Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
We’re not talking about what they currently do though. The question is what they should do in order to be fair and non-parasitic. Where the threshold lies between parasitic and non-parasitic.
So far, I understand that you’re convinced ownership is necessary if any payment is involved. What I don’t understand is why*. We agreed that people should be paid for their labour. What makes home rentals special in that regard?
* Mainly to understand how a system with such a rule can make sense.
Sell their properties to their tenants, or grant tenants equity in the property based on how much they pay in rent (ie, co-ownership).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nor would I ever try to because I don’t believe they do either.