A friend of ours has two weeks to find a new place to rent. 5 out of 5 of the rentals they've applied to have demanded application fees in the hundreds of dollars, per adult applicant. This fee comes with no guarantee your application will be approved. There are dozens of people applying to a single apartment, all paying hundreds in application fees. A lot of them housing companies are straight-up ghosting the applicants after that payment comes in.
One of the locations told them they throw out evey application at the end of the month, even though they applied on the 26th. They held onto an application for 5 days, for $350, and then shredded it. The same company told them the rental was still available, but at a much higher rate now that it's May. In other words, they accepted dozens of $350 application fees for one unit and then gave it to nobody, keeping it on the market for another month for another round of application fees.
Do the math: Let's say a landlord charges $3000 a month to rent an apartment. But then they realize if they charge $300 to even APPLY to it, and 11+ people apply... that's more profitable than actually renting it out...
The new frontier for capitalism is Application Fees. Entire corporations propped up on owning empty houses that hundreds of people pay to apply to live in and then nobody is selected, repeat every month forever.
Our friend has lost over a thousand dollars in application fees alone at this point, and still has no place to live. She's the wealthiest millennial we know, she works in real estate, and she's turning into a Maoist right in front of us.
EXHIBIT B: https://hexbear.net/post/190647
Completely and totally illegal here in the UK. By a Tory government.
That's how shit America is.
the tory party as an institution knows that landlords are an ourobouros that eats the right wing because statistically renters vote left wing and property owners vote right wing (this by the way is the reason many say that older people are more right wing)
all the houses being owned by a small number of people and rented out is a nightmare in terms of tory electability
There is a reason that Britain is still a monarchy and the Tories have remained in power barring two small off periods over the last 60 years, even with a huge and very motivated socialist presence. They are extremely competent monsters with self-preservation at the heart of all their actions. They are exceedingly good at not crossing the line.
If the tories were as shitty as the democrats or republicans we would be a socialist country by now. I strongly suspect the weekly meeting the prime minister has with the monarch are a major aspect of this consistency and I'm eager to see how much things go to shit when someone less experienced and less competent is on the throne. Someone that did not live through all the other monarchies getting fucked off.
Just to add to your comment:
Since Europeans have a historical tradition of class conflict for centuries, their ruling classes understand the necessity of social and economic compromise to maintain their power. The bourgeoisie of Europe are the legacies of liberal revolutions that bought off, absorbed, and dismantled the antecedent aristocratic ruling class; the bourgeoisie historically made more effort to collaborate across social classes (e.g: worker, landlord aristocrat, clergy ) to provide stability and continuity for the capitalist system. (scapegoating, concessions, and suppression.)
The American state was an exception to this, as class conflict was resolved simply moving to a new frontier, through ethnic cleansing & genocide; the conquest of new land and frontiers. That mindset permeated into the American identity known through a slogan as "land of opportunity", or known as "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" in the boomers' parlance.
(Or so I recall from one of the Inebreiated past/Chapo-sodes.)
Holy shit. I used to work as a housing case manager. I administered a federal subsidy that was basically the best subsidy anyone can get. It paid the majority of someone's rent up to their entire rent (depending on their income, bleh), it paid application fees, and it paid security deposit. But even it was only allowed to go up to two months' worth of rent for security deposit. 3 months is insane
Personally:
$35 application fee, per adult, for the apartment we looked at a week ago.
30+ applicants according to the zillow listing.
Which means the landlord has already made over a thousand dollars from people he will not be renting the place to.
It's part of gentrification. You aren't supposed to afford it. Shitty rich kids with daddy's money and infinite credit do it to land an apartment in a hip new area.
It's specifically to deter people who would be deterred by it.
Everywhere isn't like this, yet at least, but everywhere that is being gentrified is.
Rent-seeking-behavior but without the actual rent part. American innovation!
"We are an equal opportunity rental. We don't discriminate against anyone*^"
*With thousands of dollars laying around for us to take, just to apply
^And not really even then
Incidentally, less than 4 rental fees to build a :gui: ...not suggesting anything, just saying
Protip: "Mom and pop" landlords are far less likely to pull this shit i.m.e. They all get the wall, and they still suck in other ways, but sometimes you just need a place to live. On the flip side, everywhere I've ever lived has been a complete dump, so maybe that's the thing.
Problem with mom and pop landlords is they refuse to take care of their fucking properties. Have an issue and they’ll cheap out, try and fix it themselves, delay and ignore. At least a lot of corporate places have dedicated maintenance staff that’ll fix issues.
My mom and pop landlord was the fucking worst.
Same here. When I first moved out of my parents to live with a friend and some acquaintances they had already lived at this place for months and were looking for a new roommate to fill a vacancy. Immediately after I moved in, the house had a major issue, and the mom & pop landlord dragged their feet every step of the way. I was able to get out of the lease after staying there for not even a month and got the fuck out to move back in with my parents. The issue still hadn't been fixed when I escaped that place behind. Meanwhile all the other roommates were dumbass slumlord apologists who stayed behind and like another month passed before it finally got fixed. Never again.
Now I'm at a corporate-owned place and at worst, usually any maintenance stuff is resolved a couple of days at worst, and often the same or next day.
I see the appeal with renting from a mom & pop landlord, often because it's cheaper, but sometimes they make your life a living hell.
I think it’s the abstraction. While mom and pop landlords benefit from not spending money to do stuff, at a corporate place everything is handled by employees who don’t benefit from fucking you over and just want to do their job and go home.
People who temporarily rent out not more than 1 property in order to facilitate a move will only be sent to the gulag.
God damn. Why bother to ever actually accept a tenant? You'll make more money just pretending you're going to rent it and accumulating the fees.
There's a ton of craigslist scammers that do this grift. steal a listing, ask for fees, bounce.
There's a legal duty to act in good faith for this sort of thing.
But realistically only a class action would put a stop to this, since the damages are low individually.
And then whatever the penalty would be is surely less than the grift was worth. Just a business expense
Luckily thus is pretty insignificant for me, but they tacked a $25 fee on our rent for garbage collection. I don't know about y'all, but I take my my own trash out when the bin needs emptying. I don't need or want someone popping by my apartment every Tuesday evening to take the bag to the dumpster.
And the thing is, I know for a fact they didn't outsource the labor. They're just making the maintenance people do it on a rotation so it costs them basically nothing. Let's say we have 300 units on the property - that's $90,000 in annual fees that they have conjured up out of nowhere, and somehow I doubt that it is going to bonuses for the maintenance staff.
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
dreading looking for a new apartment after they inevitably raise rent on this one :sadness-abysmal:
Yeah i'm looking early trying to find options in mobile home parks and such. Apartments are basically a no-go these days for people in poverty.
im tempted to just move back in with family. we're slavs and all so its pretty normal the big issue is we're pretty far from them work wise so thatll be hard to figure out
also weirdly houses for rent were cheaper here. idfk how that fucking works, and its dumb, but its looking to be true
yeah same here. houses tend to be pretty damn close to apartment pricing now for some fucking reason, a lot of times cheaper.
i legit think it's a rich kid issue. they want a cool apartment instead of a full on house
idfk in my complex its mostly old boomers with kids paying for the units with garages and shit for like 4k a month and im just like HOW do you not qualify for a house??? have you been doing this your whole life??? holy shit
