[alert0]

>you're in the least productive and most predatory sector of our economy (the landlord)

I never really understand this. Let's say I own a 4 unit building on a decent sized lot in a big city. I make housing available to 3 other families in a place they could not afford to own. What is your alternative? I should tear down the apartments and opt to live in a single family home? How does that help anyone?

[pasabagi]

1. I own a 4 unit building on a decent sized lot in a big city.

2. I make housing available to 3 other families

This is the point - the second sentence does not actually follow from the first. The person who built the building, either the actual builders or the investors, make it available. At this point, it is a normal service-provision kind of relationship you see across the economy.

Except, with landlords, it isn't that they provide the building. It's that they provide the land. The land is parcelled out in a manner which, at best could be compared to if we just gave rights to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to whichever radio stations started pumping waves into it first. Of course, in reality, land ownership is usually rooted in much more brutal and sordid stories in America.

So you essentially end up with a class of people who take no risks, provide no service, and add no value, employ nobody, and often literally do nothing.

[alert0]

>The person who built the building, either the actual builders or the investors, make it available.

The person who owns the land makes it available by deciding to rent to people. The person who owns the land can decide to tear it down or not rent to people.

>take no risks

Real estate is not a risk free investment. It would be much more popular than bonds (when interest rates aren't near zero) if it was.

>provide no service

Maintaining the property in a habitable condition is a service. Maintenance expenses are why a large number of people choose to rent instead of buy when staying somewhere short term.

>add no value

Making housing available in desirable locations for less than the cost of a SFH is adding value. It can reduce people's commute or put them in neighborhoods they want to live in. If that land was instead covered in SFHs (which seems to be the implied ideal for the "landlords should not exist" crowd) the number of people who could live there would be significantly reduced.

>employ nobody

Landscapers, plumbers, electricians, roofers, property managers, cleaners, inspectors. In the case of new construction, a lot more people.

>often literally do nothing

Ha. I wish.

[pasabagi]

> The person who owns the land makes it available by deciding to rent to people.

No, the state makes it possible for the landlord to charge money for the land, by preventing squatting. The land is already available. It is the ownership that renders it unavailable.

As for the factual side of your argument (maintenance expenses as a motivator, etc), I can't comment. It's starkly different from my experience. I imagine it's actually starkly different from yours - you're just using it to rationalise the inequity.

Obviously, there can be incidental work in the maintenance of a monopoly. If somebody tomorrow gave me exclusive right to the fishing in the north sea, then I rented that out to fishing companies, there would be work involved. But fundamentally, renting out exclusive rights is not primarily about exchanging services for money. When you own land, you have just such an exclusive right, and it is just as predicated on the willingness of the state to back it, and is therefore an entirely political decision whether or not this is actually a good idea.

In the case of California, the state with a crazy unemployment problem, and sky-high property values, it's unarguable that the current system is not working. So questions of what is and is not a legitimate or useful monopoly over resources (land, in this case) should be totally on the table.

[MathYouF]

The state also makes it possible for me to charge for usage of everything else I own, not just land, by restricting people's ability to use it freely without my permission. For example, my body, my computer, my laundry machine, my bed, ect.

Is your main argument that because of the limited quantity of land it deserves special reconsideration, or do you think all or a vast number of property rights should be abolished?

[pasabagi]

My main argument is that when you have a limited quantity of something, like radio spectrum, it's normal to have a public conversation about how this should be divided - and ultimately, it's a democratic decision about who gets what, why, and for which uses.

Land should be regulated this way, but it isn't, because of the hangover (in europe) of medieval norms where landlords were essentially gangsters extracting protection money, or (in america) the essential abundance of land available for the taking[0].

If you have an expanding frontier, a fixed quantity (land) behaves like a growing quantity, so there isn't the intense pressure for land reform you got in europe. Except now, the land is all taken, so the regulatory regime which worked for a growing supply of land becomes increasingly dysfunctional, leading to problems with homelessness and tenant impoverishment, where people are paying increasing quantities of their income (50% +) to landlords, not because those landlords provide them with a good service, or because the landlords have high costs, but because it's their only choice.

[0] Obviously, the first nations population massively lost out in this.

[carom]

I guess, either way, you need a system that addresses supply and allocates housing fairly. I believe the free market can do that. Saying no land ownership doesn't really address who builds more housing, what incentive do they have, what restrictions are there, who gets to live where. Sure, if you could replace it with a system where the government builds as dense as is safely possible to meet demand, then held a lottery for who got to live there, and those tenants were forced to relocate every 3-5 years to give other people an opportunity to live there, I guess I'd be on board with that.

My hesitation is that would be a total rewrite, and we have a system that works pretty well where we could remove some market distortions and have it working really well. Remove residential zoning restrictions and landlords will build, there is incentive for it. So much of LA is zoned for SFH+ADU, and your neighbors will sue you if you get creative. There is no room in the zoning code for low end housing. I read about these men's hotels [1] and I don't think you can build something like that anymore, something that addresses a need at a price point people can afford. It sounds crass but we need tenements, so someone who is barely scraping by has a bed, an address, and a shower.

