"Eat The Landlords" - housing reform partisans target Brooklyn Housing Court overnight

[John Dule]

I was talking to my family's property manager yesterday. He said that this is the worst time for landlords he's seen in his life. Renters are living for free in houses they don't own, and are being backed up by far-left city governments who have put "freezes" on evictions and rent due to the virus. Sorry, but do you put a "freeze" on arresting burglars just because a lot of people are stealing flat screen TVs all of a sudden? No? Then why stop evicting people who are (quite literally) stealing other people's houses from them? Landlords-- who, by the way, are not generally very wealthy-- are suffering more from this virus than any other demographic group. They're being forced to live off of rents that are reduced up to 80%, and if they put even minimal pressure on rentoids to pay a reasonable amount, their renties can just say they won't pay at all. After all, there's no risk for them if they miss rent one or ten times. It's practically impossible to evict people in California these days, because the state has made it clear that it sides with criminal squatters over property owners.

Leftists destroyed this country's housing market with habitability warranties, zoning laws, rent control, and high taxes. Now they're acting as though the free market caused the housing shortage that came about as a direct result of their inept mismanagement. We're currently fixing up a house in San Francisco that we own, but at this point it might be worth more to us if we keep it off the market (as we've done for the past five years). If we try to rent it, we'll either end up with section 8 getting forced on us or we'll spend years trying to find trustworthy people to live there who won't immediately stiff us on rent and force us through a years-long eviction process. At least by keeping the unit empty, we'll be able to maintain it at its current market value rather than have sixteen poor people move in and immediately turn it into a dump.

[John Dule]

Doesn't San Francisco have an "empty housing tax"? Because that seems to be one of the most common ways that left of centre parties try to combat ever rising rent prices (alongside other stuff like price controls).

Then again such "empty housing taxes" tend to be used more against banks and real state agencies than against individual household owners but still

I think we're safe because A) We're currently renovating the place, and B) The previous owner was a family member who died, and so it was left to us in a will. Hence why we're apprehensive about renting it quickly-- seeing our old family home get trashed by a bunch of commie stooges would be heartbreaking.

Lol, this is one of the most delusional posts I have ever read. Real estate investors and property developers as a class have more pork legislation, tax benefits, and access to credit and finance than nearly any group in America.

If these people exert so much control over the housing market, then why are rent control laws still so prevalent in major American cities? Why are warranties of habitability still the law of the land? Why are the zoning ordinances-- which drive down the value of these properties-- still in effect?

[John Dule]

First, outside of California, New York, and New Jersey, not only in rent control uncommon, but in most States, it's prohibited.

Second, the only even semi-just alternative to a warranty of habitability would be to allow renters to break leases at will if repairs aren't made. But leaving aside the burdens that alternative would impose on both lessors and lessees, why would any landlord want to lease substandard housing?  Leaving aside issues of morality, it leaves them open to lawsuits.

Third, in what weird parallel universe do you live where zoning restrictions on renting result from progressive politics instead of conservative and/or NIMBY politics?

Last but not least, is landlord tipping anything like cow tipping?

Hmm... isn't it a strange coincidence that California and New York are the two states with the most notorious housing crises in the nation? Also, habitability warranties don't just demand that properties be brought up to code-- they also establish that a rentable property must possess certain features, which drives up costs. This prevents new and innovative building designs from being tested (say, with shared communal cooking areas or bathrooms) and ultimately drives up the cost for the renter. It's also a coincidence, I'm sure, that rent started spiking and housing started becoming scarce around the same time that habitability warranties became commonplace.

Wow, so many Capitalists (TM, RR) here.

Guys - you're supposed to lick the boot, not deepthroat it!

We are the boot. And we don't care what you people do with it-- lick it, deepthroat it, polish it, whatever. Just make sure the check arrives by the first of the month.

[John Dule]

This prevents new and innovative building designs from being tested (say, with shared communal cooking areas or bathrooms)

no what prevents these from being tested is that literally no one would ever want to live in a house with a toilet or kitchen: those things are terrible enough in university accommodation or large house shares as it is: just imagining how much worse it'd be with 20 people sharing a kitchen and no clear idea who would be responsible for actually cleaning it.

