-
For our US members, be sure to check on your voter registration status and if you are not registered it will only take a second to do so!
Are landlords inherently unethical?
- Thread starter Midramble
- Start date
The UK had a proud tradition of social housing, over 40% of the population was in social housing in the late 70s, the Thatcher government and those after saw the decimation of state owned housing stock with the Right to Buy scheme being a main proponent.
London has a housing crisis today and rents are astronomical, you can't trust private entities to fix that.
It's not that I think landlords are inherently unethical, it's that the system is broken and they aren't a big part of the solution.
London has a housing crisis today and rents are astronomical, you can't trust private entities to fix that.
It's not that I think landlords are inherently unethical, it's that the system is broken and they aren't a big part of the solution.
No, you can't always sell your property (for a profit) if you're struggling. Did you guys just miss the entire market collapse in 2008 or what?
And yeah, that's the whole deal with capitalism. It's not as if each citizen gets to pick the type of economic system they'd like to abide by, so I'd feel bad for anyone struggling regardless of what system they think works best. I wont try to convince you to have empathy though, that's lacking quite a bit these days.
Reading this post is basically what it feels like to see a $1 over bid on a price is right ahowcase. You almost had it. Almost. So fucking close.
Property does not equal possession. State property is simply another form of private property.
Just like the relationship between employer and employee it's inherently exploitative. There might be "good" landlords (though, in my experience as a tenants' lawyer, that normally means "actually complies with the law") but that doesn't change the injustice of the power imbalance. Whether it's implicit or explicit, landlords will always hold the sword of Damocles of homelessness over their tenants' heads.
Bankruptcy protections. You made a bad investment and represent a tiny fraction of landlords, sorry. You're now in the terrible position of having to rent from someone else. How horrible
Like I feel this is the same thing as asking what happens to the poor downtrodden middle class stock owner who put all their money into one failing stock.
There are bad actors on both sides. I have first hand experience with more than enough terrible tenants, who don't pay rent on time or at all, trash the place, etc.
Depending where people live, the laws can go either way too. Where I live, tenants have a good set of rights and land lords don't have all the power.
Depending where people live, the laws can go either way too. Where I live, tenants have a good set of rights and land lords don't have all the power.
Where I live (Pacific northwest) there are a number of low income housing developments available. I'm not sure what that landscape looks like throughout the country, but there are definitely options, and I've personally used them. Low income housing prevented me from being homeless.
Do you really believe This? I was just trying to see where the line was, and at what point commerce crosses that line in the minds of those who think landlords are evil. I genuinely did not expect someone to think WinCo (eg) was unethical.
The one they're already leveraging to profit off their tenant?
Do you honestly believe that if you had the numbers on the % of landlords who were vulnerable to becoming homeless, that it would be comparable to the % of tenants who were vulnerable to becoming homeless? Do you believe that the figures would be even remotely close?
That's a trip. Hats off to you for your dedication to the cause, I suppose
Just about anyone can file for bankruptcy.
And no, this isn't the same as asking that question as this was an all too common scenario in 2008 in NYC. Also stocks are not a necessity while housing is. You have to be paying for some kind of shelter, you don't have to be making any kind of stock investment to maintain a basic standard of living.
We got people dying and others who are malnourished because they can't afford groceries while we got places selling food for profit. Yes, it is unethical.
Yeah, there are options, like Section 8, but they aren't as accessible or effective as food assistance has been.
I think there should be more oversight. i.e. developers can't put in a 3 story complex anymore downtown, they have to be a certain amount of room since space is limited. Nor can they drastically drive up rent over year to evict people.
But I also do think it should be far easier to remove bad tenants as well and that shit should follow you around.
But I also do think it should be far easier to remove bad tenants as well and that shit should follow you around.
Yeah i'm gonna need some receipts on the bolded. And even were we to assume you're correct, which i very much doubt, worst for whom? Landlords? Yeah i guess that's true. But go ask a homeless person if they would rather have a home or not. Or ask anyone who wastes two thirds of their income on housing if their life would be worse by having a home provided to them instead.
And calling government provided housing a monopoly is just...i don't even know what to say to this. What do you think of government having a 'monopoly' on the prison system? Are for profit prisons a net positive? How about healthcare? Are you happy with the for profit American healthcare system? Or how the pharmaceutical industry literally puts profit over people's lives? How about charter schools?
When has an essential human necessity being for profit ever benefitted anyone but the profiteers? Ever?
Trump is not the bogeyman. He's a political shithead like all the political shitheads before and all the ones that will come after. Use a better argument, just throwing out Trump as a Fear Pokemon has no effect. Besides, i'm not American, so Trump means literally nothing to me in this context.
