…And I mean everyone! Like, you talk to people, some of whom are renting right now, the rest of them are staying in apartments left behind by family members instead, and their ultimate goal in life is always “save up some money, buy a house/apartment, rent in on airbnb, quit working”.
At this point, I don’t even know how many people have told me this is their life plan. Every one of those people either rents or knows so many people who rent. Everyone who lives in a rented apartment every year starts complaining about how rent prices are out of control and nobody can afford it. Like:
1- How can anyone think its a stable market that won’t crash in the future and allow you to retire like 20-30 years. Like, if everyone is saying that renting is way too expensive, I just think at some point people are going to leave the city because they can’t afford it.
2- Or that it’s an ethical sector of the economy that it’s okay to profit from. You see yourself being squeezed and all you can think about is how much you want to be the squeezer (is that even a word?).
3- That wanting to be a landlord is something to be proud of and something to be very open about. Like, "Yes, I want to be a leech, I want to make other people suffer while I prosper from their work.
I understand that they are just part of an oppressive system and they don’t see any other way out of it, but it is so boring and annoying to hear the 40th person tell you how they are going to buy an apartment in the center of town and rent it out to tourists.
Also I will forever remember this guy that was telling me his plan to buy an apartment and rent it like it was the smartest think anybody ever said. You could see the shine in his eyes as he was trying to phrase himself to explain me this simple trick to life, buying an apartment but instead of living in it, you rent it. He went on and on about how smart this trick was and he was going to retire in his 30s. He is not from a rich family so I have no idea how he was going to afford all that.
“save up some money, buy a house/apartment, rent in on airbnb, quit working”.
So really it’s just that people want to quit jobs they hate and can’t see any other way out.
What people are saying in truth isnt “I love being a landlord” its “I am alienated from my labor”. “Passive income” is painted as the only way out of wage slavery.
“when education is not liberatory, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor” - paulo freire
this quote explains very succinctly why the average american is so incredibly stupid and evil
People don’t “want” to be landlords, they want financial stability and to not sacrifice their life to making someone else massive profit. The system won’t allow them to consider that the system itself is the problem, so they look for solutions within the system, hence widespread landlordism.
it’s easier to profit than to start a revolution
I don’t know. It’s pretty damn expensive to buy a house these days…
That must be why we are here, I’d rather burn all this shit down than try to be a landlord.
I want to start a commune of climate appropriate passive houses and shared resources/labor distribution open to mostly marginalized people and the disabled (not some bougie “eco-village” with a buy-in of half a million dollars). Having a difficult time finding anyone even remotely interested in the idea and it bums me out. Being neurodivergent and having very very few friends is the main thing I guess. Fuck rent seeking leeches.
This is the sort of thing I’ve often fantasised about. But how would it work with finances? The community would still have to buy houses and land and disabled/marginalised people generally don’t have much money.
Well I’d be willing to invest everything I have, though by myself it wouldn’t cover much beyond some land and I already have tools and skills for building but it would require a couple other people with some amount of money, a few able bodies obviously as well. The construction would have to be mostly reclaimed building materials/harvested from the land. Rammed earth is literally dirt cheap, and a few trees from the land would go a long way. Most of the people I know claim to be socialists or MLs or some form of leftists and have some accumulated wealth but so far no one seems willing to actually do anything in real concrete terms. Also zoning laws and building codes are a nightmare to navigate when you are using alternative construction methods beyond something like straw bales around here. Logistics can be overcome, but without a few other people it’s hard to form a collective, hence my disappointment. I’m partially disabled and my window of opportunity is closing with age but that just means I work slower which only matters to capitalist exploiters who want economic output. Anyhow it’s been a thing I’ve been working on, I still haven’t given up. I guess it’s just sheer obstinance.
I know one decent landlord who owns a building that’s larger than he needs, so he rents out rooms for a fraction of the mortgage cost. He eats the maintenance fees, he lives in what’s basically one of the hallways, and he’s been trying to figure out a way to divide ownership up so everyone who lives there can take over the building while still having their own portion of legal protections. He still works a full-time job on top of doing most of the maintenance himself.
We have another friend who just owns two houses and rents one of them. I’ve never lost so much respect for a friend than when he told me about it.
It sucks that even people I know who are in unions are or aspire to be landlords.
Dont have much to say other than we need some sort of demonstrative example of justice to make it clear to these people there are consequences to being a leech on society
I guess the takeaway from all of this is that I would like for once to hear someone say something cool. Like that they want to be a surf instructor, open a bakery or whatever.
