• MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    The issue isn’t about a landlord selling anything; it’s about the broken system that allows landlords to exist and create the problem we have now.

    To summarize: in a system where landlords can’t exist, and our current housing supply does exist, all housing would be more affordable to everybody. If 10 houses are built and you can only buy 1 because you can only live in 1, that leaves 9 houses available for others to buy. Our current system allows you to buy all 10 even though you can only live in 1 and rent your excessive 9 for profit. That’s a problem.

      • MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        As @masterspace wrote, if people and corporations aren’t profiteering, the cost of housing is affordable to everybody. It’s basic supply and demand. Currently the supply is hoarded creating a demand, increasing the cost of housing to everybody. Nobody is homeless waiting for their house to be built. The demand for new homes is for people to be able to not be subjected to a landlord. The supply exists, it’s just already owned by somebody else for profit.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Where in this scenario do the people who are working for poverty wages get the money to buy one of those other 9 houses?

        A house doesn’t cost that much to build in materials and labour, the vast majority of middle and even lower class people can easily afford the down payment and mortgage payments on materials and labour instead of paying rent. What they can’t afford is the market rate driven up by the fact that landlords buy houses and rent them back to them at a profit.

        They could also instead join a co-op that allows them to collectively purchase and own a smaller section of a larger building.

        They could also get this magical thing called financing from either the private sector or government.

        Without systemic changes most people will ever be able to afford a house even if we get rid of landlords.

        The Ontario Liberals slapped a large tax on second properties in the 1970s and corrected the price of housing by 30% overnight. And that was before the massive boom in real estate speculation and mom and pop landlords and their totally earned and deserved “passive incomes” coming on the backs of people poorer than them.

        Are landlords the only systemic issue? No, but they are a massive systemic issue that objectively drives prices higher by depleting supply, and one that is further enriching rich boomers who already have a fucking house to live in. Go outside, give your head a shake, recognize that you are part of the systemic problem keeping housing costs high, and then invest in an index fund and accept your reasonable rate of return like a decent human being.

          • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Welp I hope you recognize that you’re a dumb greedy fuck and learn to shut the fuck up instead of trying to pretend like landlords are noble.

            They provide no value to society. They are essentially freeloading scum. They’re capable enough to understand the market, at least at the surface level, but have chosen to waste their life being a leach on society rather than provide any actual value to the useful economy.