This might be an unpopular opinion but housing should be classified as a human right.
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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you're right, whether it's popular or not
Funny how housing prices are conveniently all falling
So can we stop this? Please?
Investors should NOT be allowed to own houses, period. People should own houses. I don't care if a few people have more than one house and rent that out, small time land lords are fine.
These investment companies are the worst and they destroy everything they touch, everything is immediately scorched earth. Meanwhile we're in a very preventable global housing crisis, but hey, let's sell homes to investment companies, because what could possibly go wrong?
Nah, all landlords are leeches. Rent-seeking is literally parasitic by nature.
So everyone who has enough money to rent, but not enough to own, should be homeless? That middle ground of renting has to exist, or we're overall in a much worse state of affairs. And you can't rent unless there is a homeowner to rent from.
Also, a lot of people deliberately choose renting over owning, because they value things like not having the financial burden of house maintenance/repairs, or it being orders of magnitude easier to relocate, for whatever reason, and so on.
So everyone who has enough money to rent, but not enough to own, should be homeless?
The concept of someone having enough money to rent but not enough to own is ghoulish in the first place. If my landlord can pay $<1,200 for this house's mortgage and upkeep, and I can pay $1,200 a month for the right to sleep in it, then we should simply cut out the middle man and have me pay that $<1,200 a month for mortgage and upkeep directly.
So everyone who has enough money to rent, but not enough to own, should be homeless?
Who said that? Other than you?
It's not that complicated. Without landlords, there is no renting. Without renting, owning is the only way to have a place to live.
So if there's no renting, and you're unable to own, you have no place to live.
The entire concept of "rent" needs to die in a goddamn fire. There are much better arrangements to fill the niche you are talking about. What is lacking is a regulatory environment making those arrangements preferable to rent.
"Rent" is typically a year-to-year arrangement. Every year, the deal is renegotiated and the tenant ends up paying more.
A "Land Contract" is (initially) similar to rent, but it is negotiated only once, and the monthly fee is fixed for the life of the agreement, like a mortgage.
For the first three years of the agreement, you pay your monthly fee, and you live in the home. You are free to walk away at any time.
If you stay longer than three years, the entire agreement automatically converts to a private mortgage, with your first three years of payments considered the down payment. You continue to make the same payment, but now you are earning equity.
All that is well and good, but landlords won't offer land contracts, because land contracts favor the tenant/buyer.
Not to worry. We're going to restructure property taxes. We're going to have landlords begging tenants to switch to land contracts. The way we do it is by offering an owner-occupant exemption to property taxes. This is called a "homestead exemption" in some states. Basically, if you occupy a home, you pay a tiny fraction of the property taxes that you would owe if you didn't occupy that home. Or, more accurately, if you are an investor, your property tax rate is going to the moon.
Land Contract tenants/buyers are considered "owners". The property you are living in is owned by the occupants, and financed by the landlord/seller. The property taxes are at the owner-occupant rate, not the investor rate. Property taxes on "rentals" melt all the profits the landlord could be earning, so they are incentivized to switch to land contracts.
No, the system should be changed to not arbitrarily restrict people's access to necessities.
Housing, and other necessities, should be community property. If you don't live in the house, you forfeit ownership of that house so someone else who needs it can live in it. Fuck the exploitative system of private property ownership.
Renting is only necessitated because we live in a capitalist system. All your complaints only exist because of the capitalist system. It doesn't need to exist.
Housing, and other necessities, should be community property...Fuck the exploitative system of private property ownership.
So you'd want it to be the case that anyone can enter and live in the house you're living in, and you have no say in the matter because you don't own it?
Do you really see no massive problems with such a system?
Holy bad faith Batman. What a blatantly ignorant misrepresentation of what I said.
You have no concept of what a community property system is. For the love of God, go read fucking theory and educate yourself on alternative political and economic systems.
If you live in the house, it becomes your personal property. Meaning you own it while you live and reside there. No one can just come into your personal space. Yet, when you no longer wish to live there and are moving away, the house transfers ownership back to the community until someone needs it.
So, if I am going to college and I am sick of living in a dorm, i would have to buy a house to live off campus?
Or I get a job offer in another city or state, I have to buy a place to live before I even get to find out if I want to stay long term?
Blame the system that makes it arbitrarily difficult to transition between houses, which is in part exacerbated due to the fact homes are being used by parasites as vehicles for profit generation through rent seeking models artificially increasing the floor price of homes.
What you're mad at is the private property system inherent to capitalism restricting what you're able to do because of arbitrary bullshit. Why do you need to purchase a house in the first place? It is empty and not being used, so why does the previous owner still retain control over it and be allowed to arbitrarily prevent others from using it unless we can satisfy their greed? Why do we support a system that arbitrarily restricts our access to basic necessities in such a way and just glazes over such blatant exploitation?
Instead of trying to justify exploitation under the current system, how about we think about changing this system to one based on the needs of people instead of one based on imaginary, monetary interests and the whims of greedy fucks who retain illegitimate control over what should rightfully belong to the community?
In a system of community property, any vacant homes would be readily available and the ownership of units transferred from communal to personal property based on usufruct where, so long as you live in the home, it belongs to you but, when you vacate to a new home, the ownership is transferred back to the community.
