this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart.
Renting is an essential part of the housing market. Not everyone wants or can commit to home ownership and all it's unpredictable maintenance costs. A plumbing failure can be as cheap as $200 to fix or cost you $10,000+ for a full replacement and restoration from the biohazards of black water damage.
The reason why the housing market is fucked is because poor regulation allows corporate landlords to buy up tons of investment properties and control the housing costs and supply.
Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.
One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they'd be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.
Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.
I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I'd need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.
The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.
Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I'm sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I'll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I'll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still...
Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
Based
Ozma always is!
Socialized housing isn't an overnight project. It starts with regulating the current housing marketing and prioritizing the take down of corporate slumlords. It starts with revising zoning laws, promoting higher density housing and multifamily homes, and creating walkable and accessible neighborhoods for all.
I get the idealism from Lemmy, but this is also it's pitfall. Anything less than a leftist utopia is not worth working towards, and so we sit in righteous inaction.
It's not a utopia, housing has been nationalized successfully in several countries, with the result of the abolition of homelessness, extremely affordable rent (think 3% of monthly incomes), and evictions essentially not existing.
I'm all for revising zoning laws, enacting rent caps, and other transitional measures, but the end goal should be the collectivization of housing, which would eliminate the parasitism altogether.
History is path dependent. Not every country has the same literacy rates, civic participation, income inequality, intergenerational wealth, social inertia, and so on.
What is rational and common place in one country is radical progressivism in another.
You can do what is ideal, or you can do what works. You can deny a reality of systemic barriers to affordable housing, or accept that they are real and must be tackled one at a time.
In an ideal world, yes, there would be no landlords. In the real world, property, laws, the economy, and people are so deeply intertwined that to propose the elimination of landlords is about as facetious as eliminating bankers because of exploitation in banking.
I don't know why you keep bringing up the word "ideal". Marxists are opposed to idealism, we're staunch materialists. Saying that "things change over time and place" doesn't automatically negate historical examples , and following those historical examples doesn't imply not achieving progressive victories over time.
You claim to follow the path that works, but that's what the western left has been following for the past 50 years and look where that led us.
Yes and yes 1000%
Fuck no.
Why not though? The experiments done in housing nationalization have been extremely successful in abolishing homelessness and guaranteeing access to affordable housing. In Cuba, if you study in (completely free) public university, the state assigns you a flat at no cost. In the Soviet Union, housing used to cost 3% of monthly incomes back in the 1970s.
Imagine the possibilities that we could get with 50+ years of technological and industrial development if we nationalized housing in the west...
Social housing in Vienna
https://youtu.be/41VJudBdYXY
Ok? That's not all housing which to me is nationalizing. All countries have some concept of co-op or subsidized housing which is owned and administered by the government. It can and does exist in parallel. Should the government be doing more of it? I would argue yes.
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance...
Home insurance does not cover costs associated with maintenance and negligence.
Your sewer line failing because it's 50 years old and made of cast iron is not a valid home insurance claim.
Ok? A landlord is still no substitute for actual insurance
Nah. I've been renting where I'm at for over a decade. My landlord has been amazing. I've had times where I'm out of work and he's allowed me to be 2 months late paying, I've had hard times and he's helped out, he let's me do what I want with the place and he foots the bill. He's also only raised my rent in that 11 years by 125$. I've also seen his house, and it's worse off then mine. My truck is better then his as well. Not all landlords are the same. Some actually do want to help as much as they can.
I'm genuinely happy for you getting a good landlord, but access to housing shouldn't be conditioned by being lucky to get a decent and altruistic landlord (a minority in people's experience, hence the massive upvotes of the post).
They're still getting your money for little to no work. You're helping house and feed them in order to have access to their private property. As in, you are creating value through your labor, and have to exchange some of that value you created with your landlord for access to private property. Your landlord granting you access doesn't create value and yet you have to pay for it. At the end of the day, they still have a property that has an exchange value and you had to trade some of the value you created for nothing. It's consumed. It's gone.
Your comparison is valid, but it works against your interests. Your local grocer, as a business owner, is every bit against rising minimum wage as Walmart is: both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased, so the class relations between them and their workers make them support anti-worker-rights policy.
In the same manner, your local landlord has every reason to be as opposed to measures such as rent caps or rent freezes as BlackRock.
Yes, rent should exist as an alternative to home ownership, but the housing for rent should be publicly owned and rented at maintenance-cost prices as has been done successfully in many socialist countries before which managed to abolish homelessness. As an example, by the 1970s rent in the Soviet Union costed about 3% of the monthly average income. Can't we do better than that 55 years of technological progress later?
But one doesn't have to act in the shareholders best interest.
My friends are renting in an apt from a mom and pop landlord who hasn't raised the price in years - they roughly play half of what market price is at this point.