Its the sort of pie-in-the-sky concept that idiots that haven't actually lived in the real world propose without actually talking to the people that need housing.

I'd rather live in a 100 square foot micro-unit with a fold-in bedpod that has a cafeteria downstairs, a bathroom and showers down the hall, and a community kitchen than in a cardboard box. If you would simply allow developers to provide housing at prices that people can afford, then homelessness could be nearly eradicated. But as usual, leftists insist on "guaranteeing" certain standards for housing, which ensures that a significant chunk of people can never afford decent accommodations.

And for the record, I have lived in a dorm that functioned like this. It isn't fun. It isn't my preference. But for many people, this would be a massive step up from the streets.

[John Dule]

Hmm... isn't it a strange coincidence that California and New York are the two states with the most notorious housing crises in the nation? Also, habitability warranties don't just demand that properties be brought up to code-- they also establish that a rentable property must possess certain features, which drives up costs. This prevents new and innovative building designs from being tested (say, with shared communal cooking areas or bathrooms) and ultimately drives up the cost for the renter.

There is nothing "new and innovative" about a boarding house. Why is it necessary to delude people in this way? Whatever merit there is to the case for alternate housing arrangements, this makes a mockery of the English language.

I'm not talking about a boarding house.

[John Dule]

This prevents new and innovative building designs from being tested (say, with shared communal cooking areas or bathrooms)

no what prevents these from being tested is that literally no one would ever want to live in a house without a toilet or kitchen: those things are terrible enough in university accommodation or large house shares as it is: just imagining how much worse it'd be with 20 people sharing a kitchen and no clear idea who would be responsible for actually cleaning it.

Its the sort of pie-in-the-sky concept that idiots that haven't actually lived in the real world propose without actually talking to the people that need housing.

Nonsense, Comrade Dule is onto a fantastic idea. Who could forget the extraordinary success of communal apartments in the Soviet Union?

Communal spaces are almost always destroyed through negligence. However, a developer who wanted to build such a complex could easily hire some trustworthy tenants to clean the communal spaces in exchange for a halved rent. Security cameras could also catch angry commies in action if they decided to destroy things for their own sick entertainment.

[John Dule]

Communal spaces are almost always destroyed through negligence. However, a developer who wanted to build such a complex could easily hire some trustworthy tenants to clean the communal spaces in exchange for a halved rent. Security cameras could also catch angry commies in action if they decided to destroy things for their own sick entertainment.

That's not what worries me. I am much more concerned about the psychological effects of sharing a kitchen or a bathroom with several different families.

I am much more concerned about the psychological effects of living under a freeway overpass than I am about sharing a toilet with the Armenian guy down the hall.

[John Dule]

Communal spaces are almost always destroyed through negligence. However, a developer who wanted to build such a complex could easily hire some trustworthy tenants to clean the communal spaces in exchange for a halved rent. Security cameras could also catch angry commies in action if they decided to destroy things for their own sick entertainment.

That's not what worries me. I am much more concerned about the psychological effects of sharing a kitchen or a bathroom with several different families.

Why? Roommates are fun. That seems like a weird critique and certainly not significant enough to warrant policy action.

Socialists think that sharing and cooperation are intrinsic aspects of the human experience-- unless, of course, they're happening inside a capitalist system, in which case they stink.

[John Dule]

But as usual, leftists insist on "guaranteeing" certain standards for housing, which ensures that a significant chunk of people can never afford decent accommodations.

The argument that overregulation is preventing housing construction from being expedited is potentially convincing, but California's housing shortage is definitely not driven by something as specific as leftists hemming and hawing about basic livability regulations, and more by anti-development NIMBYs. Sure, some of them may be liberal hypocrites and you may denounce them as leftists standing in the way. But as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's not their leftism that motivates their NIMBYism.

True, it's not just the overregulation, it's the HOAs as well-- which are essentially apolitical.

However, a developer who wanted to build such a complex could easily hire some trustworthy tenants to clean the communal spaces in exchange for a halved rent.

You were literally just bemoaning about how hard it is to find good tenants in San Francisco.

Good tenants are hard to find because they know that once they're in the unit, they can essentially trash the place and refuse to pay rent, and the landlord will have no recourse due to the byzantine nature of the eviction process. Make evictions easier, balance things out so that the law doesn't blatantly favor tenants over owners, and you will restore trust to the system.

