realphilosophytube:

books4brats:

cup-a-fear:

realphilosophytube:

I’m gonna try to put some issues I have with housing into as few words as possible:

Rent takes up half of my income, which sucks. I’ve met my landlord exactly once. He’s nice and all, but he hasn’t set foot in the flat in 2 years. I supplied the furniture, I clean the property, secure it, manage it, pay for the utilities, repaired the shower when it broke – I run this home, but he gets half my income because he owns the building. This just seems like bullshit to me.

And the rejoinder is, “Well if you don’t like it then work hard and buy your own home!” – but here’s the thing about that:

If I work very hard, maybe someday I could afford a house of my own. But it’s literally impossible for everyone to do that. If everyone owned their own home, nobody would rent, and landlords wouldn’t exist. If I want to own a house, maybe someday I could; but if I want everyone to then that’s impossible. So even if I work my ass off to climb the ladder the system is such that somebody, somewhere is always going to have to give half their income away and live insecurely. Equality and secure housing for all is literally impossible as long as housing is sold and rented on the market; insecurity, homelessness, and exploitation are ineradicable. The same system that tells me to take personal responsibility and work hard makes it impossible for everyone to succeed in that way.

Abolish landlords

Don’t they also need to make a profit after you know paying for things? They have a family.

My aunt is a landlady. Has house people pay her to live in. While you know paying for electricity. Because. You know

She owns the place. Bought it with her own money. Worries about bills because sometimes a house will be without a renter for a hot minute and she still has to you know pay for the place.

My aunt is a badass no nonsense nice women. Who still needs to pay bills. For my cousins. Who contributes to family gatherings.

So. Yeah don’t shit on landlords who are making you pay rent. They have families and to provide for them They need to stay out of the red. So profits must be made.

I was all ready to give this a snarky response, but I stepped back for a moment. Here’s where I disagree:

First thing, it’s a minor quibble but in my country tenants usually pay for all the utilities as well. Like I said in my original post, my landlord does next to nothing to maintain this flat. (In the event of a disaster he’d have to step in, but if he wasn’t in the picture I could insure it for way less than I pay him in rent.)

More importantly, yes landlords have bills of their own to pay on the houses they live in, but so do we all. Maybe landlords could find jobs producing something useful for society instead of taking half of someone else’s income every month? The point isn’t whether they’re nice or badass or have families – so no disrespect to your auntie who I’m sure is awesome. My problem with landlords is strictly in their role as landlords, which is a thing they could stop doing and it’d all be cool. The point is that the landlord-tenant relationship is unavoidably exploitative and makes secure housing for all an unreachable goal. My landlord is pretty nice too: I don’t have a problem with him as a guy. I just wish he would go out and get a job instead of scrounging off me.