This is a REALLY important article. We're entering the era of algorithmic fraud. FBI raids Cortland Management (corporate real estate management firm, rents out 85,000 units across 13 states) who used RealPage to increase rents nationwide by coordinating landlord pricing decisions and holding apartments off the market.
"When I shared complaints about my housing on social media, they went viral, and I began hearing from people in similar circumstances. It changed the course of my life"
Housing activist Kwajo Tweneboa in the first of a monthly series of articles.
The lock's maker Chirp Systems remains unresponsive, even though it was first notified about the critical weakness in March 2021. Meanwhile, Chirp's parent company, RealPage, Inc., is being sued by multiple U.S. states for allegedly colluding with landlords to illegally raise rents.
P.S. never give cybersecurity spooks clicks even after they go "freelance" or whatever
Imagine if a Chinese company did this. Liberals would be hooting and hollering about Xi Jinping personally breaking into your apartment to rearrange your anime collection and take pictures of the files on your computer. There’d be immediate calls to ban the company from all business dealings within the US. But because it’s a US private corporation that abuses the shit out of the proletariat there’ll be a some pressure to fix it and they’ll maybe eventually get around to doing it and get a slap on the wrist if anything for this and a slap on the wrist for the rent fixing collusion.
Action on the problem of second-homes pricing out locals (of epic proportions in the nearby Lake District) is finally being taken... Making life more expensive & difficult for owners of short-let properties is intended to force them to sell.
An under-recognised element of the strategy is to get them all to sell in a short period, flooding the market with homes & thereby depressing the price.
With a local purchaser requirement, it could work!
'Over the last 25 years, there has not just been a constant surplus of homes per household, but the ratio has been modestly growing while our living situations have been getting so much worse.'
'We now find ourselves in a situation where one in every 21 adults in the UK is a landlord. We have four times as many landlords as teachers. As a consequence, virtually everyone struggles to afford a home that meets their needs despite a net gain in housing stock.'
'Where Adam Smith and Karl Marx found common ground was in the idea that everyone’s interests are aligned against landlords: they are an economic deadweight.'
#rents are (again) at record levels (according to Rightmove, at least) but interestingly around a quarter of all rental contracts are then concluded at a discount to the advertised rate....
This might be 'realism' by #landlords or suggest in some cases the rents advertised are not achievable - there are no renters prepared to pay these astronomical rents.
Given discounted rents have grown fro 16% - 23% in a year, may suggest #Landlord driven rent #inflation is peaking?
Well, I suppose its not a surprise, but measures to protect tenants from #landlords who refuse to maintain their rental dwellings (leaving them to develop life threatening levels of damp & mould) will not include those homes occupied by #asylumseekers.
The inhumanity of the British Govt. when it comes to #refugees is so predictable but remains shocking!
The problems with a lack of #socialhousing are pretty clear, but another aspect of concern is the contempt with which some social #landlords treat their tenants and the lack of interest the Housing Ombudsman has in sanctioning those landlords.
What social housing needs is both more building, but also a social shift away from contempt for those who inhabit these homes.
This is just another aspect of the continued divisive role of #classism in British #politics
While Savills (an estate agent) may not be a neutral source, equally they likely have a pretty good idea what is happening in the rented #housing.
Their predictions for a continuing above #inflation rise in rents next year, driven by a shortage of properties & #landlords financing (and other) costs, suggest in 2024 the #housingcrisis in the UK will get even worse.
In the end the key answer to this mess is pretty simple:
I asked my dad (an architect in 1950’s UK) how Britain built houses after the 2nd world war he said - local authorities were allowed to obtain 65year mortgages at which repayments were covered by the rental income - it became self financing.
Current gov will not allow Local Authorities to do this now why not?
Another day, another report on how the #costoflivingcrisis has driven the poor & low paid into the hands of exploitative #landlords, who have no interest in providing decent #housing, but rather treat tenants as animals that are bingo farmed for rent...
Just one more but of evidence that the housing crisis is essentially a crisis of a lack of social housing, which will not be solved by subsidising first-time buyers Mr Hunt!
Hundreds of #tenants, struggling to afford skyrocketing rents, are refusing to pay their #landlords at all. They call it a #RentStrike. The landlords say it’s illegal. An inside look at the frontier of a growing #ClassWar
Jason McBride November 9, 2023
"33 King was an inexpensive, aging highrise, but it was a bastion of affordability in a city that seemed to grow more expensive every year. In 2010, the couple moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor that rented for less than $1,000. Two years later they had their first child, Xavier. [Their rent initially was $700 a month. It has more than doubled!]