So, is the community forced to purchase the house if someone moves out? Or is it more of a renting situation and you never actually own your home, you just rent it from the community and when you move you lose all effort and time you have put into improving your home?
All you have to do is look at the military "on base" housing to see how bad places can get if you never own anything. And I am not really sure that I would want to live in an apartment situation my entire life. I already think things like "eminent domain" are bullshit, but I can't even conceive of how truly dystopian it would be to have your housing controlled by the government and whatever whacko managed to claw their way into power most recently.
I do not have time or patience to educate you. Go read theory on alternative economic systems.
Please, for the love of God educate yourself. You limit yourself by only thinking of this in terms of the current, highly exploitative capitalist system.
It would look fundamentally different from anything that currently exists today.
Ouch, so it is an assigned housing situation where the government gets to decide where and how you live...
No, it isn't. Jesus Christ you people are intentionally interpreting this in bad faith or just lack reading comprehension.
Poor people can't buy homes and those investors are the same people who make everyone else poor.
I get letters from realtors asking me to sell mine to their “client”. I’m sure they are investors so they can fuck off. I’ll take less money to make sure a family gets my house when sell.
I get emails and scam phone calls asking me to sell the last house my parents owned when I lived there, they sold that property 4 years ago
Sell it to them lol
Eat the rich
This isn't the rich, that's what makes it so sad. These funds are managed by vultures, yes, but these portfolios are quickly bundled and turned into financial instruments, which in turn portions of them are rolled into other funds, which in turn are sold to groups like teachers pension funds, or fractions sold on Robinhood using fancy names that disguise what is in them. These funds are sold not to the rich but to those trying to stay ahead of the meat grinder that is the American capitalist economy. The rich get fees that are completely divorced from how well the funds perform, meanwhile working folk are inadvertently funding and fueling the machine that is making it impossible for them to afford to buy a home.
I don't think you understand.
EAT.
THE
RICH.
Yeah, that too, but my complaint is about the system that makes the rich while simultaneously convincing us to inadvertently participate in and strengthen our own economic slavery.
That's by design though. They get rich off selling us the promise of something being the next frontier of personal sovereignty.
💯
If repeating your meaningless slogan is the only response you can muster to someone actually trying to offer substantive explanation, you're the one that lacks understanding, whether willfully or not.
Writing it in all caps only further emphasizes this.
Should 10x property taxes on non-primary-residences, and split the proceeds between subsidizing construction of new housing and being distributed as a UBI. Would be better than trying to ban speculative investment in housing outright, because it would be attacking the underlying market factors instead of telling investors they can't try to make a profit.
not only that, place limits on how many properties they can own as well, plus also close loopholes like using LLC / some kind of other shady company to buy more houses.
place limits on how many properties they can own as well, plus also close loopholes like using LLC / some kind of other shady company to buy more houses.
This is a cat and mouse game that the law, glacially paced as it is, can never win. The tax strategy suggested would be much more effective.
That's closer to trying to ban speculative investment. I guess my opinion on this is just that this type of approach won't work as well, because keeping people from participating in the market isn't a direct way to move the market. And what needs to happen is, lower housing prices and regular people having greater proportional purchasing power, so the best focus would be to give investors strong incentives to sell, increase supply, and redistribute wealth, in a way that's easy to enforce.
Houses should be for living in, not financial vehicles.
I'm not exactly arguing against that, I am suggesting taking steps to tank their price and discourage using them as a store of wealth.
It's impossible to prevent anything of significant value that can be owned from becoming a "financial vehicle" to some extent. This is idealism with no practical application.
This is absolutely terrible for working people and the economy as a whole. Gatekeeping which ultimately brings down everyone including the investors who hold it above the heads of others.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
We're chickens stuck inside investors slaughterhouse.
I hope they all get wrecked when it bursts. This is madness and literal biblical demon levels of evil.
Government officials should not be allowed to own rental property.. problem solved.
While these investors are absolutely soulless and deserve to be called out, there's another aspect of this problem that I feel doesn't get talked about enough.
If we just built enough housing this problem would go away. And it would be easy if we had a system that allowed people to build new things and undercut competition. But we can't because regulations make it nearly impossible to make anything other than houses.
People investing on houses are a symptom of the larger overall problem, of there not being enough fucking housing.
If we just built enough housing this problem would go away.
Fun fact: there are more vacant homes than there are homeless. By a factor of 28. We have the homes, we just need to let people own them
Yes of course, but how do you propose we get that to happen?
Why are these homes empty in the first place? Are they in the same places where housing is needed?
And even if you could house all homeless people, that still leaves the problem of the crushing expense of housing in many places.
No. Nobody needs a Bitcoin to live, and Bitcoins are still expensive. We have more houses than we need, and housing is expensive. That's because they're both being used as ponzi schemes.
That's kinda exactly my point? If someone could print a fuckton of new bitcoins it's value would drop. The same is true for housing. We may have technically enough housing for everyone, but that means nothing if that housing is not also where people want to or need to live.
zoning laws, and NIMBYism by rich people are the problem. i think moreso with nimbyism.
blow the bubble