[John Dule]

This prevents new and innovative building designs from being tested (say, with shared communal cooking areas or bathrooms)

Ah, you mean like the old Soviet kommunalka! Such a great, individualist, libertarian solution!

One great thing about capitalism is that if you want to purchase some land collectively with a few other people, build a few units, and live in it together cooperatively, you are free to do so.

[John Dule]

I count restrictive zoning as overregulation. And yeah, it comes from a place of NIMBYism but linking NIMBYism to conservatism is an easy way to avoid self-introspection over this problem. We know who's writing these laws in CA.

NIMBYism motivated by "screw you, got mine" isn't very progressive, regardless of the political views espoused by the person who upholds it.

I'm also not sure if there are actual laws or regulations that actually push NIMBYism. Blocking construction or rejecting plans for dense housing are actions that aren't legislative in nature. Or refusing to repeal Prop 13.

The laws that assist the NIMBYs are generally laws that give HOAs a large amount of power to interfere with development projects nearby. I don't think it's possible to define this through a progressive/conservative dichotomy. The people who benefit from such laws range from whites who don't want "undesirables" moving into their neighborhood to minority communities who oppose "gentrification."

[John Dule]

You're pushing dozens of disparate and desperate families into shared living spaces. Conflict is inevitable!

This is hardly a free choice, either. As you said, it's either this or the streets.

That's what free choice is. You are provided with a set of possible options that are contingent upon your circumstances. You then choose from that set of options. This is true for literally every single choice that humans make. Nobody's forcing you to live anywhere. Go live in a ditch in the woods if you really want to; see if I care.

Regardless, this kind of housing would likely be a first step forward for its tenants as they put their lives back together. Of course, alternatively you could continue to make these sorts of arrangements illegal, thus condemning millions of people to lives without shelter. It's your call.

[John Dule]

Communal spaces are almost always destroyed through negligence. However, a developer who wanted to build such a complex could easily hire some trustworthy tenants to clean the communal spaces in exchange for a halved rent. Security cameras could also catch angry commies in action if they decided to destroy things for their own sick entertainment.

That's not what worries me. I am much more concerned about the psychological effects of sharing a kitchen or a bathroom with several different families.

Why? Roommates are fun. That seems like a weird critique and certainly not significant enough to warrant policy action.

It is fun - when you're in college, with a group of people of same age, origin, interests and so on. After that, not really. This sounds like a Victorian lady being confused by why the working classes complain so much about cramped housing; surely it must be charming, romantic even, for a whole family to live in such a close-knit environment?

Lol, you're the one who's out of touch here-- not us. From your perspective, living in this sort of squalor must be horrible, right? Surely we should make it illegal for landlords to provide people with such Spartan housing! Surely it should be illegal to hire people to do menial, repetitive tasks in factories in East Asia! Good lord, look at these pitiful poors. Their dirty, poverty-stricken lives offend my bourgeoise liberal sensibilities!

In reality, these kinds of jobs and accommodations are a step up for people, which is why they choose them. If factories weren't superior to subsistence farming, nobody would work in factories. Similarly, if living in the gutter was really better than living in the kinds of housing units I described in this thread, people would choose the gutter. But you would begrudge them that choice, thus denying them the opportunity to improve their lives in even the most miniscule way. Oh, the soft cruelty of left-wing "empathy." It's the number one cause of misery in the western world.

[John Dule]

That is the mind of people with money. Anyone who dares try to suggest new ideas is suddenly a Stalinist, conveniently forgetting that people turn to extreme ideologies when they are being left behind.

If lefties would come up with some new ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. Things like "housing is a human right" and "eat the landlords," however, are neither new nor ideas.

[John Dule]

I would prefer to invest public money into well integrated public housing. We should seek to create public housing for people of many different social backgrounds, not just the poor or working class.

Ideally, you’d construct townhouses and apartment complexes with residents consisting of working class families, young people, aspiring middle class families, and the elderly. Applicants would be offered different rents based on ability to pay. This would provide affordable housing for the poor and accommodations for young adults in the community. This also prevents poverty from being centralized in one neighborhood.

I am not very knowledgeable on housing policy, but this idea seems promising.

