I really don’t know what the corpo end goal is, like what everyone homeless, and them owning a bunch of empty, condemned buildings? This whole thing is nightmarish. I always hear talk about increasing low income housing but never any talk of middle income. I make a decent wage but could never afford anything without roommates and even that is a stretch. Wheeeeeeeee.
Millions can no longer afford their rent
Submitted 10 months ago by CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://mynorthwest.com/3949761/a-record-number-of-americans-cant-afford-their-rent/
Comments
Donebrach@lemmy.world 10 months ago
tiramichu@lemm.ee 10 months ago
The issue is that capitalism doesn’t function in a way that has a “grand plan” that takes the whole picture into account, it’s not incentivised to care about collective sustainability.
The best (profit maximising) way for a single company to operate is to pay as little as possible to employees, and to charge as much as possible to customers.
With all companies collectively doing this, charging more and paying less, then eventually nobody will have anything left and the market will collapse, but even if organisations can predict this and see it is coming, which they surely can, they are individually disincentivised to change and so will not.
geissi@feddit.de 10 months ago
it’s not incentivised to care about collective sustainability.
Not only collective. Most companies don’t even care about their own sustainability.
CEOs working there for some years try to inflate short term ‘shareholder value’ to maximize their bonuses.
The shareholders no longer see themselves as owners who collect dividends but as investors who can just sell their stocks if the price increases.
What happens to the company 5 or 10 years down the road doesn’t matter.crusa187@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
It’s so unfortunate too, we could provide that needed incentivization for change through strong consumer-centric regulation, and the corpos would still be making money hand over fist. But, they’ve captured Congress via legalized bribe money, so there’s just nobody home when it comes time to regulate. Washington is willfully asleep at the wheel, dreaming of lining their pockets with “campaign finance donations.”
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
There isn’t a corpo end-goal, corporations follow profits like a zombie seeking a meal. There’s no long-term planning, as those in charge can jump ship at the collapse and start something new, using all they’ve gained.
LifeOfChance@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Mixed with homelessness being a crime sure feels like government is aiming for some slave labor in their prisons
quindraco@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Only in Arizona.
bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Democratic serfdom. Unless we fall into autocratic governance before that, or (hopefully) liberate ourselves instead.
Blackout@kbin.social 10 months ago
A different story but Detroit had an issue with housing and laws that prevented certain people from buying homes, getting mortgages, applying for well paying jobs all while getting abused and sometimes killed by the police. Some of those people revolted, not all, not even a significant number. They burned down everything, including the homes they could not buy and it brought down a city.
I could absolutely see this happening again because of abnormal rents. These landlords are going to upset enough people to the point when the group with no hope for their future just starts burning it all down. Why should they care about society when society doesn't care about them? Fire is so easy to start, and as Detroit found out, so hard to stop.
S_204@lemm.ee 10 months ago
You think people are going to start burning their apartment buildings?
I’m all for chaos and rebuilding apartments makes me money but I’m not sure this is going to become a thing.
Blackout@kbin.social 10 months ago
Yes I do. They did it before why wouldn't they do it again?
moistclump@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I feel like burning down a place… they’d have insurance to cover rebuild and lost rental income. It would be the renters who would suffer meanwhile.
Plibbert@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
So like, when is it socially acceptable to grab the proverbial pitchforks?
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think it already is. I think we just need to send a Calendly to see when everyone’s got some free time and we can burn this mother down.
FenrirIII@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You need the rednecks to rise up first. Until they realize they’ve been duped by their (Republican) politicians,they will lick the boots of their oppressors. Once they wise up, you’ll have an armed population that isn’t going to ‘back the blue’ anymore
Plibbert@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
As a red neck from Florida, you underestimate how far boot lickers will take things. I sometimes legitimately fear an American Reich starting in the south. My neighbors have some seriously fucked opinions.
instamat@lemmy.world 10 months ago
At least five years ago. Probably more like 18 or 20.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
I don’t really understand what the end goal here is. They’ve got to realize that at some point people are going to just take what they need right? Are they hoping that’s far enough away that it won’t be their problem anymore? Or do rich people schools not teach what happens when workers are backed into too deep of a corner?
karashta@kbin.social 10 months ago
The mindset these people have is the same one that is destroying the ecosystem: they do not care.
