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Why U.S. renters are taking corporate landlords to court
(www.cnbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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What I'm saying is renting shouldn't exist to begin with. People should not own more than one living place and that place should be the place that they live in.
Housing is a human right.
Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, created December 10th, 1948:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Adequate housing is a human right.
Homelessness is a human rights violation.
America needs to understand this.
Humanity collectively decided this shit 76 years ago and America still can't get with the program. Smh.
Sigh ..this feeling of disappointment in my country is unceremoniously familiar.
OK. What does someone do when they move somewhere new and can't afford to purchase a house? Or don't want to purchase a place because they expect to live somewhere 6-12mo for a contract?
The solutions I've seen require a fundamental rethinking of the way housing works in the USA (and most places), where renting just turns into another way to build some amount of equity, and the property managers are under more democratic control. More of the process subsidized by the local government, in the same way that water treatment is.
Arguably it's renting by another name, but the central point is to strip the profit motive out of it (some salaries are needed, but in a system with more regulatory oversight) and to allow the renter to get some financial benefit so they aren't simply pissing money away.
Apologies in advance for that vague response: I'm not an economist or real estate expert, so I can't back up that general idea with any kind of details or evidence it's feasible.
Yeah, I agree totally. That's a great idea. Lease-to-own or something similar. As a renter I'd love to build some form of equity. Because in the US the only real way to build equity or generational wealth is through owning property. Which makes real estate a VERY hot commodity to speculate in. Which is a huge problem for people who just want somewhere to live and built modest equity like everyone else has.
Public housing, rented at cost directly from the government. And you can stay in the house as long as you want, so it eliminates the “risk” of renting. Done. Solved it.
Now just fucking build some public housing please.
I think this is a good idea for public housing. BUT that is not what the vast majority of americans want to live in. Uniform apartments, townhomes or small single-family homes are not the norm and I'd hesitate to make the majority of future developments so homogenous.
And then you have the issue with government-provided housing as we've had in the past: underfunding, under policing, bad locations, NIMBY assholes, etc. We already have subsidized housing/rental assistance: Section 8. So this would be a constant battle to just keep it decent.
Public housing doesn’t need to be uniform or boring… that was mostly a result of the ideology of urban planners of the mid 20th century when most public housing projects happened. The government can contract a private developer to make a nice building, that is well located, and is not just for poor people. That seems so obvious, but it seems people are stuck by their own ideology and can’t even think a bit outside of what is, or has been.
And I’m not talking about subsidised, I mean PUBLIC. Owned by the government or by coops, councils etc. Built using federal money. Just having this around would decrease overall housing costs so much… the market would have to compete with the no-profit, cost only, rents of public housing.
And Amazon has done a lot of research and found you only need to control 8% of a market to control the pricing. The government just has to build enough public housing in major population centers facing rent crisis to own 8% of total housing there. And that’s it. Rent cost crisis averted. And thousands of jobs and GDP generated because of all the construction (add in extra infrastructure for better access to the public housing, and you got a real economic boom cooking — hint hint, it’s literally what China did lmao).
This isn’t realistic. Maybe not owning additional homes for the sole purpose of renting to make a profit would be a better statement to make.
No renting = I hope you like camping in the woods, because that’s going to be your only option when you travel for vacation.
Hotels/motels still exist.
I’m not going to get into the discussion about whether renting should or should not exist but I can get behind the idea that renting for profit shouldn’t be a thing.
Three thoughts.
Sometimes I need / want to rent. Example, I had to repair the foundation of my home and needed a single family home to rent for my family while my home was being repaired for 6mo.
Hotels / motels / inns are a pretty reasonable use case. People need temporary housing for travel.
I don’t want to live in an area for more than 5 or 10 years, I want to rent. Buying a house is a huge fucking pain, and is always full of expensive surprises once you move and have the maintenance on you.
I could go on, but IMHO, there are a LOT more reasons why renting is actually useful, and I might want someone else to be on the hook for the mortgage and maintenance.
There will always be scenarios where renting is necessary but what I was getting at was it's out of control.
What about those who don’t want to own?
Co-ops, or other not for profit rental models. Doesn't have to be a for profit corporation just to manage the building.
"Gosh, I would love to pay the same amount or more to build no equity and have some shit bag landlord paint the walls white and claim he made repairs" said practically no one. Even if they did, there isn't a reason to maintain an insane system for the benefit of very few.
Nah—I’d just assume let everyone choose for themselves whether renting or owning is right for them.
That's working out so well for us.
I've known so many people that think buying would tie them down too much.