So sell them? Or become a leech and rent them as a landlord? Housing is a human right and has always been in demand. Especially downtown in a major city.
that still ain’t a job. your aunt and uncle didn’t work to renovate that house because the renovation would pay their bills, they did it so they can own a nice property and rent it to other people in perpetuity. all the money they make is gonna come from them owning something, not doing something.
My other uncle in law is only a landlord because he inherited the property.
ah yes, the hard hard work of inheriting land. he isn’t being forced to be a landlord. he could just sell the land he isn’t using.
the problem people have with landlords isn’t that they’re “money hungry corporations”, its that they’re leeches, holding land they aren’t using so that they can suck money out of people who don’t have any land to hold, in large enough quantities that people who want to have their own land to use for their own life can’t find any, cuz its all bought up by fucking landlords. being a landlord means taking from people who have less than you, and you only ever get in that position by having more wealth than most people ever have.
Dude we live in a world with actual billionaires. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere calling people whose net worth is under $1mil “leeches”. If you get all these small-fry landlords to feel guilty and sell off their land, then the billionaires and corporations will happily shrug their shoulders and snap it right up, leaving us even worse off.
This honestly feels like that Oreos meme. “Pay no attention to us billionaires, it’s that guy’s uncle’s fault!”
i’m an anti-capitalist. i have a systemic critique with the systems of power which allow people who own things to acquire wealth on the basis of that ownership. billionaires are products of the same system which allows uncle landlord to impose rent on people who have no other option but to rent, because their obscene wealth comes from the exact same mechanism of ownership.
even if we didn’t have billionaires and corporate ghouls buying up every piece of property, and it was instead all owned by nice old uncles and aunties, the actual practice of owning land you aren’t using so people who need land have to pay you for it to live is still morally bankrupt, and is likely to reproduce new billionaires and corporate ghouls as those uncles and aunties consolidate their excess land into investment firms and property management companies to maximize the economic output of the land they own. the problem isn’t that billionaires exist, its that our economic system is set up to funnel resources towards the people who start out with the most resources.
i’m not saying that him selling the land is a good or morally preferable option, either. i just found the notion that a person is only a landlord because they inherited land a silly argument. there’s plenty of things you can do with land that isn’t renting it.
BC, Vancouver’s province, has legislated the end of single family zoning as of summer this year. Vancouver specifically is allowing up to, if I recall correctly, 6 units per lot. BC is also giving a forgivable loan to homeowners to build additional units/housing on their lots.
I think it’s a positive step, and aggressive as far as housing policy goes. The local governments are scrambling around infrastructure, transit, and parking issues.
Maybe if they’d started addressing it 10 years ago though it wouldn’t be such a scramble.
I would love to see them implement something like they tried in Montreal for school zones. They have speed cameras set up and if they detect a speeder instead of issuing a ticket that the driver will receive later the camera just triggers the stop light to turn red in time to catch the speeder. It literally just slows the speeding traffic down and can’t possibly be taken as a “cash grab” like most speed cameras are.
The whole “took a risk” stuff is so dumb because in most cases what they risk is ending up with less money… which is still more than most people have throughout their lifetime.
I’d feel totally safe risking 900 million USD if I already had 1 billion USD. What’s the worst that can happen, like, really?
To add on to that, what gives people a special right to be able to take "risks" like that in the first place? It's not like the basis for risk taking is distributed in a way that most people can, so they're taking advantage of most people not even being able to as well as it being little real risk.
Just another way the game is rigged. If I spent every cent I had to create a risky startup, I’d be homeless. If someone from an affluent family spends every cent they have, they’d always be able to borrow life changing money (even 5k could change someone’s life) or move in to someone’s summer home, etc.
Risking 50 dollars is very different to a wage slave than to someone in the middle class.
You have to look at the situation they’re risking putting themselves into, not the number of dollars or hours of labor they’re risking.
It’s like when conservatives say they’re in favour of equality of opportunity (but not in favour equality of outcome, a total red herring but that’s a different rant). Like when has there ever been equality of opportunity?
The risk actually complete and utter bullshit anyway, especially if you’re operating under a corporation.
Consider I take out $1m to start business. I buy a property and equipment for the business. I operate it for a year, make some money, then go bankrupt.
The bank takes back the business assets and … That’s it. They can’t touch your personal assets unless you agreed to put them up as collateral. If it was a sole proprietorship your credit score goes to zero which sucks for a few years, but if it’s a corporation the company goes bankrupt and you walk away scot free.
So I spent a year running a business, made some money, and wind up in the same place I started. What did I lose? Maybe a credit score and that’s it.
If there is nothing to lose, then there is no risk.
Also remember these AirBnb owners are more often like you and I except absolute shitheads looking to exploit the market for their own personal gain.
The problem may be partly those in charge but we need to point the finger at ourselves. We all bought into the same system that encourages this shitty behaviour.
but plans to list it for $150,000 less than he bought it for a year ago – its value walloped because in a matter of months, it will no longer be useable in most cases as an Airbnb, “The revenue stream dictates the value,”
The only place I go that has an extensive good “mocktail” lost charges like $15 a piece for what boils down to a fancy tiny juice glass. I completely understand why the idea isn’t taking off.
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