this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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There's a lot to unpack out of this reddit moment.
If we want people to take us seriously about advocating for reform in this housing crisis, this ain't it. Stripping nuance out of the conversation isn't helping the cause, it just makes us look uninformed.
Yes, the vast majority of landlords charge too much and do to little. But claiming that no work is required to be landlord does two things:
It absolves the landlord of the responsibility to maintain the property
It diminishes the scope of the work required to provide people with affordable housing and doesn't set clear goals to accomplish
There is a rule of thumb called the unrecoverable costs to owning which is typically 5% of the property's value. This goes towards plumbing, electrical work, landscaping, HVAC repairs, roof work, pest control, interior upkeep, and much more. The reality is that a property doesn't take care of it self and someone has to.
Yes, the system is broken, rent is unaffordable, and home owner is neigh impossible these days. What we need is regulation on the housing market, getting rid of speculators, reform zoning laws for high density housing, public transit and good urban planning, more subsidized and public housing, etc.
Even when you have all of that you will still need landlords, just not the kind that we have today. Because for housing to exist there is an inherent risk that somebody has to carry to guarantee the mortgage is paid for and that it will not go up in flames.
Capitalistic landlording is wholly unnecessary. Homes can be personally or publicly owned without needing a landlord rent-seeking. Ownership is not labor, and creates no value.
This isn't a "reddit moment," it's a leftist moment, and given that lemmy is the leftist answer to the Capitalist Reddit, it's a bit interesting that you think this is more reddit than true to Lemmy.
I didn't say ownership is labor. I said maintenance is labor.
Seriously. Have you tried: re-painting a house, replacing drywall, installing new floor boards, replacing light fixtures, redoing baseboards, hooking up new washer/dryers, replacing doors knobs, fixing broken ceiling fans, installing security cameras, vetting and hiring handymen, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, getting permits with the city, installing a new faucet, cleaning up sewer leaks, cleaning up mold, fixing stucco, dealing with bedbugs and termite extermination, get HERS testing, spec out a new electrical panel, debug for nuisance tripping, and so much more shit that I don't have time to list them all.
This stuff doesn't do it self. I live in my own home now and I had to learn how to do most of these things, at least the ones that don't require certification. Handymen are expensive, and right fully so because doing maintenance well is not an easy job. If I can't learn to do it right, I'll need to pay someone else to do it.
My point is that owning a home is kind of like owning a pet. You need to be fully prepared for shit over the house and know how to deal with it when it happens. Unless you're some property conglomerate, owning a house isn't just a deed transfer, it's practically a living thing that you need to take care of.
Maintenance is labor, and you don't need ownership to perform maintenance. There will always be plumbers, but you don't need a landlord to hire a Worker to do work.
Owning a home doesn't need to be like owning a pet, again, you can have robust and nice public housing or personal ownership and contract maintenance yourself. Neither option necessitates neofeudal landlords.
See comment
Already answered. Exactly none of that requires a Capitalist landlord, you can accomplish every bit of that either publicly or with a worker-owned maintenance firm that can oversee all of that.
Capitalism is entirely unnecessary.
That's an absolute dodge. I answered, contracting complex maintenance in no way requires having a Capitalist own your home. You can either have publicly owned housing, or you can personally own it, and choose to contract a maintenance firm or do it yourself.
All of these are superior to having a Capitalist landlord, designed to extract as much profit from you as possible for as little maintenance as possible. The closest to a Capitalist landlord would be public housing, except public housing isn't concerned with extracting profits but getting results and covering costs.
Why exactly do you think some dude needs to own your house in order for them to coordinate maintenance? It's nonsense.
I grew up abroad and lived in high density public housing with walkable neighborhoods and universal healthcare care. That is as good as it can get and how it should be.
When I moved to the US I accepted that this country is fucked in ways that can't be fixed by just deleting landlords. The system that you have in mind isn't functional for the low density urban sprawl that is vastly separated by inhospitable zoning, high ways, and red lining.
You can't copy what works in some places and expect it to work the same way in others. Publicly own and co-owned housing needs constant attention and that can only work when it is high density because you can't expect a single property manager to walk a hundred miles taking care of the concerns of each house hold. You can't hire a property manager for each household because that would be insanely expensive. Not to mention how much more the upkeep is for single family housing compared to apartments.
People on Reddit and Lemmy have a visceral reaction towards landlords with an absurd understanding of how property management, the housing market, urban planning, and zoning works.
There are systemic barriers beyond just landlords that make widespread publicly owned housing non-viable. When you start out with an impossible goal, you get nothing done. Actually advocate for things that make a difference like increasing mixed used and high density zones in your local area. Saying 'get rid of landlords' is about as lackadaisical as saying 'abolish jobs'. As nice as that would be, it's not realistic in this economy and you're not getting anywhere by sounding like a nut job to the socially regression crowd.
People on Lemmy and Reddit are young and quixotic. I get it, it's great to dream big. But when all you do is dream, nothing will come out of it. Be realistic and make a difference. Visit the countries that you see these ideal housing situations in, understand the history, the culture, and how they got to where they are. The economy and housing market is path dependent. You can't jump from A-Z and expect the same outcome.
I'll be honest, skimmed that wall of text, and frankly none of it much matters.
The fact is, Capitalist landlords are entirely unnecessary and housing for the profit motive inevitably leads to enshittification. Good public housing and personal ownership are great non-Capitalist options.
You're doing a great deal of intentionally misrepresenting what I'm saying, by pretending I want to just press the big Landlord Delete button and walk away. It's pathetic and cowardly.
