Uhh, I hear people complaining about those services all the time, see Air BnB.
The complaints are about the scale of people who are opting to turn their units into Airbnbs, which takes them off the rental market, which deceases supply, and thus increases prices. You’ll almost never hear somebody complain about how someone turning their property into a hotel is an inherently bad idea.
You can acknowledge the benefits to renting while also acknowledging it’s an unbelievably toxic and abused system that profits off the poor for the gain of the rich.
I disagree with this premise. I don’t think that renting is inherently toxic, abusive, or exploitative. There’s no valid argument to argue as such. Property is a commodity, those who have excess of this commodity are opening it up for others to use for a fee. That’s a service, and just like any other service there’s nothing wrong with it. I also think that you’re misguidedly assuming that only poor people rent, which is not true. There’s an absolutely massive luxury rental market as there is one for every budget and style. It truly is a market, and like all markets, it’s still dictated by the law of supply and demand.
I think the crux of our disagreement stems from the fact that I think our housing crises stem from poor and outdated policy, not from an economic system. Capitalism has been proven to be extremely effective at efficient mass production, so why is this not the case for housing? It’s because we have backwards housing policy. It takes years, sometimes even decades, for any developer to get their project approved. It takes a lot of money to go through all the legal proceeding, lawsuits, fees, and demands made by the town/city. Even if the developer finally gets to the point where they can finally start building, they’re still now allowed by law to build mixed units or multifamily units, they have to build either single family homes or strip malls. Not only that, but a big percentage of the property has to be dedicated to parking spaces, again this is by law. Even if the developer complies with all these nonsensical laws, demands, pays the fees, and spends years going through the process… the whole thing can be killed at any moment by NIMBYs for the dumbest reasons. This is why we have a housing crises.
You want to fix the housing market? Do what Austin has been doing for the past decade. For whatever reason, it seems like they’re only ones in the country who figured out that if they make the development process easier, reform their zoning laws, and incentivized developers to build, they can build so many new units that they supply of housing not only meets demands by exceeds it, thus leading to a decrease in prices. Austin has seen pretty substantial decreases in both rents and house prices, and the trend is not slowing down (source). The average rent of a 2 bedroom apartment there is around $1400, which is well below the national average of $1630 (source). Keep in mind, that Austin is a big and growing city, and yet they’re prices have nearly dropped to prepandemic levels. Clearly they’re doing something right, and the rest of us need to follow their lead.
That’s sounds to me like a way more grounded, nuanced, practical, and realistic plan and approach than just simply insisting that renting as a concept is bad because Marxism insists that capitalism is bad, and therefore we should get rid of it and replace it with a system that’s proven to be worse. A rigid ideology that’s built on a house of cards made up of baseless assumptions and relies and the most extreme option at every turn shouldn’t have any place in modern discourse.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 3 days ago
In my area, the majority of homeless have cars. A car rental can be more important than a home to rent for survival for more people than you might think.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 days ago
That’s more of a testament of how fucked up housing is in your area. That would be like saying tents are more vital than housing because many homeless use them instead.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 2 days ago
No, it’s more of a testament to how car-dependent our area is. You can live without a house, but you can’t live without a car, or access to someone who will drive you. Housing here is comparitively affordable.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Ok, agreed, but then the problem is with disgusting urban planning, people living in cars is just a dirty band-aid
SparroHawc@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Car rentals aren’t as much of an issue, because of how much less expensive it is to own a second-hand car. If you’re homeless and you need access to a car, you don’t go to a rental place, you get a beater from Craigslist for about the same price it would cost to rent a car for a month (if not less).
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 2 days ago
I work with a lot of homeless, and I have known a few who have rented a car in a pinch. But you’re right, most just have an old beater they own.