So sure, the direction of Mom and pop landlords interests may be the same as a corporate landlords, but that are under much less pressure to leverage that.
From the perspective of the MBAs and economists, small landlords being nice like that is just an inefficiency that the invisible hand of the market will eventually sweep away in favor of cold efficient corporate management.
It seems to be that a local landlord is basically just a mom and pop shop that hasn't closed down yet because it only needs to find one customer to buy its one service.
Whether or not a small business owner is for or against raising wages depends entirely on their own ethical compass, and whether that compass is strong enough to turn away from the temptation of extra profit. It's rare that individuals are so altruistic to be able to fully turn off the impulse for profit incentive and personal enrichment.
In contrast, a worker owned coop would not have that issue, as all workers would have equal incentive to raise wages as much as is reasonable while still maintaining the ability for the coop to thrive. Their individual ethics or moral compass wouldn't factor in nearly as much.
Thanks for your insightful responses to the replies of my comment, I won't respond to them because you already perfectly explained it. Good work, comrade
Cheers :)
You could manage it with some kind of benevolent Home Owners Association! That always works fantastically!
Worker owned coops equivalent for housing is a housing coop complex, which I believe is the most sustainable model of housing.
However, I'm not sure how that would apply to single detached houses.
EDIT: I didn't really address the original point.
The comparison was between Black Rock and Mom and pop landlords. You can bet your ass that black rock is trying to squeeze out profit. That statement does not hold as true for Mom and pops, because there are other reasons why they may be renting out.
In a theoretical socialist society, people would not be allowed to own multiple single family homes, only the one they're currently using, since renting an essential need creates a power imbalance.
As a stop-gap, all currently rented single family homes (as in renting the entire house, not just a room in a house), could be converted to rent-to-own contracts, so that at some point that power imbalance ends and the renter is no longer being exploited.
Who maintains the homes that no one is living in?
Could you elaborate what you mean?
Sure.
If you don't maintain a house, it falls apart extremely quickly.
Examples on my house. Plumbing leak. If it's not fixed the house can become uninhabitable in a few weeks.
Gutters filled up with leaves. If you don't clear them out, they'll sag and fall off the house, and you'll get creeping damp coming into the base of the house.
If you don't repaint exterior trim as it ages, the wood/metal underneath will rot/rust.
If you don't mow or maintain the green spaces, you'll end up with a bunch of brush and plant material near the house which can be a huge fire hazard.
Trees near the house need to be trimmed and maintained to prevent large limbs from damaging the roof.
If the house isn't lived in or maintained, animals will get into the attic, nest, urinate, and defecate, which will make the building uninhabitable.
Just a few examples there, literally there is an endless number of problems a house can have, and if someone isn't around to fix it at least mitigate them, then the house will very quickly become uninhabitable. I've personally seen it happen in less than a year.
I don't mean regarding maintenance, I mean why are the houses empty?
I could see a very undesirable area having houses left abandoned, just as they are in our current system. But in areas that are desirable, why would a house be left abandoned for so long when everybody needs a place to live?
A group from in the community could keep track of what houses aren't being used so they could direct people needing a home toward them. Perhaps if someone is moving they could inform that group that the house in now available, and give them the keys.
Why would a house be empty?
Maybe it the family in it moved out because they only needed a quick place to stay short term after moving to a new city? Could be that it's housing for a college student who has gone back home during summer break? Maybe a nicer house opened up in the area, so the resident left their old house to go to the new one?
Your question seems to have the answer I was looking for in it though. It would fall on the neighbors to maintain the house until someone else moved in to it. So they would be doing extra work without any kind of compensation or benefit to maintain a home that anyone could just walk up to and claim. How do you think they are going to feel when some "house jumper" moves in, who just lets the place fall apart and moves on to another location because it costs them nothing to let the house go to ruins and they have no personal interest in maintaining it?
I think in most cases, short-term housing as you describe would be best served by more dense apartment complexes that are maintained by the community, and the people who stay in them for those short periods. They would be maintained in the same way that public transport or libraries would be maintained, as a public resource that everyone has access to and needs.
The benefit to those who maintain such complexes is that they would also freely have access to use such facilities in other parts of the country. This is not terribly dissimilar to how individual Native Americans were able to travel vast distances in America and expect accommodation from virtually any tribe they came across (that weren't hostile due to a larger conflict), because without such universal accommodation, each tribe would be limited in how far they could travel or trade. It was to all tribes mutual benefit to give each other that accommodation, in an early form of mutual aid (you can read more about that in David Wengrow's book, The Dawn of Everything, a very interesting read).
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le'Guin offers an interesting solution to that scenario. In that book, money does not exist, and housing is simply a right that all are entitled to. Couples and families are given larger accommodation when it becomes available, which is managed by an elected housing committee.
