to prevent property owners just leaving their homes without a long-term tenant: significantly increased rates/taxes for homes that are unoccupied long-term, or which are used for short-term accommodation (e.g. Airbnb). Additionally, state-owned housing with highly affordable pricing should make up a substantial portion of the market, on the order of 30%. This provides a pretty hard floor below which privately-owned housing cannot fall, because people should be reasonably able to say “this place isn’t good enough, I’ll move”.
If a property owner is willing to deal with the fact that a home’s first and foremost purpose should be to provide a safe and secure place for a person to live, then I have no problem with them profiting.
While I hate the current state of affairs around housing, some people do lose the plot and forget that some people prefer/need to rent and that rent cant just be the mortgage payment because they’re on the hook for repairs, not you.
Landlords aren’t inherently the problem, they’re a symptom of ALL property owners completely shutting down new development for over 50 years.
I agree with these ideas but we also need to fund development of new housing, and if anyone wants to complain instead of shutting it down extend an offer to buy their house so they can leave.
we also need to fund development of new housing
Hells yeah. That’s why one of the ideas above was that the government should be a significant force in housing. Part of that might be buying up existing homes, but a lot would be funding the construction of new homes.
I didn’t mention it above because while related, I considered it out of scope for that comment. But I’m also a fierce advocate for abolishing low-density zoning entirely. What my city calls “LMR” (low-medium residential) should be the bare minimum zone for residential areas. That still permits single-family separated homes to be built, but it also automatically permits 2–3 storey townhouses and apartments. Plus zoning areas near (say, within a 400 m walk of) train stations for medium-density residential. (All mixed-use, of course.)
But this isn’t !fuckcars@lemmy.world or !notjustbikes@feddit.nl, so I’ll leave it at that for now.
Agree with everything but HARD disagree with #3. Pets are not a right and so many people are HORRIBLE pet owners. And when people are bad pet owners the damage they can do it unreal, like ripping the house down to the studs type of damage. Also anything that prevents people from being bad pet owners is a win in my book. That addition to the law would be AWFUL for animal welfare and it’s just not needed.
like ripping the house down to the studs
If the damage they are causing is more than superficial, that would be covered under “damaging the property” (in #1).
The point of #3 is that it shouldn’t be the landlord’s business how someone lives their life. Their only role is the fact that they own a house. If it’s bad for the animal’s welfare, that’s the State’s job to deal with, not someone purely with a profit motive.
When you write legislation you must look at the consequences of that legislation, not just the principals of the legislation. Otherwise you end up with horrible unintended side effects.
With your rules on not allowing access for inspection an animal could have an entire year to do damage before the owner could discover it. And then what? They make a claim against their insurance? Who will then try and go after the renter who probably doesn’t have the assets to pay for the damage. As a result insurance policies will increase and that cost will get passed onto innocent renters who are paying for the crappy pet owners.
Also what do you think the enforcement mechanism for this is for “The State”? How are they going to be able to look into the living conditions of these animals? There is no good way to enforce that and it will just end up with thousands and thousands of animals being neglected. You can’t just ignore the issues legislation will cause because you only care about principles. That’s just ignorant and neglectful.
It’s also not unreasonable for apartment buildings to ban larger pets that would be cruel to keep in a small apartment.
Double property taxes on owners, but give back a property tax credit on owner-occupants, so that the effective tax rate on owner occupants falls, and the only people paying the doubled tax rate are investors.
Statutorily increase the tax rate and credit when owner occupancy is below 80%, and reduce the tax rate and credit when owner occupancy rises above 90%.
Wouldn’t landlords simply pass those costs onto their renters?
Introduce rent control
Yes, and no. They are more likely to switch to a different strategy, such as a private mortgage or land contract. Large apartment complexes will likely convert to condominiums or co-ops.
Basically, if we raise the rate and credit high enough, the landlord will be able to get a better return with one of these other options than they could get from renting.
All of these other options are permanent agreements, with terms established from the start. The landlord can’t arbitrarily raise rent every year. The tenant gains equity from day one.
Basically, I’m killing the concept of renting. It needs to die in a goddamn fire.
Being a landlord is supposed to be a job though. They’re supposed to maintain the property and handle property related disputes between the tenant and the community. The problem is landlords aren’t held to their obligations and are allowed to treat it as a passive investment. Liability for landlords and their property managers needs to be increased. Require a licence for landlording that can be revoked.
