[xhkkffbf]

Small? A friend who has about 5 houses told me that all 5 were behind or paying only a fraction of the rent. Including the woman who worked for Google as the local rep selling schools on using GSuite. She was making $150k when she filled out the lease paperwork. Google didn't have layoffs but somehow she couldn't write the full check. Go figure. But he still owed money to the bank and the utility company and ...

[matsemann]

It's hard to have too much sympathy for a person owning 5 houses while others are struggling having roof over their heads, though.

[TuringNYC]

I sort of sympathize with your viewpoint, but i'm curious why this doesn't extend to other human needs?

- shouldn't we also allow hungry individuals to walk out of grocery stores w/o paying for food and w/o risk of prosecution?

- shouldn't we also allow sick individuals to avoid medical debt collection and medical bankruptcies?

- shouldn't we also allow individuals to not pay tuition?

If i were to take the analogy further, shouldn't struggling businesses also get cloud hosting charges forgiven by government decree? Should public agencies in budget crises stop paying programmers salaries by government decree? Should struggling small startups stop paying software licenses by government decree?

I'm genuinely curious where the one stops and why.

[matsemann]

Of course tution should be free, and no one should have medical debt. I'm almost laughing at this being a "gotcha". Same with food and housing, it should be guaranteed by society.

But no, I don't think you should be able to walk out of a grocery with whatever you want. But the difference is a grocery provides a service, it has a function. A landlord is mostly a parasite extracting money but provides little value. if anything landlords just makes it more expensive for everyone to get a roof over their head.

[_-david-_]

Depending on when they got the houses and where they are, 5 houses may have cost less than $100k for each of them and may not be taking in that much rent.

That is less than the cost of one house in much of California now.

[ghufran_syed]

With that kind of thinking, we can soon make sure the person with 5 houses has much fewer houses, possibly 0? The problem with redistribution is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

[Chris2048]

The person is a landlord, they are providing housing.

[matsemann]

How? By buying a house someone else could have bought and actually lived in, thus increasing the prices for everyone? How does buying and renting a house provide something not already there?

[sevenf0ur]

Not everyone is wealthy enough or wants to move into an area and buy a house. Landlords make this possible. They also keep up with all the maintenance that any homeowner is familiar with. Houses are in a constant state of decay.

[MereInterest]

Except that landlords make a profit. The rent is higher than the mortgage+expenses. The landlord assumes risk of depreciation, but the response to the 2008 financial crisis showed that risk to be minimal.

That extra profit is an incentive for landlords to buy more, which pushes up the price of houses overall, whether being bought to live in, or bought to rent out

[Chris2048]

> The landlord assumes risk of depreciation, but the response to the 2008 financial crisis showed that risk to be minimal

Then it seems you think risk is overpriced. That fair enough.

But if the whole market of landlords disagrees, the burden is on you to demonstrate otherwise.

> the response to the 2008 financial crisis showed

That's like saying "the fact my house didn't burn down showed that my fire-insurance was worthless". That's not how risk works.

If you disagree, buy a house yourself, and offer it at lower-than-market rental rates. If no one with skin in the game is willing to do that, what can be done? It's not like the lower-end rental market is only affordable to the 1% - There are plenty small-time middle-class landlords.

[Chris2048]

> By buying a house someone else could have bought

I interpret "others are struggling having roof over their heads" as struggling to make rent, not purchase a house. If you struggle to pay the bills, it might be hard to get a mortgage.

> thus increasing the prices for everyone

The price is higher because someone else is taking on the risk. The alternative is prices are lower, but increasing the risk (and up-front cashflow requirements) for everyone.

> How does buying and renting a house provide something not already there

The house was already there to buy. Now it's there to rent. Again, I'd assume those who struggle the most are looking for rentals.