Submitted 8 months ago by artifactsofchina@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Yes. That is, if you’re actively hurting the availability of affordable housing, that would be hypocrisy. Your economic interests are at odds with your stated ethical stance, which means your ethical stance is unstable.
Owning the property is not the problem: Rent-seeking is. Running it as a managed coöp would be the ethical path forward in that situation.
But if you’re advocating for changing the system there is nothing hypocritical about owning it since your impact is a drop in the bucket. In order to make changes you need power and power comes from wealth.
I’d say that you’re unlikely extract enough wealth to make a difference in the large scale, but you absolutely have enough power to make an immediate difference for however many people can live in your building.
That’s the problem with consequentialism: A certain evil now for a possible good later. I don’t agree with that.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
I’d say if they are solely an investment, then yes you are part of the problem. Because you expect a return on your investment and so inherently rent has to be increased to generate the necessary profits.
If you’d live in a house that has more room than you need and rent these out that’s fine in my book. But possession solely for profit is one of the main problems of our current economic system.
If you’re arguing for a particular public policy, then generally no. If you’re arguing for social change driven by private behavior, then perhaps.
Arguing for social change based on personal behavior is pretty stupid
Yes. Housing is a necessity. It’s not a way to gain financial freedom or security. Anyone that participates in the system of commodifying a need in any capacity is a greedy and awful person. You can’t be for affordable housing while also having some poor person paying your mortgage and shrugging that “this is just how it is”.
In what way? The majority of affordable housing (as defined by the government) is housing to rent. Someone has to own it and it’s incredibly likely to not be the people living in it because they can’t afford it or do not want to be buying a house.
Your assumption that our government is somehow not for profit is the flaw here. “Someone has to own it” why not a person? Why do people have to pay for shelter?
I think it depends a lot on the specifics of the situation.
Did you buy a single family home / house that you’re living in, and renting out part of to help pay your mortgage? Then it depends on the rent you charge.
If you charge market rates and you can afford to charge less than market rates, or if you hire contractors and maintenance people for the unit that are cheaper / worse than the ones you use for your own unit, then yes, you are being exploitative and hypocritical.
If, however, you treat the unit like your own and charge below market rates then no, you’re not.
If you build an addition on your house, or build a laneway house or something, then it’s more reasonable to charge market rates for rent because you’ve actually added new housing to the area, an act that in itself should help to slightly drop rents. Same thing if you buy vacant property and build rental units on it. However, if you continue charging the most you possibly can long after you’ve made your money back then you’re back into the territory of being an exploitative hypocrite.
And if you’re just in a hot market and buying up houses / condos, and renting them back to people as is, or just doing the cheapest and shittiest job you can turning them into apartments, then yes you are being a hypocrite. At that point you’re just using your capital to buy up a limited quantity item and sell it back to people at exploitative rates. It would be like being stranded in the desert and buying up the remaining water and then selling it back to people for a profit. You’re providing no value to society, just using past success to force people into a corner where they have to pay you for a necessity that’s in limited supply.
No, it’s just having basic empathy for other humans.
Hm I’d say not necessarily. That depends on your situation I guess. The question comes down to “would you give up your property for other people to live in?” If you own 1-2 small properties, that’s not being a greedy landlord. And it would make it possible for you to give people housing they could afford (while still profitable for you, if you needed it to be).
If you charge insane rents, then you’re not only a hypocrite but maybe also schizophrenic. That just sounds like a disconnect.
But it’s very possible to “change the system from within”, even if that’s not my political opinion. If you can buy property, maybe you should. And then rent it to people for an affordable price.
I’m sometimes thinking people should get together and buy mansions to convert into shelters
You are part of the society. You cannot escape it.
It’s not because you own property (which, if you can, is a wise investment) that you can’t see how messed up the system is at the expense of the working poor.
I think it’s one thing to not be willing to go live as a hermit to avoid unethical consumption and another thing to simply… not participate in rent seeking behavior like this.
Depends on how greedy you are.
lunatic_lobster@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I would make the argument that it could actually be a means to align with affordable housing (although that would likely be very difficult in this current housing market). Managing a property is a service, you have to manage vacancies, repairs, rent collection, etc.
If you don’t offload this to a management company and do it all yourself it is technically feasible to make a profit from the labor of managing the property even when charging below market rate for the property (difficult to do right now, but after owning the property for a period of time definitely possible).
If you were to do this you would be directly combatting the affordable housing problem by introducing competition at a lower price (it would be a drop in the ocean, but it would be fighting for affordable housing).