[ibeckermayer]

Have you ever ran the numbers for a rental property? I have — after interest on the mortgage, taxes, repairs, insurance, HOA fees (if applicable), management costs, etc., margins wear thin to non-existent in most areas. Plus you’re taking on risk in the case of being unable to find renters / rent / home depreciation. Running rental properties is largely a commodity business like any other, which means competition drives down margins (all else equal, I understand there are local idiosyncrasies that might make this not the case). For sure it can be lucrative if you’re smart, and prudent, and lucky, and manage to keep your head above water on a 30 year loan or few, and I imagine there are big players that can command lower interest rates and those sorts of thing; but there’s plenty of Joe Schmoe landlords who are running small businesses, and they’ve been forced arbitrarily to take the brunt of the economic downturn on the chin in order to protect their tenants. Why should they be forced to disproportionately pay for this?

[sidlls]

Those “Joe Scmoe” landlords are mostly graduates/victims of real estate guru nonsense who over leveraged themselves thinking of how rich they’d be in 5 years. I have no sympathy for them.

[tjr225]

They(the landlord) has agreed to take on a risk to profit on someone else’s need. I’m not going to _ever_ feel bad if that risk played out unfavorably for them. That’s insane.

[ibeckermayer]

In an important sense, taking on risk to profit on someone else’s need is how the entire economy works…

You can argue that much of what we produce nowadays isn’t a fundamental “need” like shelter, but that’s really beside the point, and a function of our relative prosperity as compared to previous eras.

How do you propose housing be managed if not by voluntary exchanges?

[tjr225]

I think public housing should be provided to those that need it and private housing should be available to those that can afford it. Same with food, same with water, same with healthcare, same with education.

[Ekaros]

Part of that risk calculation never was government banning them from evicting renters if they don't pay rents. Maybe in future they need to add substantial increase on rents to take in account next pandemic. As clearly the government does not protect their property.