my wife and I are looking for an apartment and were just turned down because we have a one year old. Fuck kids, I guess. (not in the US - apparently discrimination is legal here).
This is one of those hell world things that makes me laugh and cry at the same time. In my city they're constantly tearing down family homes and multi family apartments and replacing them with "luxury studios". Then we get a slew of articles about how THE CITY IS DYING and EVERYONE IS MOVING OUT and WHY ISN'T ANYONE HAVING FAMILIES.
Like damn dude I wonder. It's not the 0.01% tax rate increase the article keeps harping on. It's because the city refuses to develop homes for people to live in. There's nowhere to live except shitty overpriced luxury studios, and those are all half empty. You can't sustain an entire city on 20 year old tech bros, the city needs to be planned around having places for everyone to live.
Understand that housing in America isn't for Americans to live in. It is largely an investment opportunity for foreigners. If they keep their money in their own countries it'll either be taxed out of existence or lose its value as the government ruins the currency. But if they park that money in America, they get to keep it.
But they should rent it, you say? They're losing money by keeping it empty, you say? It's a way to safely park money. They don't really care if they collect rent or not. Honestly many would rather not as it's a lot of trouble. They don't want to be called when the upstairs toilet is leaking, or have the bother of hiring a management company. So, they buy unit after unit, and suddenly there's no place to live.
Any financialbro will tell you that a house is the only investment you can live in. That's why they're many people's first investment, or only investment.
I've heard of some apartments bringing in more in application fees than they'd bring in a month by being rented, so they may not even be losing money keeping it empty. The most rational economic system btw :)
Oh yes, fully aware. This was our argument during the city meeting. Of course, the developer had a big chunk of time to discuss their plans, and we only had the open floor time (which was very short) to discuss our side about how, you know, housing should be a service the city plans for people to live in.
But of course capitalism won out in the end, as it always does. No small wonder that our local government representative at that meeting was primarily funded by the developer who bought that school building for pennies on the dollar.
yeah like I have a PhD and my wife is pretty well paid, and we're gonna end up spending a quarter of our income on rent when we move. Where are people who make minimum wage supposed to live? Fucking underground?
I went to a city meeting near me a few years ago to protest one of these mega studio complexes that was going into a school. The argument was we should close the school, put studios in there, and then use the tax money to open a new school (yeah wtf?)
The developer pulled up a chart that related to age and family size and how much income they WANT to spend on rent. Yeah, WANT. The age bracket they were targeting was, according to their fancy chart, WANTING to pay 50% of their income on rent. WANTING to pay. For a studio.
That school is now a luxury studio complex and kids have to go to a different neighborhood to learn. But it's cool because you can go get coffee on the old school gym now! The floor is still original!
But sure it's the taxes that are forcing families out.
Yeah I hate that shit too. Or the slew of "why don't kids play outside anymore" well it's 117f outside, maybe start there?
Oh that one really gets me. Kids don't play outside anymore because it's literally illegal for them to play outside. If they're kids they can't go out because it's illegal to be outside without direct supervision and if they're young adults they can't go outside because they're "loitering" or "disturbing the peace" or whatever.
Not just Bikes did a good video on it...I'm not sure if it's this one or not but maybe this will help you find it if you're interested https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw
It is!
I swear, landlordism will be hard to get rid of when a democratic or even socialist revolution of some sort happens in America. I don't even think the abolishment or replacement of "America" will be the hardest part; people these days aren't all that patriotic (only spontaneously so but not really ideologically, which is better for our purposes because it's easier to then tell them why it's wrong), but there is very much confusion on the landlord question outside ML circles, I think.
Oh yeah, and landlordism is becoming more powerful after the Covid-19 pandemic (which is technically still ongoing).
Death to all landlords except my slightly senile one who keeps setting my rent by the value money used to have in the 1990s/early 2000s. She just plain forgot about the 10% inflation in 2022 and raised my rent by 1%. If we could somehow use the soul energy of the other landlords to keep her alive and setting my rent even longer I would be much obliged, because I am paying a lot less than what is to be expected here.
My old lady landlord died a couple years ago, and immediately her son started jacking up rent, eventually kicked us out to sell the place (since our rent was so "behind the curve" it would have taken years to catch up even w/ max increase).
We don't need to wall the slightly senile landlord women, just put them up in collective retirement housing.
Any landlord under 65-70 though....
That's what I fear. I don't want my landlord lifting heavy stuff or experiencing sudden fright or anything. She should conserve all her strength for setting my rent by 25-year-old standards.
Oh yeah, sorry about that last comment, that was me just pontificating and airing my thoughts.
Your plight is truly egregious and pretty bad; if anything, you need a home of some sort considering your wife and kid.
Are you in the United States or Europe or where? I couldn't quite tell.
this is in Europe. homes are several hundred thousand euros easily
Jim Crow is gone, but in many ways, the gains of the civil rights movement are being rolled back intensely, especially recently.
In addition, the corruption of the police, municipalities, etc. has never gone away.
Has there ever really been a mass purge of police departments across the country after the way they treated protestors and activists during the 60s/70s?
I certainly have not heard of any major historic examples; there were none.