These things are tiring because renting a place is a job and has expenses. I have had some good landlords. Like these two sisters that owned a four flat and lived in the building themselves. Like any job though it can be done poorly. Like this other guy who owned several flats including the 6 flat I was in and did not live there but did live in the area. And then I had an accountant who owned an apartement complex and was great but in another corp owned complex it was aweful. The better ones had folks who were mostly trying not to lose money and were more concerned with having good tenants. The bad ones looked to maximize profits to the detriment of everything else.
Playing the devil’s advocate here: Under capitalism, you could also see it as a provision of services where the landlord invests in the means of production (the building) and provides the service of letting people stay there for a certain amount of money. The offered services include the maintenance of the building. If a landlord is keeping a building poorly maintained and/or expects an over the top rent, then this is simply a bad service.
But well, this obviously doesn’t work out as soon as you consider a safe place to live a basic human right that mustn’t be commodified.
you don’t need to play the devil’s advocate. There’s plenty of libs here doing it earnestly.
Well, I tried to find any arguments that could speak in favor of landlords. From the additional comments I got here it is pretty obvious that there isn’t really any justification for housing to be in the hands of landlords.
It also assumes that the landlord is paying for the building with his own money instead of getting a loan.
The bank provides the money to build a house, the tenant pays the bank off and somehow at the end of this process the building belongs to the landlord.
This is the rub in some ways, but in others who risks their credit/capital and who also has the foresight to navigate the modern home building issues of financing a new home build for 2 years in many places without a shovel even hitting earth as permits and red tape are cleared? *It costs almost $100,000 just to get a permit in my North American city which the city keeps.
I chose to rent as I want to live where I want and don’t want to deal with the issues of home ownership once the home is built or the taxes, however just the journey to building a home is no walk in the park and has changed a great deal since our great grandparents could just build any old house/shack they wanted on land they paid very little for as no one was living in the areas beyond the natives that once called these areas home.
I’m not even sure the cabin my grandfather built in the 70s on recreational property in a remote area that he ended up retiring to could even be built today.
In the cities where real estate pricing is through the roof due to demand, and occupancy is at record lows, those that can take the financial hit from delays and the costs to build a home are at present the only ones seeing homes being built in these conditions so the market in terrible ways have created a situation right or wrong of rewarding that initial capital investment as who else in their right mind would go through that just to have less than nothing in the end to hand it over to a tenant without a full refund of all of those costs in the first month by the tenant?
Without these builders I wonder how many renters would be able to fund paying for the land for 2 years, then the materials for building the home, and the labor, then navigate the city, and manage the builders and trades, while working at their job full time (not related to home building in many cases) while living somewhere else during this process along waiting for a close with city approval to occupy once completed which might push this to 3 years?
Paying both the bank and then your rent to live somewhere during this process isn’t cheap either.
If the market relied on monthly renters for home building I suspect MANY more of us would be living in tents or campers… Which is also happening in the current system too but perhaps not at the same degree?
How do we as a society trigger the removal of red tape, nimbys, and fund the building costs of higher density housing might be a better question to ask as these challenges need to be tackled to see more homes built. Getting around the reward paying for the large upfront costs of building homes needs to be navigated too.
Unfortunately moving further west is no longer an option due to the west having run out for many of us.
While the risks you describe are correct, it would seem that in some places the landlord expects an annual return of around 10%. That looks like an insanely high number to me and I don’t think that the risk is this big.
You’re describing a property manager. They can be the same person as the landlord, but they don’t have to be.
and usually aren’t
deleted by creator
Is any investment ever ethical?
landlords should get a real job.
deleted by creator
"I am the landlord, I speak for the land:
Just put your tips in the palm of my hand.
What’s that? “No tipping,” I hear you all bleat?
Then I’ll jack up the rent and put you out on the street!"
Jesus fuck the amount of limp noodles here. You’re so dominated by the owner class that even your dreams are subservient.
People need temporary housing sometimes, yes that is true. I am not sure what sort of cosmic fucking roller coaster you get on in order to go from that to privatisation of land is good actually.
I swear there’s something about posting memes in leftymemes that triggers the libs, and they come here to vomit their bootlickin’ takes.
It’s so sad. There are ways for things to be upkept, developed, innovated on whatever that don’t involve private ownership.
Not everything has to be owned, even if something has a profit motive things can be held in common.
Capitalist realism is such a major bummer, people think they’re being bold by asking for slightly more of the pie they baked. In a sense it is, because of how screwed we are, but like my friends… we baked the damn pie.
Lefty memes will continue until class consciousness improves
