this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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If there were no homes to rent, where would people who can't or don't want to buy live?
Let's imagine there was somehow zero rental market. Imagine there was a law against purchasing a dwelling and then not actually using it as your residence. People still need to live somewhere, so there would be a demand for housing. People would see a profit in meeting that demand, so someone would build and sell housing. Currently, those who can't afford to buy a home have rental as a cheap alternative. Without that, there would be an open niche for something to meet the need for housing. There would be a market pressure to solve the discrepancy between the price of housing and the available capital of the average person. House prices might be forced down, salaries might be forced up, I don't know what would happen precisely but there would be a pressure to make it possible for people to live somewhere.
You can see evidence for this in what happened in a lot of major cities. People have been able to use one home that they own as collateral in buying a second, and then use the income from renting it out to pay that off plus a little profit. That leaves them with two properties as collateral and a little cash spare, making it easier to do it again with a more expensive place. Rinse and repeat and you've got wealthy landlords buying up all the properties so there's no need for the people selling those properties to drop prices to where first-time buyers can afford them - the usual dynamics of supply and demand that keep prices in reach of buyers have been disrupted, and the two types of buyer separate into two tiers that get pushed further apart, getting harder and harder for people to jump from the lower tier to the upper. This is how you end up with people paying ยฃ1000 in rent while the bank tells them they can't have a ยฃ700-a-month mortgage because they can't afford it, and that ยฃ1000 a month leaves them nothing left over to save up for the ยฃ30,000 deposit they'd need anyway. The market pressure that led to this situation are obvious, and reversing those pressures is the most obvious way to fix the situation.
I can't speak for OP but I think in general the idea that "landlords shouldn't exist" or whatever doesn't just stop at eliminating rentals. There is more than enough housing in the US to house everyone here (and probably the world? if not, there's enough resources to build housing for everyone), and it seems unjust to let people be homeless or exploit their need for shelter due to artificial scarcity.
I like to think that most of us could agree that everyone deserves the dignity of having shelter regardless of what luck life has dealt them, even if we can't immediately agree on how.
Only if you assume that the entire country is a single market where specific location is largely irrelevant. The places where a lot of housing is available is usually because it's not where people want to be. Like I could buy a house on main street in the town where my grandparents grew up for <$100,000. But do I want a small house in bumfuck nowhere that doesn't have any land attached to it and requires significant upgrades and maintenance due to age? No, not particularly, especially because it would either mean a 2+ hour commute to a nearby major city or an entirely remote job.
The abscence of landlords does not preclude the existence of housing. The house would still be there if there wasn't a landlord attached to it.
Before landlords we all just lived under trees for shelter from the rain. Cooperative housing doesnt and never existed.
This is objectively false.
I think it was sarcasm ;)
Most of the people I know live in a Housing cooperative. I can't be assed to fact check but I'll bet it's the most common form of housing in Sweden.
You're ignoring apartment blocks and similar high density developments.
I don't follow, are you suggesting it's impossible to own a single apartment in a block? As someone who lives in an apartment I own without owning the entire building, I can tell you that's definitely false. You don't need a landlord to make high density housing to work.
So nobody owns the building?
The people who own the apartments. Individual units have individual owners, shared areas have shared ownership by whoever owns the units unless specified otherwise. Maintenance of common areas is the shared responsibility of all owners.
Would imagine it's an HOA situation.
There's a company that owns the land, and it's sole purpose is to maintain the land and common areas of the building. All the units could be individually owned, and that company exists to have a bank account that can pay for repairs/repaints. In this situation I'm describing, while the company would own the building, they have no ability to raise rents, as all the units would be owned by the tenants.
That sounds an awful lot like a landlord. And if no rent is being collected, where is the money for the bank account coming from?
It's nothing like a landlord, as the person living in the apartment owns said apartment. The owner makes the money off it when it's next sold.
While often HOAs are abusive, and I don't want to ever be a part of one, I also don't want to live in a condo/apartment again. Someone needs to take care of the building, so they set up HOAs which, when run well, are democratic. You elect the board, you can go to the meetings and make your voice heard. If you speak well you can convince all the people in the building to get behind the idea you're championing. Condos require a Home Owner's Association due to the fact that no one person should get to dictate how the common area is run, and no one should be on the hook to fix, say, an elevator. Everyone pays dues, and those dues pay for the repairs.
If people elect to hire a company to be the head of the HOA, well they're choosing to be lazy, and for that reason, the HOA will be paying the company to run it's affairs. If the HOA is run by the residents, no money is going to enrich any one person, the money is being used to enrich everyone that lives there, through keeping the building in good shape to raise the value of their personal property.
The part that makes it similar to a landlord is the necessity for someone to actually be responsible for the building as a whole. "Dues" is just "rent" by another name.
And putting money in the bank is just rent for living? The money is used to increase your home's value. But I see we are at an impasse, and will be done discussing it.
No, putting money in your own bank account is not like paying rent because you still own the money and can still spend in on other things. Paying rent to a landlord, or dues into a maintenance account, removes the money from your ownership and prevents you from spending it on other things.
That doesn't make it good.
No it would just be a piece of land. The landlord bought the Land and built the house, without the landlord, it would be land owned by the government or a realty company.
In many cases, landlords buy already built houses and rent them out. The solution is to remove the landlord and give the house to the resident.
Free land and house, what kind of thinking is that?
What, do you think people should have to pay to be able to sleep in a safe place?