A single family home would be unlikely to be empty for long in a desirable area, so I don't think abandoned homes would be a significantly bigger issue than they already are under our current system. As a current example, In Japan, many smaller rural towns with dwindling populations have such an abundance of unoccupied homes, that they're actively paying people to move out to the area, and will sell the house for under $10k in the hopes someone will take them up and maintain it.
Only if they wanted to. There would be no one to force them to do such a thing. They may elect to do so since they would have much more free time in a socialist world (estimates usually suggest around 3 months of community work would be required to give everyone a good standard of living, with the remainder of of the year being free time to do with as they please).
How is that prevented in our current society? Many home owners let their home go into disrepair despite owning it. Sometimes this is done out of poverty, or a lack of motivation for upkeep. The only way to force someone to maintain their home in our current society is with HOA's who give fines or even jailtime to individuals if they don't. They don't have the most popular reputations.
Regardless, a community could decide to implement HOA-like rules if they all agreed to it, and then someone could decide if they wanted to live there and abide by those rules, or go somewhere where there aren't any (like our current system).
Okay, but that just kicks the can down the road, those apartments still need to be maintained. Yes, you answer that right here...
So the community bears the effort and cost of maintaining houses (or apartments) which they are not allowed to benefit from.
Maybe. What if the neighbors are assholes? What if the house needs to many repairs? Having a dilapidated structure or dwelling next to yours can create a whole host of issues, from fire risk, to nuisance animals, pest and even increased rates of crime.
Hard to say. I think it would be worse. For all the faults the current system has, there is a direct financial incentive to own and maintain property. If you get a house and let it rot, you won't have a house to live in. If you get an apartment and let it rot, you won't be able to rent it out. When housing is free, the house itself becomes valueless, and not in a good way. I think we would see a significant number of people jumping from home to home, trashing each one and then moving on to the next, leaving the community with the choice of cleaning up those homes, or letting them become uninhabitable hazards, and a blight on the neighborhood. If you think people would suddenly start taking care of a home just because they have one, then I've got a bridge to sell you, just look at all the litter and pollution people dump everywhere. Take a moment and look at cars in parking lots, and I bet you'll find at least one that is packed to the brim with garbage, to the point of being dangerous to drive.
I haven't got time to read a book this morning, but for the basic premise of what you told me about The Dispossessed, I think I spotted a fundamental flaw in that system...
No, there is a financial risk and financial incentive when you own a home, or even rent an apartment. If you don't take care of it, then you lose out on that risk. HOAs aren't necessary to enforce maintenance, there are zoning laws, city, state, and national laws that pertain to maintaining a home, along with certifications and inspections to make sure the dwelling is safe to inhabit.
Anyway, this wasnt meant to be a dialogue on the current system. It's clear that there are major flaws with it, but it's also clear that "just make housing a right and let anyone move into a house that the community has to pay for and work to maintain" is an idealistic dream that naively handwaves away reality.
Bear in mind that the community would render aid to anyone who needs assistance in maintaining their own properties as well. It would be mutual aid. For the 'cost' of perhaps choosing to maintain a temporarily empty property, you would never need to 'purchase' a new roof, heater, or repairs for your own home. The community would help you the same way you helped them.
You're also ignoring my mention of the benefit that this mutual aid would enable others to travel to maintained community housing anywhere in the world for free.
I think you're putting a bit too much weight into the idea that the only thing keeping most housing stock in good condition is that financial barrier. I think most people would want to keep their home in good condition without financial pressures forcing them to keep it nice. If everyone let their home go into disrepair, then there would be no 'good' homes to jump to. It's in the interests of everyone to maintain good housing stock, so that if you ever did move you wouldn't only have shitholes to choose from.
I'm not saying in this new way of society that everything will just become magically perfect, but I very much doubt it would be an epidemic on the scale you're thinking of. Even in your example of garbage filled cars, you don't find half the parking lot like that, only one at most. Just because a handful of people might not take care of their home doesn't mean it wasn't worth it to stop millions of people worldwide from suffering and dying on the streets, throwing themselves under busses due to hopelessness.
There are millions of dilapidated homes that are owned by the people who live in them. There are thousands upon thousands of rental properties that landlords will let become unlivable and condemned. Owning a property or even having consequences does not stop that from happening.
There is nothing stopping a community from continuing to enforce those laws if they desire.
"It's easier to imagine an end to the world, than to the end of capitalism."
I'd suggest looking at some more in-depth analysis instead of dismissing the concept off hand from a short comment.
Ah, gotcha, so when my neighbor's house needs to be redone because he rewired it himself, I'm on the hook for that. Too bad I have to stand by and let a couple of transient drug addicts cook meth in the house next door again, after I just spent last year decontaminating it and rebuilding it after the previous amateur chemist stripped out all the copper and dumped industrial solvents in the basement.
