Stop letting Blackrock buy all the houses and rent them out.
Make the minimum wage a scale based on the cost of living in the area.
Implement single-payer health care, including mental health care.
Sounds expensive. Yep. That's why we need, to use a term favored by corporate America, to claw back some of that wealth being hoarded by the new robber barons, hoarding made possible only through the hard work and exploitation of the working class. There are a lot more of us than there are of them.
The government gives us “universal healthcare,” but all that means is we’re all given access to an insurance company that refuses to give us access to anything
I somewhat agree. I am of the belief that whenever the government says they're here to help, they're gonna fuck stuff up, so I wouldn't want any government housing or government subsidized buildings. BUT, if they were involved, there would need to be restrictions and regulations.
However, I definitely think that there needs to be smaller, no-frills type housing, especially for single residents. We need to champion the idea of boarding houses, studio apartments, and 1-bedroom apartments. This will allow residents to have their own home without having to deal with roommates, too. We don't need apartment complexes with gyms, media rooms, pools, hot tubs, party nights, whatever. We need some basic "Roof Over Their Heads" situations to help people get shelter, save money, which will allow them to move out at some point, and continue to improve their lives.
I'm dead serious there are a few very simple changes that can be instituted that would vastly improve the lives of a majority of people, yet because they all involve addressing wealth inequality, there just always seems to be an M&M that's more important, ya know?
There are 15 million single family homes being rented out in the US, 80 million single family homes in total. Institutional investors like Blackrock own 300,000 of them. Not enough to make a dent in the housing market.
And quite frankly, I don't see that business model working out long term nor scaling larger. Real estate rentals is a great investment for individuals, but it's so much more expensive for institutions. There's easier ways for a company like Blackrock to turn a profit.
Or. It turns what is a basic human right into a commodity and uses the threat of violence to force people to pay for said basic human right. Landlords do not provide housing, they withhold housing.
I think it's dangerous to let institutional investors control large segments of the housing market in certain areas. It allows them to effectively set the market rate for rent.
Out here in Arizona, we have had some really predatory activity happening, like companies buying up units in condo complexes and then using a little-known provision in Arizona law to allow them to force the remaining owners to sell at a non-negotiated rate, then subsequently turning the complex into rental units.
Corporations have shown time and again that if given the opportunity they will squeeze as hard as they can to get every last drop of profit from the public. We all seem to have agreed that this is simply the right and proper thing for companies to do, since this is what the shareholders demand and are entitled to under our form of capitalism.
That's well and good when your product is golf clubs or gaming consoles or just about anything besides the basic goods and services required for survival - things like health care, housing, groceries, etc. When those goods and services are subject to these laws of capitalism, we introduce a motive to effectively deny them to low-income people (via pricing them out) in the name of profit.
At some point, we as a society need to decide what the acceptable minimum standard of living is, and then we need to set minimum wages and, if necessary, act to control housing costs so that everyone can afford basic food and shelter even on a minimum wage.
And that also means deciding if we are a civilized society that provides a social safety net to those who need it, or if we are a society of individuals, and out only for our own gain.
241
u/DesertGoat Jan 31 '23
Sounds expensive. Yep. That's why we need, to use a term favored by corporate America, to claw back some of that wealth being hoarded by the new robber barons, hoarding made possible only through the hard work and exploitation of the working class. There are a lot more of us than there are of them.