Housing should be available for everyone. We have the means and it's immoral and unethical not to do do. Anyone who exploits that flaw is conducting themselves unethically and immorally.
I mean, do you know how much food grocery stores throw away on a daily basis, because just giving it away for free would be bad for business? And how many people in America go to bed hungry? I don't think it's possible to reconcile those two things without one of the actors being unethical.
In a system where everyone receives enough food, a grocery store - that offers more food, of a higher quality, from luxury brands - wouldn't be unethical. But when there's starving people in the world, food shouldn't be a commodity to profit off of.
Those people purchased a property slightly beyond their means, with the intent to make up the difference by renting to someone else. They made an investment and took a risk. No one forced them to purchase that property. They bought instead of renting so they could have equity in a property, pad the mortgage with rental income and eventually profit off the situation
It's the exact same thing as the same person buying a smaller home or renting and losing all their money in the stock market in 2008
As long as you are out there stanning landlords, I am sure the world won't miss my lack of empathy for them.
From each according to their ability to each according to their need
A house with an underwater mortgage is no a significant asset. In fact it can be a huge detriment to the point where not having it is beneficial.
And no, I don't believe the number is close, but pretending this doesn't happen is silly. You have any idea how many people in NYC lost their 2 unit homes to developers dying to gentrify neighborhoods back in 2008-2011? We're seeing the result of that right now in many NYC neighborhoods. This is a thing, whether it supports your argument or not.
Owning and maintaining property is providing something of value. People give them money for the value they create.
sorry, I edited shortly after posting. I was trying to lolwut the post you quoted, but somehow got your post instead.
"Nothing necessary should be allowed to be privately owned" when taken to its logical conclusion is beyond idiocy.
Sounds vague at best. How is need determined? Do we become a species of pure subsistence?
So who should provide the food/groceries? Should meat markets donate their food? Should farmers donate their crops? How do they make money to survive?
I'm reminded of the time when I was a grocery store worker and I had to throw away $300 worth of cooked chicken into a locked and monitored dumpster to ensure that the local homeless population couldn't get to the food we were throwing out anyway.
Mind you, it was food that we wouldn't have thrown away if dipshit management hadn't kept massively misreading the demand because they were sure they'd get extra profits out of it.
I'm pretty sure I could maintain a home just fine if I didn't need to put 2/3rds of my monthly income to a societal parasite.
"If you were a bad person who did bad things you wouldn't say that the things you do are bad"
Interesting argument.
Are we really pretending that people don't fall on hard times? It's like people are ignoring the most common cause of foreclosure for the purpose of making a point.
I'm sure the world wouldn't miss it even if I wasn't out there saying landlords don't deserve to be homeless.
What does being profitable have to do anything? The premise of this thread is that landlords are unethical because shitty behavior. What I'm saying is you can't point the finger at landlords collectively for shitty behavior then excuse tenants as if they are all perfect tenants.
We literally throw away over 50% of the food we produce in thr US
Certainly, the kulaks you've just shipped off to be executed or "re-educated" will be very relieved at your moral clarity.
Nobody is saying landlords deserve to be homeless. You're the only one defending against this imaginary position. People are saying a system where people can profit off of the necessities of others is bad, and landlords are a good example of why this is bad. Just like for-profit healthcare is an example of this bad system
We're not trying to replace the poor and homeless with landlords, we're trying to talk about a society that doesn't need landlords
I'm not pretending it doesn't happen. I'm calling out leveraging edge cases for sympathy as a bullshit dodge. The number of woeful, suffering landlords who are about to be - again, as Ferrio put it - out on the streets because their tenant missed a month's payment is so laughably small compared to the number of tenants who can be turbofucked by any number of shitty behaviors from their landlord.
But if anecdotes are all that matters to convince you, I'm sure there are some good, noble cops out there who will reassure you that there is nothing systemically wrong with their profession.
Owning a property and leasing it out doesn't make you a bad person.
If you're a bad person and you lease a property out, chances are, that person is going to be a really shitty Landlord.
That doesn't mean that all Landlords are shitty.
If you have the money to invest in the property market and you don't because you think it's unethical, then you're just leaving money on the table stupidly. It doesn't make you a better person than somebody who does lease property out.
But yeah, continue to misconstrue my posts to better serve your agenda.
Come one man, people in here are trying to defend capitalism, stop making it so hard.
Because a landlords motives for shitty behavior is to earn more profit while shitty tenant behavior is probably a sign of mental health issues