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?
Owning your place to live should be a right. Anyone who holds more housing stock than they personally need and who will only let it out if there’s profit on their investment (because if it’s an investment, then there is an expectation that the line must always go up, which is also very inflationary), tightens the market and makes it harder for other people to become a home owner.
The big difference between renting and paying of a mortgage, is that by paying off the mortgage, the home owner has build up equity and secured a financially more secure future. But if someone is too poor to get a mortgage to afford the inflated house prices (inflated because other people treat it like an investment), then in the current system they pay rent to pay off the mortgage/debt of their landlord and after the renter has paid off their landlord’s mortgage, they’ll still be poor and without any equity themselves.
It’s a very antisocial system. And with landlords building up more and more equity on the backs of people who are unable to build up equity themselves, there’s a good reason why landlords are often said to be parasitic.
You assume that everybody wants to own and that just isn’t the case.
I assume that everyone who wants to own a home wants to own a home and many of those aren’t able to. That’s the current reality.
Edit: I reread what I said and I distinctly said that it should be “a right”. Having a right to do something is not the same as having an obligation to do something. Imo home ownership should be a right for everyone, but that doesn’t make it an obligation.
Yes, you did, but you said it as part of an answer to the question “why are landlords considered parasites?”, and you explained that those who own more homes than they can live in are parasites. The logical conclusion (would be that it should be outlawed to be a landlord.
So, how am I to understand that? Should there be a quota, an acceptable amount of parasites so to speak?
Heavily tax buying and owning homes as investments. Also heavily tax vacant homes in regions with a housing shortage.
Basically regulate it so that prospective buyers who are buying a place to live in are significantly advantaged when trying to do so, while at the same time discouraging others from buying up those homes as investments.
We can worry about that when there’s a lack of places to rent and homelessness is down.
I’m 40 and have friends my age who rent because they don’t want to own even though they can afford to. I’m not sure what percentage of renters are like them.
People will always have a chance to rent since apartments exist, but people do not have a chance to buy houses
People own apartments too. If you can’t own more than one home, surely apartments would also be covered by that?