Sure thing. That's totally going to happen. Even if this system was in place, how would one go about getting one of thosr places to stay in. Either it's a free for all, first come first serve, with no guarantee that when I get to a destination that there will be a place to stay... Or there is a controlling board with a system to allow or reject people based on criteria set by a small group of people with extra power and leverage over others.
The big problem with the communal house idea (which keeps popping up despite it's glaring flaws) is that no one bothered to examine it critically at all. As soon as you ask simple questions like "who takes care of the empty houses" or "how do you deal with people being assholes" it fall apart into vague handwaving about how everyone will be all helpful sunshine and smiles, which we know for a fact, people aren't that at any level of their being.
Except it wouldn't be their home. Someone else built it, someone else maintained it, and after all that work, someone else got nothing for the effort when they had to leave it. Why would some squatter care about putting that effort in, when they can just hop to the next empty house that someone spent years maintaining?
I already mentioned that a community could collectively decide to continue to enforce building codes.
There would be much less incentive to create drugs for profit in a world without money.
Not saying there wouldn't be drugs or addicts, but it's extremely likely the scale of the problem would be fairly drastically reduced, as many people turn to becoming drug addicts due to becoming homeless as a way to find some way to cope with the extreme stress and trauma of the situation. Without money, there would be no reason for China to continue to sell fentenyl and other drugs to the cartels to be shipped into the US, and the same for Cocaine from South America. That would leave only what could be reasonably produced at home, which would likely take the form of weed.
If, on the chance that someone did start producing meth in a community that has collectively agreed to not allow for that, they could potentially be ejected from the community.
It seems that you believe people are only motivated by money, status, or power. But we have examples of societies that were able to implement an Anarchist way of existence, such as Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, which abolished money, the state, and was able to thrive as federated communities. George Orwell went there, and spoke of how excellent that mode of society was, to the point that he fought in the war and took a bullet in the neck for it.
They could have built it themselves, too.
That's all well and good, but how likely is that to actually happen?
The original commenters point was that corporate landlords are driven only by profit as they buy up rental property everywhere. Even preventing that is highly unlikely, if we're being honest, but it is far more likely to happen than all rented houses being forcibly turned to rent to own contracts.
We all want the same thing, but there's a tradeoff between grandiose ideals and feasibility. It does not seem wrong to support pushes for less radical but more realistic methods of improving housing if your goal is to improve housing.
None of what I suggested is feasible to achieve within a political framework that is ultimately captured by capital. A handful of small particularly ethical landlords may support reform, but most will not, and the bigger corporate landlords will actively fight it with millions of dollars in lobbying, which the politicians have proven time and time again they are only too willing to accept.
Edit: It will take renters standing up, creating tenant unions, and engaging in direct action to cause real change.
Agree. We have a few housing coops in town and I recommend them to everyone I know.
Renting is important to have available but it absolutely does not need to be at the level its at. The amount of people paying for someone else’s investment while wishing they could own something of their own is crazy and it’s insane that we’ve normalized that. And all the while they’re just hoping nothing goes wrong because it seems like even the “good” landlords are hit-or-miss when it comes to getting them to do literally anything. Mine’s usually pretty good but right now there’s a fucking hole in the foundation and getting them to properly address it is a hurdle I shouldn’t have to go through. In order for these buildings to be profitable the tenants need to not only pay for those issues you mentioned but now they’re also paying for someone else’s salary AND in the end that person gets to sell the building and keep all that money, too.
The reason the housing market is fucked in the US and Canada is becauss there are very few rent controls and a lot of the power sides with the landlords. In Montréal you have to be worried about going taking them to court because future landlords can just look up if you’ve ever done anything and deny you a place to live even if the problem was your current landlord is dogshit. Oh, and there’s a new law that’s around landlords being able to use necessary renovations as excuses to raise your rent! They have all the power and it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small, it’s a “business” that attracts the kind of people who don’t mind making easy money off of making you pay for their stuff.
Your landlord(probably) isn’t going to let you hit it because you’re glazing them on Lemmy. Stand up for yourself and others, even if you got lucky with a landlord who is considered good because they don’t throw a hissy fit when you ask them to do their fucking job.
You're getting flack but you're not wrong. When I moved into my current house I was a landlord for over 3 years adopting the basement tenant already in the house. Rent was well below market rate and I never raised it. We were both respectful. Ultimately I terminated their lease because I have kids that are getting older and I need the extra space as well as just not in the mental headspace to rent my basement anymore. I've since gutted it with the intention of making it a proper finished basement for us all to enjoy.
I gave them over 3 months notice. First month rent back and provided references.
Some of us just want to do good.
I'm glad you're a human with empathy and good intentions, but tenants shouldn't be in a position that their housing (one of the most fundamental rights of people) relies on the good will of whatever landlord they happen to be stuck with.