That is the mind of people with money. Anyone who dares try to suggest new ideas is suddenly a Stalinist, conveniently forgetting that people turn to extreme ideologies when they are being left behind.

If lefties would come up with some new ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. Things like "housing is a human right" and "eat the landlords," however, are neither new nor ideas.

What is your argument against housing being a human right? I'm curious.

I will respond to these two posts simultaneously. Firstly, the statement "Housing is a human right" is far too vague to be considered a practical policy proposal. However, let's assume that it means that everyone in this country should have the option to live in free government housing if they want to. The problem is that housing is a scarce resource, and if we establish that everyone has the right to lay claim to an equal portion of this scarce resource, the existing shortages will only be exacerbated.

For example, let's say we have a state that has 40,000 genuinely homeless people. These people are living in gutters and under freeways, and they need roofs over their heads. We declare that "housing is a human right" and that the government must provide housing for these people, either by building new units or purchasing old ones from landlords (perhaps using good ol' eminent domain to grease the wheels!). Here we run into our first snag: not all of these units are equal. Some are located adjacent to excellent views, nice parks, economic centers, and public transportation hubs. Others are in run-down, polluted cesspools. Geographically speaking, it is impossible to build truly "equal" housing for all 40,000 people. But without the market to assign value to these difficult-to-quantify intangible assets, we have to rely on the judgement of, say, a panel of government bureaucrats to determine who "deserves" to live where. Perhaps the neediest of the needy deserve the better housing? Of course, this incentivizes people to present their situations in the worst possible way to the decision-making bureaucrats. Perhaps to engender themselves to the panel's sympathy, they will purposely take on massive credit card debt, develop drug addictions, or have extra children. This sounds absurd, but remember, Devout Centrist said he wanted a system wherein housing was allocated based on ability to pay. It stands to reason that in order to get a guarantee of nicer housing, people would logically attempt to make their ability to pay completely nonexistent, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are in dire need of housing.

But let's say we've now housed those 40,000 homeless people. Problem solved, right? Not even close. We've declared that housing is a human right, free of charge, which means that every deadbeat dad and slacker college student in the country now wants to get out of their rental agreements and get one of these sweet new "free housing" deals. A surge of applications for housing follows. Obviously the state government can't build new units fast enough to meet this surge in demand, so in order to honor their pledge to the public, they'll have to buy even more units for these new applicants. After all, if you genuinely believe that housing is a human right, then nobody should be paying rent at all... right? Logically speaking, a government that makes this guarantee must provide housing to anyone that asks for it, which is simply an untenable solution that creates far more problems than it solves.

Now, Devout Centrist seems to imply that these government-built, government-owned units will still charge rent, which I think is.... absolutely precious. The idea of the government being your landlord-- effectively the landlord for the entire state-- is practically feudal. In a system of private property ownership, you're at least able to shop around for good deals and weigh the pros and cons. With a "housing guarantee" however, you're probably stuck with whatever unit the bureaucratic panel assigns you. Applying for a housing change would probably require wading through a sizable amount of red tape, and even then it's a crap shoot whether or not you get the location/type of unit you actually want. And if DC's system comes into being, and people are actually forced to pay rent on their government housing (which, as far as I can tell, negates the whole "housing is a human right" mantra automatically-- what other "human rights" are you charged a fee for?), then tenants will still be incentivized to maintain a bad economic situation for themselves because their rent is based on their "ability to pay," a nebulous concept that is ultimately wholly arbitrary without the presence of a price system to establish concrete relationships in value.

Of course, you might say "Hang on a minute, John. Nobody wants to live in government housing. People will still be incentivized to work their way out of these state-controlled slums." Hmm... will they? The "townhouses and apartments" DC is describing sound pretty nice. Of course, you could let them deteriorate, or build them crappily, or not include certain essential features like kitchens and bathrooms-- all of these approaches would provide powerful incentives for people to move out. But then of course, you violate the all-important "habitability" thresholds put in place by lefty pearl-clutchers who want to make sure that everyone has a "right" to an electric stove, a 42-inch TV, a two-car garage, and a condo in downtown San Francisco. If the quality of these government units is anywhere close to that of the rental properties on the market, even middle-income people will feel a powerful incentive to take advantage of their newly-declared "human right."

