this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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How is this legal.
How is it legal that people buy property and rent to those who want to rent instead of buy? My question to you is why wouldn't it be legal?
In principle it’s fine and it fulfills a market need… not everyone wants to buy. But in practice, under-regulation in a market where many people want to buy but can’t exacerbates wealth inequality by reducing the available housing and driving up home costs. This in turn drives up rental costs. It’s a nasty cycle.
Absolutely, a problem that is improved by increasing housing supply (thus lowering costs). We need more government investment in building homes and to remove barriers that prevent or slow homes from being built. Simply outlawing rentals, as OP suggests, would do the opposite, it would take out a huge chunk of people who are building homes, drastically lowering supply and exploding housing prices.
There are definitely alternatives, where there is more tax incentive to own one home that you live in, and increasing penalties for holding more properties, especially for a long period of time and especially if they are in areas of high housing demand.
OP isn't directly suggesting making rentals illegal; in fact it's a bit vague what specific practice they're blaming. My best guess is that they generally don't feel laws should allow/incentivize owning so many housing properties, especially if one is not personally doing anything to earn money from them.
A responsible landlord is "doing" arrangements for property maintenance and handling all tax and other legal requirements, and my hard feelings are towards slumlords who let dwellings become unsafe, or property flippers who kick all the renters out and build new dwellings to sell to more wealthy buyers.
But also, isn't the hate for landlords equally applicable to banks and other financial institutions that hold mortgages? They really are earning money by no other responsibility than having the capital available at the start.
The solution is for the state to guarantee that everyone must have a place to live. Shelter is a human necessity, it should not be conditional.
Are you envisioning the government being a major landlord, like in Singapore? It seems to work really well for that country, but Americans seem uncomfortable with the idea of government housing.