"Then, in 2013, the landlord, a company called Realstar, informed Henry that her rent was going up that year by 5.5 per cent. She was confused. 33 King was rent-controlled—increases were capped in 2013 at 2.5 per cent. But there was a loophole: in Ontario, landlords can apply for what’s called an above guideline increase, or #AGI, to make major repairs. Realstar fixed the roof and elevators that year, so Henry thought it might be a one-off. When it happened again the next year, with an increase of 3.8 per cent, well above that year’s 0.8 per cent guideline, she and her neighbours were incensed. They’d long talked about deteriorating conditions in the building and regular maintenance that seemed to go undone. Some felt the AGIs were simply a way for #Realstar to boost the value of its asset by squeezing extra money out of its tenants.
"In 2017, Henry started working on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant in nearby Brampton, and became a member of Unifor. It was the first time she’d joined a union, and it was exciting to be part of a group of people banding together to fight for their rights. Energized by that experience, in 2018, she helped form a tenants’ association at 33 King to fight future AGIs. Still, they kept coming—in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
That year, a company called #DreamUnlimited, a #realestate giant with $23 billion worth of assets, bought 33 King. Because the 2019 and 2021 AGIs were still pending approval by Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board, or LTB, Dream inherited the applications. Henry and other tenants wasted no time making their feelings about them known to the new owners. Working with the York South-Weston #TenantUnion, or YSWTU—an umbrella organization for 13 tenants’ associations in the area—they staged protests, called Dream’s president, Michael Cooper, and went to the media in a bid to have the AGIs cancelled.
"The movement hasn’t come without consequences. Dream has initiated eviction proceedings for more than 70 tenants at 33 King, and Starlight has started them for 75 in Thorncliffe Park. More are likely to come, but the strikers have remained resolute, the fear of losing their homes outweighed by the impossibility of continuing the status quo.
"Their fights are just beginning. Tenant #activism is flaring across the country as renters face skyrocketing rents and deteriorating living conditions in the most brutal #housing market in memory. Whatever their outcome, the Toronto rent strikes are the latest, loudest volley in a brewing class war."
Got a statement of account from our now previous #landlords. This was my response to them:
"$12K? Haha. So you want us to pay the entire balance of our lease after we were given 72 hours to get out in order to avoid attorney's fees in the midst of my family burying my father and now we don't even live there anymore?"
They also charged us $350 trash removal fee, because we didn't get enough time to finish cleaning out our apartment.. ya know, because my father had just fucking died.
We'd been led to believe We would only be owing our balance as of when we moved out. That was the whole point of us scrambling and leaving several important things behind. If I'd known they were going to pull this shit, I would have sat my ass there and waited until they had the sheriff throw us out. Seems like quite a nice arrangement for them, we pay for a year's #rent on an apartment they've just rented out to someone else.
Yesterday my landlord offered me a cheque of €1020 with a paper for me to sign with strange additional expenses subtracted by my original security deposit.
I refused and called today clarifying I know the law and my rights and menacing to reach lawyers.
This afternoon €1420,32 are already on my bank account.
The continuing (worsening) #housingcrisis is reaching the point where it may bankrupt local councils who no longer have the resources to fulfil their statutory #housing responsibilities.
If you think this is some awful accident & a combination of issues that no-one could have predicted then, I'm afraid, you've missed the point of decades of #Tory housing policy.
This has been (and continues to be) part of a drive to end local #democracy while enriching #landlords!
Leaving apartments vacant can increase landlords' profits, so arguments that building more units will automatically lower rent are essentially self-serving bullshit.
"radio call-in show was doing a thing about #renters and #landlords in my province and ofc it was mostly landlords calling in cuz they have more free time. but the renters that called in were like. one was a lady in her 60s saying she has no retirement fund and her and her husband will be #working into their 70s and that #rent just goes up and there's nothing they can do about it on the verge of tears. and ppl calling in and saying they've been renovicted they've been #homeless and couch surfing and sleeping in their cars and not sure where they're gonna sleep or how they're gonna afford food and how all the universities in the city have food banks for the students now when they didn't before. and the landlords calling in were talking about stuff like. equity. idk just the tonal whiplash of a woman being on the verge of tears with nowhere to go and working minimum #wage fulltime and it doesn't even cover rent then the next lady is stressed about her. equities. and how they only wanna do short term rentals for students. one landlord compared rent going up to a store that sold shirts raising their prices, as if that's in anyway comparable, and basically said she's a business not a social resource. if you don't want to be a social resource mayhaps do not occupy a basic #social need such as shelter. host did not challenge that statement. so soulless and genuinely disturbing to me. imagine being able to live like that. dear god. over $2000 for a one bedroom utilities not included and landlords getting mad when more than one person is stuffed into their stupid expensive 1 bedroom apartment as if anyone is happy about this situation. drove me crazy the way it was presented like Both Sides Have a Point as if Equities are just as important as Sleeping in your Car. i do feel this sense of inertia the last few years of okay something's gotta give now something's gotta give we're gonna hit the brick wall any second now but it just keeps going on like this....."
""if you don't want to be a social resource mayhaps do not #occupy a basic social need" is a valid fucking point. Take note, landlords."
