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Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?

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zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

The question is what they should do in order to be fair and non-parasitic.

Sell their properties to their tenants, or grant tenants equity in the property based on how much they pay in rent (ie, co-ownership).

So far, I understand that you’re convinced ownership is necessary if any payment is involved. What I don’t understand is why*.

For an exchange to not be parasitic, both parties must gain something equal to what they lose. This, by definition, means that a renter must be able to pay zero dollars for rent in months where the landlord doesn’t have to make a mortgage payment and doesn’t need to do any maintenance on the property.

We agreed that people should be paid for their labour. What makes home rentals special in that regard?

As I’ve already said, landlords don’t provide a service equivalent to the payment provided, and the indefinite nature of a lease makes it impossible for a landlord to ever provide value equal to what a renter pays. As long as a tenant lives in a rented space, they have to pay a fee for the privilege, even if they’ve paid enough to pay for the mortgage many times over. You can’t convince me that a landlord can provide potentially multiple properties worth of value over the span of a lease.

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howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can we keep the context of what we’ve previously discussed instead of rewinding the conversation and repeating ourselves? I thought we agreed earlier that it’s fair for tenants to pay for expenses related to usage of the home and it makes sense to distribute that over time across all tenants.

[…] Imagine being the tenant that moves in just as the roof needs replacing and getting hit with a bill in the tens of thousands for a roof that you’re only going to be using for a year or two.

Then landlords should send me an itemized invoice that details each of the expenses incurred while I’ve been a tenant, a breakdown detailing how any rent payments cover the cost of those expenses, and a payment plan that we can negotiate to ensure both parties are getting fair deals. […]

It sounds like you understand now how that number comes about and why it isn’t zero, right?

[…] I’ve already told you I don’t agree. Paying a non-zero amount of rent is always parasitic.

[…] What’s this business about itemized bills to make them fair if the bills are zero?

Landlords don’t do that. Until they do, they’re parasites. […]

Did I misunderstand what you’re saying here? I understood it as meaning that an itemized bill for your rent with the ability to negotiate in order to come to a fair deal for both parties is sufficient condition to qualify as non-parasitic.

You can’t convince me that a landlord can provide potentially multiple properties worth of value over the span of a lease

Nor would I ever try to because I don’t believe they do either.

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- zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Here’s my point: if landlords change basically everything about how “renting” works so that it’s basically indistinguishable from property ownership from the tenant’s point of view, they’d qualify to be non-parasitic.
  
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  - howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Yes, you’ve already said this but it doesn’t answer the question. Repeating yourself won’t change that. What I asked when I originally responded to you was why the simpler alternative of renting at cost isn’t acceptable. So far, you’ve told me
    
    A tenant never gains anything once the terms of the lease expire […] as long as the price of rent is a positive number.
    
    […] Paying a non-zero amount of rent is always parasitic.
    
    Which can mean any of the following:
    
    There are no costs associated with renting so at-cost is 0
    
    You are not aware of what there is to gain from renting over owning
    
    You do not need those benefits yourself and therefore no one else does either
    
    You disagree with the concept of money being an abstraction for physical goods and human labour (There’s something special about owning home equity that is different from having the money to buy that same equity and that can’t be translated to a monetary value?)
    
    I’ll rule out #1 because you also said
    
    Then landlords should send me an itemized invoice that details each of the expenses incurred while I’ve been a tenant, a breakdown detailing how any rent payments cover the cost of those expenses, and a payment plan that we can negotiate to ensure both parties are getting fair deals.
    
    Which means you do acknowledge the existence of a cost to rental units.
    
    So what is it that you don’t agree with? Is it one of the things I’ve listed, or did I miss something?
    
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