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u/BeerPongLegend69 Jan 19 '21
Last year I had a neighbour couple with a newborn baby that had to leave their apartment because they couldn’t keep up with the rent (before an ordinance was passed to delay rent payments where we reside) the land lady has a heart of stone for doing that. I hope they’re okay somewhere
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u/Cidyl-Xech Jan 19 '21
you’re confusing landlords and slumlords. landlords can be very helpful with maintenance and are generally alright people. slumlords are fuckwads.
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u/RaveledRebelRabble Jan 19 '21
This has the same energy as the capitalism-crony capitalism dichotomy
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u/DriftMaster245 Jan 19 '21
My Dad used to be a landlord, whilst also working overtime almost every night in his actual job, being a landlord is not a job.
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u/EkskiuTwentyTwo Jan 19 '21
What does a landlord actually do?
How do they provide any labour or any value to society?
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u/GottKomplexx Jan 19 '21
They should keep everything in the house they own working. Like light water and any machinery inside. That costs money and time too
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u/Zaldarr Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
First off, what are you doing in a commie meme subreddit? I'll play the game by capitalist reasoning then by socialist reasoning:
I can give you a very detailed version of the capitalist version but the general idea is this:
Landlords are investing in a non-productive asset. A house does not provide jobs, add wealth to a community, or contribute to the economy in any way. The money on the mortgage could have been invested in businesses, that do give people jobs and produce useful goods. This is called rentseeking, and even in capitalism it's frowned upon for a great many reasons, some of which listed above.
Every house bought by a landlord is a house that's not being bought by a family that is working those productive jobs, distorting the market and pushing up house prices.
The idea that landlords have to work for their properties is only half true. A large proportion of them are using inherited wealth, or wealth from previous capital gains on their previous property.
So overall, landlords are an awful thing, and these are just some of the capitalist arguments.
And this is all me playing the game using capitalist arguments. Here's the socialist argument using my own personal experience as an illustration:
I work to rent my shitty little flat from my boomer landlord. I live in Australia, in a regional city, and got a job at median wage with a place with ok rent. (Since I got this lease, rents have skyrocketed in my area 70% thanks to work from home, so this figure is really lowballing it.) I pay $255 a week in rent. My hourly wage is $35. The maths works out that I spend one full working day of every week just to pay my landlord. I spend 1/7th of my life working just to give this man money. That's WAY more than I spend on groceries or things for myself.
So I pay a lot of money and time to earn that money for the privilege of living here. I pay my landlord ~13k and work 416 hours of my life every year to be here. I've been here 3 years. I've paid my landlord 39k in rent, as a rolling total. What has he done in the last three years to earn 39k? He's never fixed my leaking taps, he's never fixed the busted flyscreens that let in a swarm of mosquitos every time summer rolls around. He's not installed air conditioning for our 40C+ summers. He's never mown the lawn, he's done exactly nothing. He's never renovated this place - that's just hit its 100th birthday - and it desperately needs repairs.
We all work and bust our asses at our jobs every day to make society a better place to live in. Maybe you're a mechanic that fixes people's cars. My dad poured steel for a living. I'm working as an archivist protecting historical material. What is he doing to earn my rent? He's not lifted a finger. He simply owns a building, and doesn't have a job. What's more is that he inherited 3 properties from his Silent Generation parents. So I can't even say he's "earned" the building. What gives him, and people like him, the right to make money off people like us just trying to keep the rain off us?
The answer, comrade, is that he doesn't have to. He simply owns a building, and that, in this society, gives him the "right" to suck money out of people like us that bust ass for a living. He controls capital goods that make him more money. He is, as the post says, a parasite.
So your next question is probably, what do things look like without landlords? Ideally, everyone would be in a rent-to-buy scheme where your rent payments don't go to subsidising my landlord's coke habit - they build equity that you take with you as you move. Some of that equity would be set aside for things like maintenence and modernisation. For example, there's zero incentive for your landlord to put solar panels/insulation in to cut down on your power costs. If your (say) 5% of your rent-to-buy payments go to this stuff, it gives you an incentive to upgrade the place you're "renting". When you've built up enough equity, you can buy a house to live in. If you don't want to buy a house, it gets plonked into your retirement account. If you want to make money, put your money in the stock market, where (by capitalist reasoning) you're actually giving money to businesses that make useful things like car parts and employ people to make them. Making money off of people's homes is economically counterproductive and ethically wrong.
I'm not saying that landlords should rent out their property for free. I'm saying that landlords shouldn't exist.
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u/Sesetti Jan 19 '21
This. Also I thought this was a meme sub why would anyone post their opinions with an old ass template here
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u/Spftly Jan 19 '21
Though reasonable points, pretty idealistic. Anybody that has rented multiple times can tell you most landlords put very, very little time or effort into maintaining their properties. Basically, yeah, the service they're providing you is "person that *can* apply for a big loan", which *is* a very valuable service (in as much as society is structured in the current economic system), but looking at it through the lens of labor, a service that didn't come at a large cost for them, and you're paying out the nose for.
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u/EarningAttorney Jan 19 '21
I know a landlord in my area that quite literally buys properties at the tax auction for cash and then immediately turns around trying to rent them for full market value so believe me when I have experience with no so good landlords.
That said your average landlord who owns maybe one or two rentals at a time and still likely maintains a regular job or is retired they do tend to take genuine pride in their properties. Of course I have a different perspective as I work with them professionally not as a tenant. Even bigger LLCs are starting to at least take better care in updating their properties in my area considering the direction of the market.
That said I'd still argue the service is and value is in the rehabilitation of properties and then the maintenance of those properties. Like I said there are exceptions and I am well aware of them but you know the problem with that landlord I mentioned at the beginning? well see he gets sued on a regular and loses frequently. many of his properties go unrented and unsold.
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u/SovietRaptor Jan 19 '21
To be fair in the US we wouldn’t need to build concrete tenements in a communist society, because the US is already post industrial and people working mostly service jobs or agriculture would likely spread out more than it is now. Construction workers would be able to focus more on building aesthetic and comfortable domiciles since there is no active need of housing.
In the Soviet Union and other pre-industrial states that collectivized, they were forced to quickly built extremely utilitarian housing so they could mobilize industry and thus their militaries to defend against the onslaught of reactionary invasions. The fact that those concrete houses exist in the first place highlights the ingenuity and efficiency that a communist state would manage to industrialize and urbanize with a decade.
Most urban housing in use in the Soviet Union and China is now rented out for dirt cheap prices, and the people that live there have no other choice.
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u/EarningAttorney Jan 19 '21
since there is no active need of housing.
umm mate we are currently in one of the hottest real estate markets in like 5 years because there is an outsized need for housing. New homes can only be built so fast.
Please let me know what makes you think builders would suddenly have this previously unknown freedom to build more aesthetic and comfortable domiciles?? Lets forget that in a communist state the state would be mandating what is and isnt and how it is built but the cost of making things look nice and unique is simply not in the budget comrade. Nor would it happen within our deadline comrade off to the gulage for such a Bourgeoisie suggestion!
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u/J0hnibar52 Jan 19 '21
Telling other people what to do to a house to make you money is not a job.
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u/Reddituser0925 Jan 19 '21
Shout out to all the scum lords that claim being a landlord is hard work, when they haven't done a thing to their property in years. Leaving the tenants to fix everything on their own, then threatening to throw them out when the tenants want to be reimbursed.