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Or just undo the laws that tied them… since the bosses and the land lords are one and the same.
A milder version of this is what there is in Switzerland. In Switzerland a person cannot rent an house/apartment that costs more than 1/3 of what they earn.
While clearly there are more and less expensive areas, it kills the race to unreasonable prices (like, let’s say, NY or London or… everywhere) and allows essentially everyone to have an house (and who cannot still afford there are social helps but that is for another post)
Yeah, we’re pretty bad a social help in the US. That sounds just send a bunch of people into the streets.
I am not Swiss but I have lived here long enough to realise they don’t do that out of simple generosity.
They realise that desperate people do desperate things.
And this jeopardise things that the Swiss value like quietness, not having to worry about crime, etc.
In the end nobody is an island and if someone is desperate the whole society is impacted a bit by that single desperate… a lot of desperate people and the society is impacted a lot by it
Back in the 1800s, the employer WAS the house lord as well. This meant not only the home was affordable for factory workers, the quality was good enough, so workers would show up at work well rested enough.
See I thought of this from the other direction
The minimum wage shall be the lowest hundredth dollar in a month which is still greater than three times the state’s median rent for a single bedroom apartment.
That’ll actually stoke class division between landlords and bosses since driving up rent will bump wages just as much.
this sounds nice hut big companies would create a refugee camp like buildings in town and rent them for dirt cheap and give you unlivable wages if they want
This assumes you get paid by a US company. Silly system
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just implement good old rent control that limits the price per square meter/square foot.
There wouldn’t even be a class warfare because bosses are landlords. We are seeing this now already, bosses are forcing people back into office because their real estate is losing in value. So they would fight the law just as they are doing with rent control.
And the second proposed system could even be heavily abused and create a worse situation for everyone. For example, landlords have 0 incentive offering bigger units anymore. So they mostly offer the legal minimum to fulfill all regulations. Bigger homes would become “benefits” offered by your job. But obviously if you lose your job, you will lose the housing provided.
Doesn’t work - this also eliminates any investment and repairs into a property that has already reached that cap. This is where you get slum lords and no future builds.
On the other hand, put in a mass government housing development program that is rent controlled and doesn’t need to profit would both increase housing stock, improve investment in quality to attract tenants and lower rent prices.
I like the idea, but realistically those bastards would probably find some backdoor deal so they can both profit off of you.
Capitalism doesn’t need to be fixed, it needs to be dismantled.
Either that or companies like Walmart would buy a 6 unit building in any town they had a store then rent them for like 250 bucks a month so they had to pay like 4 bucks an hour.
Was also thinking about how they could bring the average down by offering near uninhabitable rooms for $10/month. Rooms need to be 2 m² and have a communal bathroom on each floor, of course.
I can taste the black mold and dangerous living conditions already!
The French revolution 2.0
I think an interesting side effect would be the massive reduction of houses being bought as rental properties. If you had no real way to cover a mortgage or even some of the absurd property taxes with the rent you could get, your wouldn’t invest unless you really believe in the area or are buying to fix and sell.
It would basically tank the housing market and put everyone who owns a house with a mortgage under water. Would suck for me, and I’m not a landlord.
Oh noes! We’re so worried for the lords of land and property owners. If you have owned your property for more than 3 years please step out of the conversation.
The unfortunate risk you take owning a property. Likewise, is there really any way for the next generation to be ok with the current one not taking a hit?
Yes, if it’s the after next generation that is taking a hit /s
See that’s the odd balance
Not all people who’d lose out by going balls to the walls on affordable housing is a landlord, in fact most of them are working class people who have no investment vehicle but their home.
The process of decomodifying housing is necessarily going to be a long and bitterly unpopular one in its time.
Companies would start to buy houses that they can rent for cheap, but never fix anything in that house. I confidently believe that this idea would worsen the situation.
Hmm. I like the concept but think there are practical issues: Suddenly everyone who owns apartments or other rental property in a major city immediately sells it (even if just to be demolished) and kicks out the current renters. Mass homelessness affecting disproportionately those worst off. Perhaps the cost of Buying a home would drop due to all that property for sale - especially if the apartments can be sold as condos, but I’m not sure if it would compensate enough, and would be a huge mess for some time.
Suddenly everyone who owns apartments or other rental property in a major city immediately sells it (even if just to be demolished) and kicks out the current renters.
Why? Paying for demo would be costing them more money. Same with sitting on it without tenants.
What I mean is that they couldn’t afford to keep it in any way and may end up selling it at just the land value (if that)
The flip side is that it would be sold to people looking to buy one.
It wouldn’t push up homelessness, just more who rent would instead own
What about differently sized apartments with different amenities? Sounds like this would force standardization and a race to the bottom on minimal amenities.
The issue is that you’ll just have an influx of the highest yield housing types. I think the best bet would be requiring a percent of your owned properties in a market, say 20%, to have rent not exceeding a cap tied to minimum wage. That’ll ensure at least 20% of the rental homes are at an affordable price for minimum wage earners, and open up the other 80% to be higher cost, better amenities, etc.
This adds additional nuance, and I like the idea. Thank you for taking my question seriously.
No problem! I always enjoy some good theorizing lol
The NL has a points system with its rent caps, so nicer flats have a higher cap. I’m not saying there isn’t a housing crisis in the NL though.
Interesting! Do you see more builds being built at the higher cap, thus attributing to the housing crisis? Thank you for taking my question seriously.
@[email protected]’s idea of having a portion be mandated for Minimum Wage rent has some teeth.
We see barely any building ever since the government introduced higher taxes on social housing corporations. And the nitrogen emissions are also very high due to industrialised agriculture, causing new build projects to stall (too many emissions in a certain area =/= no permit to build).
To be honest, what I see is that the market is frozen, and while there are a lot of different houses, almost all are occupied. I rent from a corporate landlord in a high-rise, and the law keeps them decent. That said, their occupancy is basically single digit units free out of tens of thousands in the NL. It’s bonkers.
I guess what I’m saying is that these measures, like min wage help band-aid over the absolute worst problems, but they don’t make the market good. More building, more units, especially if built by the government to alleviate problems, would be good. If I understand correctly however, the previous few governments were all leaning neoliberal, so that did not happen.
The bare minimum legally allowable is already the blueprint that landlords use. Have you looked at rentals lately?
Have you? In my city there are a wide range of sizes (flats/multi-room) in different areas (near different industry sectors) with different amenities (washer dryer hookups/pool/dog park/none) across different ages (new builds/recent/decades old).
They wouldn’t fight the landlords because a lot of them are landlords.
They would simply lobby to have the law repealed or, more likely, vetoed before passing. Failing that, they would exploit every loophole and edge case to take advantage of it and cry to lawmakers and voters that the law is the problem rather than their circumvention of it.
There’s a wooden and steel contraption that uses gravity and a 5 gallon bucket for just such occasions.
The bucket is just for easy cleanup, you can omit it or use a trash can.
We got a lot of work to do. Better just set it up on a dock…
I thought we were against putting trash in our water. I think bucket -> compost is better. There are plenty of strong backs that would love to put in the work for the benefit.
I personally think the fear of your brain becoming fish food might help motivate behavior change,but keeping micro plastics out of the ocean is pretty important.
Why enable capitalism at all?
I like the ideas that discouraging wealthy people from buying houses that they exclusively use for renting.