All in all, it's hilarious that you take the high road and call me a young, naive dreamer when you can't articulate a point beyond sticking your head in the sand.
L + ratio.
That's rich coming from someone who unironically says 'L + ratio'. Nothing is being misrepresented here because there's nothing to misrepresent. All I've heard so far are regurgitated catch phrases from Lemmy and Reddit, and that alone doesn't make for a housing proposal that's grounded in reality.
Sounds more like a home warranty company. Which works pretty nicely in practice.
I've never had First American tell me what color I can paint my walls.
The vast majority of landlords doesn’t do any of that. They just pay for it to professional people from the revenue that they get from renting the house. The only labor that they perform is maximizing rent and minimizing maintenance costs (usually at the expense of the renters) and having to find new tenants from time to time.
The majority of the revenue is simply achieved by having the asset or capital to acquire said asset. They don’t really provide any service that wouldn’t exist without them, they are simply exploiting an asset and people that need a place to live.
why need landlord when have worker to call and say "fix my pipes". he come over and fix your pipes. what can landlord do that worker man cant.
Because having one plumber fix 10 houses is fundamentally different from having a landlord oversee fixing 10 things in the same house.
Imagine if every mechanic only fixed one part of the car and you had to go to 10 different ones to fix 10 different things. No mechanic would be able to point to what's wrong with the whole car and can only tell you what's wrong with each part.
There is a degree of vertical integration needed to maintain a single dwelling. As an example, I wanted to replace my stove that had a broken oven. In order to do so, I needed to fix the gas line. However, I need to finish removing an old gas furnace and installing a heat pump. In order to do that, I needed to repair the broken sewer lines under the unit, and in order to do that, I needed to resolve a dispute with the city over sewer line maintenance (they admitted fault eventually).
This wasn't just a bunch of small projects that 10 people could each do one of. There were a myriad of dependencies and choices to make that would affect other parts of the house.
Funny enough, the same principle is part of why the US healthcare system is so shit because the lack of vertical integration due to the insurance system is why patients have such a hard time getting the diagnosis and medications they need. If you or a family member has multiple health issues, you may be familiar with this.
My point is, keeping a house alive isn't some group project that you can get 10 people to each do a little bit of. At the end of the day there are executive decisions that will determine the outcome of other parts of the house.
And all of that can be done either publicly or at a worker-owned maintenance organization. None of that needed a landlord.
I think that the broader point is, a proper landlord, one that actually has investment in the land they own and maintain, can allow for a more holistic approach to any given problem. If one entity is aware of the nuances of the situation, they're better able to get things moving in all of the little codependent issues that may arise.
None of this excuses shitty capitalist landlords who just buy up shit and rent it for a profit. And yes, it could be handled by the person living there instead of a landlord. Or government approved... Maintenance overseers for each individual property?
There are a myriad of ways to approach the problem besides a landlord, but the point still stands that having someone with a broader knowledge of the individual property can make repairs a ton easier.
The thing is, that managerial position has absolutely no reason to require ownership. The home can be personally owned and a local worker-owned firm can be contracted, or it can be maintained by a local public manager.
The point the original commenter was making was that somehow nobody decrying landlords had put this into thought, and that Capitalism is therefore the correct answer. You can follow their comment chains, its pretty blatant. They end up calling the Worker firm a glorified HOA and then stick their head in the sand.
I don't agree with all of their statements, particularly the glorified HOA bit (I didn't see that on this specific thread, probably elsewhere they posted), merely trying to point out that some of their statements are accurate.
I'm pretty sure I carved out several possibilities for non-landlord people who can fill out the same role. I'm just saying there's a bit of truth to having someone actually knowledgeable about the specific property facilitating maintenance.
I get that, my point is that nobody thinks housing doesn't need managers, despite the original commenter pretending that's the common stance of people decrying landlords.
To be fair to the original commentor, it's pretty common for it to just be tackled piecemeal.
I rent, and just had to deal with an overflow valve leaking. There ended up being several other tangentially related things that needed to be addressed. If I was managing that, as the person who actually lives there, I'd have been able to inform the contractors of all of this stuff ahead of time. Instead I have a 255 character box to send off to some nameless person who has never seen the property in all likelihood, who will call the cheapest contractor available, and draw a 2 hour repair into a 2 week affair.
This is why I stressed that we need people INVESTED IN the properties they're trying to maintain, not just have them be another line in a spreadsheet.
Obviously it depends which country you're in and how trustworthy your government is, but in my country I heard from a former coworker, who used to work in constructionz that government-built housing estates tend to be well taken care of. You call the council and they quickly send someone over to fix the issue. They also do periodic maintenence so council estates are more maintained that private estates. Council estates are still owned by the government and they still have to comply with their own laws (for the most part), so they tend to these public housing. Whereas, estates built by private corporations and vulture funds would sweep things under the rug because there is fewer oversight.
As a landlord, you can hire someone to handle reparations, disputes, enforcement of contracts and rent collection. Therefore, being a landlord is really not actual work. It's like the difference between being the owner of a company and its CEO: it sometimes goes hand in hand in smaller companies, but the owner isn't pocketing the company's profit because they do management work, they get the profit because they're the owner.
So just build public housing, which can actually be priced attending to the real cost of building it and maintaining it rather than market speculation.
https://youtu.be/skz9odeewpc?si=Gfu5bOG2XZcAXXMP
kill all landlords
In Minecraft.
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Edgy honestly