this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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By saying being a landlord is not a job and implying that everyone should get handed a house to live in - this post is saying renting should not be allowed / an option.
If there is no financial incentive to maintain the house, then there is no reason anyone would become a landlord / rent out their property.
Most people also fail to consider how expensive it can get to own a home, even if you're renting it out. Rent covers unexpected costs of the home. For example, through no fault of anyone - a tree put its roots through your main sewer line and now the house has been filled with back up nastiness. In this situation - is the landlord / homeowner expected to come up with the money out of their own pocket when the rent is capped at the mortgage? Something like that can easily cost upwards of $20,000. Landlords just magically make money appear to cover the maintenance?
Renting is more like insurance. You pay a fixed rate while the landlord takes the risk of potentially having to put out a large sum of cash in a short period of time. Just because you didn't get in an accident today doesn't mean your insurance company didn't pay out claims today. It's a shared risk for all renters of the property instead of them being directly on the hook.
You're thinking within the confines of the capitalist market, but why limit yourself? We can have systems where you can easily switch homes with people, or keep rent but keep it reasonable and without the huge extractive element, or so many other potential systems.
The problems you mention are problems created by capitalism, we have the power to fix them by playing by different rules, because the rules are made up.
So... The sewage backfills into the house and you put in a petition to the government to come fix the problem? You just move out and until the government gets around to fixing the house, it just sits vacant and the problem exacerbates itself?
I'm renting from a nonprofit housing agency right now, and they are way better at fixing problems than any private landlord I've ever had.
If your government is controlled by neoliberal capitalists, that is what might happen yes, and that is why we should do as much as we can to get a government that actually acts in the interest of the people.
Government isn't inherently bad at doing things, you've just been conditioned to think that by this system that forces the government to self-sabotage. Of course, the self-sabotage only applies to social programs, they're actually very good and efficient at subsidizing and lowering taxes for the wealthy, for instance.