If you rent to house mates, is that stealing? Do you need to have joint ownership with everyone?
My two cents—which is worthless (thanks inflation!):
Not unless you are taking advantage of them. It really is going to depend on the specific situation. But if you are renting to housemates you’re not really the landlord class most people are talking about.
But what is taking advantage of them? If someone owns a house outright, isn’t charging any rent charging more than you need to? At that point, they’re not contributing anything. I agree that’s not what most people are talking about, but I don’t see how it’s categorically different.
Most people who are arguing that being a landlord (as a class) are arguing that using property (ownership) as an investment (extracting value) is evil by it’s nature. By owning the home and living there, there is already a categorical difference. Most (although not all) people arguing against rentier behavior have no issues with a person owning personal property.
I do see your what you are trying to say, it’s akin to “slippery slope” falacy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
If landlords are wrong, then logically wouldn’t this other more reasonable and less exploitative thing be wrong too? (renting a room in a house you own and are living in)
Or maybe not. Maybe renting out a room in a house you live in is wrong too. Frankly, it would be simpler to do away with all private property rights, and live in a star trek style egalitarian utopia. I would vote for that.
As long as I get to smuggle in some Romulan Ale.
I don’t think rentals should exist. You could literally put a house anywhere a couple hundred years ago, and all you needed to do was build it. Now we have artificially stunted the supply of housing to make good little worker bees our of everyone. The threat of homelessness and starvation is a fantastic motivator to not rock the boat in society.
Well, not quite. You’d have to have rights to the land to do that. Else someone could ride up and just take it from you.
You could literally put a house anywhere a couple hundred years ago, and all you needed to do was build it.
I think you have to go back way more than a few hundred years for that.
In the US there were programs that kinda sounded like that but it was just the US government trying to get working class white people to displace native people.
In Europe wasn’t everything owned by nobles snd royals who demanded a cut of your labor? Could people just build a random house anywhere in ancient Rome or Greece?
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
If you’re not charging them above what is required to cover their share of the mortgage, then that’s not immoral at all.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
But you would be the one getting ownership from the mortgage, so I’d think charging less than the share of the mortgage would be fair. But that ratio depends on your and their particular time value of money, which is hard to pin down. And once you paid off the house, the rent should go to zero?
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
I agree, that sounds fair.
I suppose after the house is paid off, they could switch to pay the equivalent percentage they were paying for the mortgage, toward property taxes and utilities instead.