Comment on Landlords are parasites
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 days agoSure.
If you don’t maintain a house, it falls apart extremely quickly.
Examples on my house. Plumbing leak. If it’s not fixed the house can become uninhabitable in a few weeks.
Gutters filled up with leaves. If you don’t clear them out, they’ll sag and fall off the house, and you’ll get creeping damp coming into the base of the house.
If you don’t repaint exterior trim as it ages, the wood/metal underneath will rot/rust.
If you don’t mow or maintain the green spaces, you’ll end up with a bunch of brush and plant material near the house which can be a huge fire hazard.
Trees near the house need to be trimmed and maintained to prevent large limbs from damaging the roof.
If the house isn’t lived in or maintained, animals will get into the attic, nest, urinate, and defecate, which will make the building uninhabitable.
Just a few examples there, literally there is an endless number of problems a house can have, and if someone isn’t around to fix it at least mitigate them, then the house will very quickly become uninhabitable. I’ve personally seen it happen in less than a year.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
I don’t mean regarding maintenance, I mean why are the houses empty?
I could see a very undesirable area having houses left abandoned, just as they are in our current system. But in areas that are desirable, why would a house be left abandoned?
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Why would a house be empty?
Maybe it the family in it moved out because they only needed a quick place to stay short term after moving to a new city? Could be that it’s housing for a college student who has gone back home during summer break? Maybe a nicer house opened up in the area, so the resident left their old house to go to the new one?
Your question seems to have the answer I was looking for in it though. It would fall on the neighbors to maintain the house until someone else moved in to it. So they would be doing extra work without any kind of compensation or benefit to maintain a home that anyone could just walk up to and claim. How do you think they are going to feel when some “house jumper” moves in, who just lets the place fall apart and moves on to another location because it costs them nothing to let the house got to ruins and they have no personal interest in maintaining it?
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
I think in most cases, short-term housing as you describe would be best served by more dense apartment complexes that are maintained by the community, and the people who stay in them for those short periods. They would be maintained in the same way that public transport or libraries would be maintained, as a public resource that everyone has access to and needs.
The benefit to those who maintain such complexes is that they would also freely have access to use such facilities in other parts of the country. This is not terribly disimilar to how Native American tribes were able to travel anywhere in the US and expect accommodation from virtually any tribe they came across (that weren’t hostile due to a larger conflict), because without such universal accomodation, each tribe would be limited in how far they could travel or trade. It was to all tribes mutual benefit to give each other that accommodation, in an early form of mutual aid (you can read more about that in David Wengrow’s book, The Dawn of Everything, a very interesting read).
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le’Guin offers an interesting solution to that scenario. In that book, money does not exist, and housing is simply a right that all are entitled to. Couples and families are given larger accommodation when it becomes available, which is managed by an elected housing committee.
A single family home would be unlikely to be empty for long in a desirable area, so I don’t think abandoned homes would be a significantly bigger issue than they already are under our current system. As a current example, In Japan, many smaller rural towns with dwindling populations have such an abundance of unoccupied homes, that they’re actively paying people to move out to the area, and will sell the house for under $10k in the hopes someone will take them up and maintain it.
Only if they wanted to. There would be no one to force them to do such a thing. They may elect to do so since they would have much more free time in a socialist world (estimates usually suggest around 3 months of community work would be required to give everyone a good standard of living, with the remainder of of the year being free time to do with as they please).
How is that prevented in our current society? Many home owners let their home go into disrepair despite owning it. Sometimes this is done out of poverty, or a lack of motivation for upkeep. The only way to force someone to maintain their home is with HOA’s who give fines to individuals if they don’t. They don’t have the most popular reputation.
Regardless, a community could decide to implement HOA-like rules if they all agreed to it, and then someone could decide if they wanted to live there and abide by those rules, or go somewhere where there aren’t any (like our current system).
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Okay, but that just kicks the can down the road, those apartments still need to be maintained. Yes, you answer that right here…
So the community bears the effort and cost of maintaining houses (or apartments) which they are not allowed to benefit from.
Maybe. What if the neighbors are assholes? What if the house needs to many repairs? Having a dilapidated structure or dwelling next to yours can create a whole host of issues, from fire risk, to nuisance animals, pest and even increased rates of crime.
Hard to say. I think it would be worse. For all the faults the current system has, there is a direct financial incentive to own and maintain property. If you get a house and let it rot, you won’t have a house to live in. If you get an apartment and let it rot, you won’t be able to rent it out. When housing is free, the house itself becomes valueless, and not in a good way. I think we would see a significant number of people jumping from home to home, trashing each one and then moving on to the next, leaving the community with the choice of cleaning up those homes, or letting them become uninhabitable hazards, and a blight on the neighborhood. If you think people would suddenly start taking care of a home just because they have one, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you, just look at all the litter and pollution people dump everywhere. Take a moment and look at cars in parking lots, and I bet you’ll find at least one that is packed to the brim with garbage, to the point of being dangerous to drive.
I haven’t got time to read a book this morning, but for the basic premise of what you told me about The Dispossessed, I think I spotted a fundamental flaw in that system…
No, there is a financial risk and financial incentive when you own a home, or even rent an apartment. If you don’t take care of it, then you lose out on that risk. HOAs aren’t necessary to enforce maintenance, there are zoning laws, city, state, and national laws that pertain to maintaining a home, along with certifications and inspections to make sure the dwelling is safe to inhabit.
Anyway, this wasnt meant to be a dialogue on the current system. It’s clear that there are major flaws with it, but it’s also clear that “just make housing a right and let anyone move into a house that the community has to pay for and work to maintain” is an idealistic dream that naively handwaves away reality.