[chmod600]

A lot of people place misdirected blame for unaffordable housing on themselves or others who buy, fix up, and rent out houses.

It's pretty obvious that the cause of unaffordable housing is elsewhere. But being the one to actually collect rent is a kind of guilt-by-association.

[causality0]

I mean, sure. At the end of the day all land owners, and I speak as one, exist at the end of a chain that began with theft and likely violence. The surface of the earth is by nature no less a resource that should be common to all man as the atmosphere and the oceans. Neither the landlord with more than he can live on nor the renter with not enough to live on can exist without someone at some point having taken more than their fair share by guile or force of arms.

[TulliusCicero]

Owning as the only housing model doesn’t make sense. There’s plenty of reasons someone might prefer to rent instead, most of them having to do with not being in a position to put down roots. Which necessitates some kind of landlord.

[nitrogen]

Owning shares that could be transferred from house to house would make a lot more sense than renting.

[enord]

Money. The shares you are talking about already exist, and they're called "money". Of course, the relative value of shares wrt. the house will fluctuate over time and you'd have to account for this when transferring between houses, except this is calculated for you by the market when you just use money.

[TulliusCicero]

That sounds like it would be hideously complicated in practice.

Renting works fine if you have some basic regulations (which admittedly is the opposite of the case in the US).

[refurb]

I don’t believe sin is inheritable and I didn’t steal land from anyone, I was just born into a system that I’m doing my best to take part in.

[causality0]

The sin isn't heritable but land, like artifacts in the British Museum, doesn't stop being stolen because we've had it a long time or traded it amongst ourselves. I'm not advocating anything radical; I'm just saying it's reasonable to be a little uncomfortable about it sometimes.

[refurb]

That’s entirely a judgement call. I wouldn’t assume everyone feels that way.

The people my ancestors stole the land from, stole it from another indigenous tribe. Go back far enough and everyone is living on stolen land.

[ausbah]

is one of the incentives for those who rent housing not to keep the available housing supply low (at least to a certain point)?

[chmod600]

If you grow carrots, you would prefer to keep the overall supply of carrots low so that your carrots will fetch the highest price. But what you are actually doing is increasing the supply of carrots. So incentives and results are two different things and we shouldn't conflate the two.

I assume by "incentives", you mean that they'd manipulate the law to limit other suppliers. I'm sure that happens, but as a landlord you don't have to do that. And being a landlord (who isn't manipulating the law) doesn't make the problem any worse.

Criticism should be directed at the real problems. Those are a mix of law and culture and just inertia.

[diordiderot]

> what you are actually doing is increasing the supply of carrots.

There's an error in your analogy.

Nobody is growing carrots, they're buying carrots

Incentives push the carrotlords to pass local ordinances. 'Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome'

[ausbah]

landlords rarely build housing, they usually buy up existing housing and rent it out

and the don't have to do anything illegal to restrict the housing supply - they can lobby, regulate, and vote

[chmod600]

I don't know what you mean "rarely", because clearly a lot of housing is built and intended as rental property.

Regardless, the small landlord who buys a single family house and rents it out still puts a new house into the rental market, making it more affordable than it previously was on the purchase market. Along the way a landlord typically makes improvements and pays for maintenance, which improves the supply.

If you don't like laws then complain about the laws. The act of renting a house to someone else is not the problem.