The long term is seen as merely a succession of short terms. Numbers going up is seen as proof of prosperity regardless of if those numbers signify actual sustainable growth or not.
ThereIsSomeGuy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
How often do Americans pay rent? When they say rent was $750 do they mean weekly or fortnightly?
fkn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If it’s not specified, monthly. Otherwise it’s specified.
Kernal64@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The only fortnights that exist in America is the video game. It’s not a division of time used here.
pikmeir@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Monthly.
BugleFingers@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Usually monthly when unspecified. However, I would do a ton of stuff to get my rent to $750, that’s literally 1/3 of what it is now (also just got notice it will increase come renewal of course)
dipshit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
convert office buildings into apartments. it’s a start.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Except for the part where you have to rip out everything and build it virtually from scratch due to the severe lack of plumbing infrastructure to individual spaces in the same way that apartments require.
It sounds great, but realistically it’s almost easier to just demo the buildings and begin from the foundation.
Either way the issue isn’t the ability to construct apartments and/or condos, it’s the land being owned by people who either want it for a commercial use-case or it’s just being held for value increase.
dipshit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I am fine with demoing the buidlings and creating new apartments / condos if that’s what it takes. It just seems like this wouldn’t be true for all buildings, but maybe most. You’re right that the owners of these properties are placing a huge bet on their buildings being used for commercial use again. The city should tax vacant buildings higher to discourage squatting on these properties by commercial investors.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 10 months ago
But, hear me out; Poop buckets.
Tyfud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m a landlord, have been for over a decade. I keep my rent as low as possible and during peak covid gave my tenants many months few, etc. I barely make a profit on the place, just enough to convert expenses mostly and some to buffer for the future.
Everyone around my property is raising rent like crazy. I’m almost half the market rental rate right now, and my tenants are (obviously) hesitant to leave because it’s cost them at least twice as much to move anywhere else.
Point being, shit is crazy right now, even for those of us trying to do the right thing. I don’t know wtf is going to happen next, but this isn’t sustainable.
stoly@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Thank you for your honestly and for being a good person. You’ve really shown that this whole problem is a choice made by people trying to exploit a needed resource. This is basically the housing version of buying all the toiler paper at Costco.
Takios@feddit.de 10 months ago
Try that in Germany and the Finanzamt will force you to raise your rent lol
instamat@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Let’s start hunting landlords, and when they’re gone we move on to the CEOs
snownyte@kbin.social 10 months ago
There needs to be a massive protest, by staying in where you live. To have shelter and four walls, should be and is a humanitarian right. We've gone throughout all of history starting with having no walls but caves, then to having huts, to finally having walls and to having everything sustaining us within those walls.
And the only people that charged us, were when we visited Inns and Hotels, sometimes other people when we holed up in a room by their option. Not a lot of these greedy landlords existed then, but here they are now, upholding and upsetting the very things we've struggled to achieve.
Yet we're going to allow that?
EvilEyedPanda@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s fine, the billionaires can still have several homes, and a custom yacht. That’s all that matters right?
stoly@lemmy.world 10 months ago
MyNorthwest is a rightwing rag that should be ignored.
If real millionaires cannot afford rent, it’s because they are wasting their money elsewhere. That, or their rents are actually in super high luxury buildings and they just need to go somewhere reasonable.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not “millionaires”, it’s “millions” like “lots of people”.
stoly@lemmy.world 10 months ago
DOH!!
Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
But on the bright side. umm. Ecomomny
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“As you lay starving, homeless, and destitute tonight, take solace in the fact that the top 500 corporations have never been this profitable”
UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
yaaay dow and stuff so happy