This isn't even mentioning what will happen to the landlords. As more and more tenants move to government-guaranteed units, property owners will see their checks disappear and their assets depreciate in value. The blindly vindictive crypto-Maoist coalition of the progressive left will surely see this as a massive success-- despite the fact that many landlords are simply middle-income elderly people who purchased property to rent so that they could pass some assets to their children. But now that rents are plummeting, those investments will be worth next to nothing, and the growing government housing bureaucracy will purchase those depreciating units for pennies on the dollar. Generations of accumulated familial wealth (aka the backbone of the middle class) will evaporate as the market responds to the sudden shortage of demand for housing. Families will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Elderly people will go bankrupt. And as financial problems compound for the middle class, you'll see even more applicants trying to get their hands on a government-owned unit (a commodity that, at this point, will surely be in short supply).

Of course, so long as the public is united in a common misery, the activist left will be happy. This is because progressive policies are just as much about enacting vengeance as they are about helping people. A senior citizen losing their life's savings in a housing market crash is ok, because old people are lame. Ok boomer! Lol! No one cares about your stories about the Dust Bowl; you were born in the 1920s and so you're probably a racist, rich old white person anyway. Now the capitalist oppressor class will be forced into squalor along with the rest of us! Rather than work to improve my own situation, I'd prefer to drag everyone else in the world down to my level. Only then can I feel comfortable telling myself that the fault lies in "the system," not in me.

[John Dule]

You're talking about a boarding house. Maybe you need to describe it that way to sell it to certain people. Maybe you need to describe it that way to sell it to yourself. I don't have a problem with it, because I know that life is getting worse for many people in rich countries and that a large share of them will be forced to settle for materially worse lives than their parents enjoyed.

Boarding houses operate on much more temporary timescales than what I'm talking about, put a greater emphasis on communal activities (such as meals), often provide meals for tenants, and often involve the owner living on-site. What I am talking about is closer to a dormitory, though the comparison is still not fully accurate.

A boarding house is in fact better than a freeway underpass. A boarding house full of people who know how to behave is probably better than a large apartment in most American public housing developments. But let's not pretend that middle class Americans actually want to live in that way, or that the lack of affordable housing in proximity to the most remunerative jobs is anything but a political choice regarding both housing and jobs. And I mean real housing,  not favelas comprised of  "tiny houses" and hipster-fied van homes or the neo-Victorian squalor of paying $2000 per month for a roomy bunk with high-speed internet.

Lol, I'm not saying this is anyone's ideal domicile. But then again, the way the American poor lives right now is probably not ideal either. Most people don't like trailer parks, public housing, or living on the streets. They do it because it is their best option out of a bunch of terrible ones.

"The state isn't protecting my claim to unearned capital and I can't see my share of the family's return, boohoo!  "

Wow. How about you define "unearned capital" for the rest of us, so we can better understand how much of our property we'd be allowed to keep in your world of perfect economic justice? You know, most social mobility is predicated on the ability of families to accrue wealth over more than one generation. But I suppose that in the interest of "fairness" we should set the inheritance tax at 100%, right? That way everyone will be equally consigned to lives of mediocre means.

[John Dule]

My goodness, where do I start?

Now, Devout Centrist seems to imply that these government-built, government-owned units will still charge rent, which I think is.... absolutely precious.

Tenants in public housing are still charged rent, albeit rent proportional to a percentage of the median income in the area.

So just to be clear, you support this? And that means that housing isn't a human right, yes?

In a system of private property ownership, you're at least able to shop around for good deals and weigh the pros and cons.

Why can’t public housing coexist with private homeownership? Never did I suggest that we abolish the private market for rental properties. Unless you’re saying private property should be the only way to go. In which case, there’s no incentive for developers to build properties for the poor and working class.

This is like saying "there's no incentive for car manufacturers to build cars that poor and working class people can buy." It just isn't true. So long as there is a reasonable amount of market demand for a product (housing) to be offered at a certain price, that demand will be met-- unless the government mucks up the system.

With a "housing guarantee" however, you're probably stuck with whatever unit the bureaucratic panel assigns you. Applying for a housing change would probably require wading through a sizable amount of red tape, and even then it's a crap shoot whether or not you get the location/type of unit you actually want.