There is nothing besides legacy rent control units at the $500/mo price point in LA. There should be. We shouldn't rely on rent control, where we privatize the costs of a social problem and give landlords a huge incentive to get people out. We should just build some livable shit.

1. https://newrepublic.com/article/161808/ewing-annex-hotel-hou...

[alert0]

>leading to problems with homelessness and tenant impoverishment, ..., paying increasing quantities of their income

I see all of these as problems with zoning. I could also rant about rent control but it has a much smaller effect compared to the prevention of construction and density.

[imtringued]

>This is the point - the second sentence does not actually follow from the first. The person who built the building, either the actual builders or the investors, make it available. At this point, it is a normal service-provision kind of relationship you see across the economy.

If making it available is such a no brainer, why did they sell the building?

If there was no value in selling the land and building to a new owner, developers would just cut out the middleman. The reality is that developers want to build and take profits today, not over 30 years and then build again with no risk of the previous property turning a loss.

[pasabagi]

> If making it available is such a no brainer, why did they sell the building?

Rent is incidental to the real profit that you make from owning a building - asset value appreciation. Often developers do cut out the middleman. It's also sometimes a simple matter of where your credit is coming from and what interest you're paying - obviously, high interest rates push you towards a quick sale, etc.

I honestly don't think it should be controversial that rent is a form of rent, that is, a type of income that derives from simple ownership of something, not from any service or product. But you know, here we are.

[joecot]

My alternative would be to establish a land trust to manage the apartment building. Then you can provide housing for 3 other families without also making a profit off of them. Here's an example of a Land Trust: https://www.sawmillclt.org/

The argument is often as you say, that Land Lords add value by giving housing where people couldn't otherwise afford to live. And this is undercut by two points:

1. The landlord isn't the essential part there. If the point is to provide housing without having to buy, that's easily done with land trusts and co-ops. The only downside is that there isn't a Landlord to make a profit, but it's better for society as a whole.

2. If landlords didn't buy up properties for the purposes of turning around and renting them, the property values would be lower because there wouldn't be as much demand on the market. Then a decent portion of the people you're talking about not being able to afford to live there ... would be able to afford to live there.

[imtringued]

>2. If landlords didn't buy up properties for the purposes of turning around and renting them, the property values would be lower because there wouldn't be as much demand on the market.

Why would there be less demand on the market? What you are saying is that without landlords there is an absence of properties that people want to live in. How else does the land lord increase demand? By buying units that he never intends to rent out? That type of owner is no longer a landlord, merely an investor.

>Then a decent portion of the people you're talking about not being able to afford to live there ... would be able to afford to live there.

They would be able to afford to live there because nobody else wants to live there? What? How is that supposed to be a good thing?

I honestly can't grasp the hate of landlords. It literally makes zero sense. Rent seeking is bad but all land owners engage in it. Landlords have at least some incentive to make scarce land available to as much people as possible. All the other types of owners would rather make as little land available to as few people as possible. That is truly perverse and should be punished with a land value tax (the landlord would have to pay it as well but he doesn't care, as he would still make money off of the improvement of the land, not the land itself).

[alert0]

I appreciate the reply, I hadn't seen these before and I'll do some more research on them.

My initial reaction is how does this address the issue of developing more units in dense urban environments? For example, if we convert all multi family dwellings in LA to CLTs. Housing is more affordable and no residents are being displaced. Now more people want to move to LA. Who builds housing for them?

They would be required for compete over an extremely limited number of SFHs. Unless the CLTs had a provision that every Nth year, they would be torn down and redeveloped for greater density, this sounds like it would cause a city to completely stagnate. That Nth year clause would really go against the non-displacement goal. It could be sustainable if a city had zero growth, but for desirable metro areas that are mostly developed, that is not the case.

Market rents cause healthy turn over. There are other ways to address affordability, such as addressing wage growth, removing density restrictions, or expanding Section 8. Non-profit landlords would just further distort the system by not addressing systemic needs that require capital.

[AlexTWithBeard]

> with land trusts and co-ops

The hardest part with this - as with many other similarly noble undertakings - is to find a person who's willing to do all the job of setting things up and then step aside.

As we empirically see, there are not many people like that, otherwise this country would be full of land trusts.

[joecot]

Many of the land trusts form because the tenants get so pissed at their landlord that they make their landlord's life miserable, until the landlord gives up and sells the building to them for a land trust. Peace is a lie.

[AlexTWithBeard]

Does the landlord sell the property at market price?

[nlitened]

Sell it at a loss to somebody who does better risk assessment of their leveraged investments?

[alert0]

The comment is about landlords being predatory, not about an underwater investment.

[silicon2401]

You shouldn't be allowed to own property, nor should anyone else. We should all own nothing and like it. We should all live in uniform boxes so that nobody can have something nice unless there's enough for everyone to have some. That's the kind of thing that, if people don't already believe it, they'll believe it soon enough based on recent trends.