Nah fuck that.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
This will probably be an unpopular opinion but I think the reality is that the choice whether to be a landlord has no effect on the supply of housing and so is almost totally irrelevant to this essentially systemic issue. The only kind of stuff that matters here:
- Supply of housing influencing its cost
- Wealth of the poorest influencing their ability to pay for housing
- Other factors (the credit system etc) limiting people’s access to housing
- Legal ability to use housing as a speculative investment (ie. low property taxes even if you own multiple properties)
The idea that people would buy property and then provide housing on a charitable basis in defiance of the market isn’t realistic and isn’t a viable solution to the problem. The only solution is to build the right incentives into the system. Someone can support the latter without trying to do the former.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Well like I said that’s kind of the sentiment I expect because people like to make this about individual morality, but care to elaborate at all? Do you disagree with any particular part of what I’m saying?
nucleative@lemmy.world 1 day ago
OP: constructive addition to thread You: nah
groet@feddit.org 1 day ago
The price to buy housing is influenced by how many people want to buy. People who want to live there are competing with landlords who want to rent out the housing. So it drives up the buying price.
A landlord buying for a higher price will likely try to charge a higher rent as to recoup the investment.
More potential landlords means higher rent prices. Every single landlord is increasing the problem.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
This is good logic but I think what you are missing is that the factor behind investment demand driving up price is volume of capital rather than number of landlords. One company can buy any number of living spaces if it has a way to profit on them, cancelling out the effects of any number of principled refusals by individuals to buy property in pursuit of that profit.
That said, one thing that is weighted to individuals is lobbying local government to protect their investments, so more people becoming landlords isn’t necessarily good, because your finances being tied to something is a powerful source of bias, for instance towards opposing new housing developments that could increase housing supply and reduce price of your properties, or opposing higher property taxes for non-primary-residences. But if someone supports effective policies towards affordable housing, even knowing it will harm their investments, I think they get credit for that.
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
This is the same logic that fossil fuel companies do to shift blame from themselves onto consumers.