Mm, not quite. Our current system is needs based. Meaning that, you qualify for public housing if your income is below a certain threshold. This creates housing developments that are occupied by mostly poor people and working class families, concentrating poverty and crystalizing resistance to public housing.

By eliminating the needs based requirement and by constructing more public housing units, you are providing more options to working families, young people, and a variety of other renters. This is not assigning a person to a unit and forcing them to live there. You are giving them the option to live in affordable public housing or private rental properties.

How, then, are the units allocated?

And if DC's system comes into being, and people are actually forced to pay rent on their government housing (which, as far as I can tell, negates the whole "housing is a human right" mantra automatically-- what other "human rights" are you charged a fee for?),

Housing projects charge rent. Section 8 properties charge rent. Public housing in this country is subsidized, yes, but it is not free. Now, granted, there are housing vouchers but those are used to pay for private rental properties.

Again, this defeats the concept of housing as a human right. You are not charged a fee for exercising your right to free speech, or for your right to vote. How is this "right" different from those others, in your mind?

The "townhouses and apartments" DC is describing sound pretty nice. Of course, you could let them deteriorate, or build them crappily, or not include certain essential features like kitchens and bathrooms-- all of these approaches would provide powerful incentives for people to move out.

Let me get this straight. You are suggesting that the government should seek to build public housing as poorly as possible so that the poor will have ‘incentive’ to move to better accommodations? Am I understanding this correctly?

I don't have time to explain the basics of rhetorical arguments to you; just respond to what I said without deliberately misinterpreting it.

But then of course, you violate the all-important "habitability" thresholds put in place by lefty pearl-clutchers who want to make sure that everyone has a "right" to an electric stove,

Averroes already broke down the issues with your boarding house idea, but surely providing electric stoves won’t bankrupt public and private housing developers.

a 42-inch TV, a two-car garage, and a condo in downtown San Francisco.

These are not, in fact, habitability requirements in downtown San Francisco.

See above.

If the quality of these government units is anywhere close to that of the rental properties on the market, even middle-income people will feel a powerful incentive to take advantage of their newly-declared "human right."

This is not a problem if you charge rent as a proportion of a person’s income. Although I should point out that middle income people in public housing is a net positive, as it reduces economic segregation and creates more competition in the broader rental market.

I still cannot wrap my head around why you're promoting this idea, then. If you're going to make housing a human right, you can't charge rent. If you're going to charge rent anyway, then why not just allow the market to provide this housing by scrapping the zoning regulations and HOAs that are preventing these kinds of units from being built? You are using the government to solve a problem that the government caused in the first place. It's unbelievably wasteful and pointless.

But now that rents are plummeting, those investments will be worth next to nothing, and the growing government housing bureaucracy will purchase those depreciating units for pennies on the dollar.

This is quite an apocalyptic scenario. The amount of government investment in public housing needed to bankrupt the private rental market would be gargantuan.

You're going to need that level of government investment when you declare that housing is a human right!

(I'm not going to respond to the other parts of your post because I would end up repeating myself.)

[John Dule]

Wow. How about you define "unearned capital" for the rest of us,

Lol. I'm renting my house out to a friend right now while house-sitting long-term for family and I'm basically getting paid above cost to pay for something. Capital extraction may be gained, but it certainly isn't "earned". You're not providing necessary labor or a vital service, you're manipulating a situation where you have power and the other has less power.

Note: throwing out a strawman about the estate tax does not assist your argument.

Lol, I suppose housing isn't a "vital service" now? And exercising your legal right to property is not "manipulating the system." You might as well say that people who exercise their right over a legal copyright are "manipulating the less powerful," or that someone who builds a house and then sells it has "taken advantage of their property rights to extort others." Ownership isn't theft.

My point about the estate tax followed logically from the complaints made in his post about "unearned" capital.

[John Dule]

I don't want to sound flip, but the solution is simple: build more affordable housing, and bulldoze any special interests that get in the way.

This is my goal as well.

And the easiest way to do this is for the Party leadership of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has outsized influence in urban areas, to make a determined effort to do so.

