cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/12162
Why? Because apparently they need some more incentive to keep units occupied. Also, even though a property might be vacant, there’s still imputed rental income there. Its owner is just receiving it in the form of enjoying the unit for himself instead of receiving an actual rent check from a tenant. That imputed rent ought to be taxed like any other income.
And who paid those crews?
The renters, ultimately. Landlords are just middle men who need to be cut out of the equation through a land tax system and massive investments in housing development, zoning fixes, and market rate housing/co-ops.
The only “job” landlords have is owning, which isn’t a job and adds nothing. They are a burden and inefficiency of the economy, and a burden on people.
I actually agree with a lot of those proposals, but property ownership still comes with a level of long-term required investment that many people simply do not want and cannot afford. You could vaporize every landlord in New York City today, and the housing would still be incredibly valuable and far more expensive than most people could afford. I live here myself, and while I do hope to own some day, that’s simply not financially feasible for me right now. People like me need to rent, and thus we need to rent from somebody. I only moved here a year ago, and I’m quite happy to have not had to combine all the hassle of moving with the added pressure of purchasing an asset that will tie up my net worth for a good few decades.
I can see some merit to systems like China or Singapore where land is leased directly from the government rather than private landlords (and arguably, given the existence of land and property taxes, it’s a nominal distinction really), but still, you’ve got the existence of an intermediate owner that performs maintenance and searches for tenants, with the bonus and curse that that intermediate has no profit motive to actually perform that work.
That’s largely due to the lack of supply of housing. And that’s why I think the government should be absolutely spamming housing units. Even if we kept landlords, they’d have no leverage to keep rents sky high.
And I think that your choice for that somebody should be better than some rich fuck who owns half the city’s housing (mildly exaggerating).
The person who does that work doesn’t need to be the owner though.
You know, so long as we can agree that lack of supply is the core issue, the rest of all that is really just details haha. I’m not hugely confident of public housing’s track record in the US (though there’s obviously a lot that went into that), but whether it’s new public housing or just loosening zoning and allowing the market to actually meet demand, I don’t really care so long as there are units.
It’s one of the core issues. I think there is a lot more baked into this, but if this is one of the things we can agree on then so be it.
While I do think public housing is a part of the solution, and has a lot of mistakes to learn from, I think co-ops should be the main workhorse/end goal for government built housing.
I say, all of the above. Any possible way to increase the supply is a good thing.
There is value in someone figuring out all the finance mess so that when someone wants a place to live it exists. I.know how to build a house (I was in construction in my younger days). I don’t want to spent 200 days of my life building a house, I just want a place to live.
That’s the job of a manager, which isn’t what a landlord generally does. And even on the rare times when a landlord actually does do some financial management, it takes up a minority of the time.
I would like to do so at some point, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to do so. But housing needs to be affordable and it isn’t.