However, this is not the easiest way of accomplishing it. The easiest way to do this would be to strip away laws that give HOAs power, end rent control, scrap zoning laws that restrict building height in certain neighborhoods, and quintuple the amount of new building construction allowed every year in the cities. This is an extremely simple solution that requires little government effort, and it will yield excellent results for everyone.

In the meantime, I am completely in favor of nonviolent squatting.

This is like saying "I want everyone to have water, and until they do, people should be allowed to steal it." Sounds good, doesn't work. Eventually no suppliers will even try to provide water, because they know that it's considered acceptable to steal it and the state has made it clear that they won't intervene. Without any incentive to make the product available, supply will (no pun intended) dry up.

[John Dule]

Wow. How about you define "unearned capital" for the rest of us,

Lol. I'm renting my house out to a friend right now while house-sitting long-term for family and I'm basically getting paid above cost to pay for something. Capital extraction may be gained, but it certainly isn't "earned". You're not providing necessary labor or a vital service, you're manipulating a situation where you have power and the other has less power.

Note: throwing out a strawman about the estate tax does not assist your argument.

Lol, I suppose housing isn't a "vital service" now? And exercising your legal right to property is not "manipulating the system." You might as well say that people who exercise their right over a legal copyright are "manipulating the less powerful," or that someone who builds a house and then sells it has "taken advantage of their property rights to extort others." Ownership isn't theft.

My point about the estate tax followed logically from the complaints made in his post about "unearned" capital.

You aren't doing anything to "provide housing". A developer or a homebuilder actually engages on the labor and service level, therefore "earning" their capital. I understand the desire to morally justify something that benefits you at the expense of others, but crowing about how ungrateful the serfs are ain't it, man. You're using your wealth to purchase something you don't need in hopes of extracting more wealth from people who do have that need. It may not be legal theft, but I think you can do better than promoting predatory capitalism at the expense of more meritocratic variants. In fact, as a rather intelligent Berkeley man, I'd venture that you would benefit even more from a more meritocratic society than an extractory variant.

What you have described in the bold portion is, quite literally, the definition of investment. It is what farmers do when they plant more crops than they actually need, in the hopes that they will be able to sell the surplus. It is what venture capitalists do when they purchase commodities that they hope will appreciate in value. It is what companies do when they purchase intellectual property rights from other parties, and then use that copyright to produce products that are protected by property laws. It is the cornerstone of human innovation, capitalism, and economic progress.

You can demean it all you like, but don't think for a second that I feel the need to "justify" this beautiful aspect of human ingenuity. It requires no justification.

[John Dule]

If you think billionaires should be able to buy up the entire food supply and sell it for double the market value while people are starving to death in the streets, I don't know what to say.

Note: throwing out a strawman [...] does not assist your argument.

[John Dule]

Wow. How about you define "unearned capital" for the rest of us,

Lol. I'm renting my house out to a friend right now while house-sitting long-term for family and I'm basically getting paid above cost to pay for something. Capital extraction may be gained, but it certainly isn't "earned". You're not providing necessary labor or a vital service, you're manipulating a situation where you have power and the other has less power.

Note: throwing out a strawman about the estate tax does not assist your argument.

Lol, I suppose housing isn't a "vital service" now? And exercising your legal right to property is not "manipulating the system." You might as well say that people who exercise their right over a legal copyright are "manipulating the less powerful," or that someone who builds a house and then sells it has "taken advantage of their property rights to extort others." Ownership isn't theft.

My point about the estate tax followed logically from the complaints made in his post about "unearned" capital.

You aren't doing anything to "provide housing". A developer or a homebuilder actually engages on the labor and service level, therefore "earning" their capital. I understand the desire to morally justify something that benefits you at the expense of others, but crowing about how ungrateful the serfs are ain't it, man. You're using your wealth to purchase something you don't need in hopes of extracting more wealth from people who do have that need. It may not be legal theft, but I think you can do better than promoting predatory capitalism at the expense of more meritocratic variants. In fact, as a rather intelligent Berkeley man, I'd venture that you would benefit even more from a more meritocratic society than an extractory variant.

What you have described in the bold portion is, quite literally, the definition of investment. It is what farmers do when they plant more crops than they actually need, in the hopes that they will be able to sell the surplus. It is what venture capitalists do when they purchase commodities that they hope will appreciate in value. It is what companies do when they purchase intellectual property rights from other parties, and then use that copyright to produce products that are protected by property laws. It is the cornerstone of human innovation, capitalism, and economic progress.

You can demean it all you like, but don't think for a second that I feel the need to "justify" this beautiful aspect of human ingenuity. It requires no justification.

Uhh, lmao. I'm probably one of the most pro-market people here. If you can't see a significant difference in investing that hopes to win people's wants vs. investing to restrict people's access to actual needs, well, that is scary. Sorry, Dule, but daddy owning three houses is not human ingenuity.

Literally nobody does this.

[John Dule]

Then why do you have a vacant home sitting there while people are sleeping in parks and under bridges?

Two reasons:

1) We're currently renovating the place-- not to meet any government housing standards, but just because we'd like to make it nicer. We pulled up the wall-to-wall carpeting to expose the hardwood floors, painted the whole interior, refloored the kitchen with nice linoleum, built a new fence, cleaned the stairs, installed new garage doors, bought a new stove, and sold most of the old furniture. However, we still need to clean the basement, fix up the rec room, and possibly construct some retaining walls in the backyard to stop the hill from sliding (it isn't tall enough to be dangerous, but the constant trickle of dirt is a nuisance). My granddad bought this house after he came home from the war and raised my dad there, so it has a good deal of sentimental value to my family. We'd like to see it in really good condition before renting it out, hopefully to a young couple with kids.

2) Imagine, if you will, trying to enter into a contract with someone. You will provide a service for them in exchange for a monthly fee. However, given recent circumstances, they know that once the contract is signed they can just start paying you 20% of the agreed-upon fee-- and if you complain, they can rip up the contract and decide not to pay you anything. They also know that in this situation, you're not legally able to stop providing them with that service. First you must take them to court-- a drawn-out process that will cost you time, money, and energy. During this time, they can continue using the service you're providing in whatever way they see fit. They can destroy the many features your service possesses, thus significantly lowering the value of your investment. Tell me-- in this situation, would you be eager to enter into such a contract? Would you try to sign as quickly as possible? Or would you try to shop around for trustworthy people with whom to enter into such a contract?

But no, you're right. Landlords are evil, and they only let properties sit empty because they hate poor people and want to see them freeze to death on the streets. They purchase land to exploit people, and they love letting their assets sit idle while millions go homeless.

[John Dule]

I don't believe I said anything like that. Really, all I wanted to do here was demonstrate that you're not the victim here and you don't have the moral high ground. If you think letting a home sit vacant for years is "an act of human ingenuity", frankly, you're not the brightest bulb to fall out of the socket. I'm actually shocked you had the nerve to declare someone else's attitude "feudalistic". I'm not sure I've ever seen you so frazzled.

Who has the moral high ground then? Actually, never mind. I don't care about leftist hot takes on morality. My point was that you were demeaning the instinct to invest, which-- far from being a negative trait-- is what has made the world what it is today. Letting a house sit vacant has nothing to do with that; it's just a sad byproduct of left-wing policies and the havoc they wreak upon ordinary people's lives.

All you really needed to say here was "yeah, we inherited a nice home from our family and we appreciate it. This home has sentimental value and we hope to see it taken care of. This windfall will someday benefit me and being able to approach the situation with some degree of certainty would benefit both my family and our potential tenants."

Ok, if you prefer brevity I'll start including a TL;DR at the end of my posts.

Personally, I vote against rent control every time it shows up on the ballot. But I can also do such without taking a sanctimonious attitude toward those less fortunate.

The sooner the left realizes that the right wants to help the less fortunate too (and is actually better at it), the sooner we can have honest conversations about these issues. I have seen no such desire for reconciliation in this thread, however.

If more people shared your attitude, it would provoke an equal and opposite reaction. And guess what? You're outnumbered.

Ah, the good old "strength in numbers" approach again. Once you've lost an argument, it always feels good to resort to sheer numbers to obtain your desired outcome. That's why the mob must be resisted at all costs.

[John Dule]

dule, have you ever been a tenant? just wondering

Imagine arguing for a return to tenements in the middle of a pandemic.

Fair enough. I expect that you'll advocate for eliminating public transportation like trains, subways, and buses in that case. You know, in order to avoid looking like a hypocrite.