The landlord had told them he wanted to raise the rent to $3,500 and when they complained he decided to raise it to $9,500.

“We know that our building is not rent controlled and this was something we were always worried about happening and there is no way we can afford $9,500 per month," Yumna Farooq said.

  • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Decomodify housing. Like tax owning a home past like the 3th one so high it would destitute someone as rich as Musk in a month. Watch everyone who uses property for investment panic sell and crash the market into oblivion. The people who want to own a home can now do so and the rest can be bought up by the government for cheap to convert into public housing. Ez affordable housing and renting in one swoop.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      So I’m a big fan of reducing landlords (especially big corporate ones), but aren’t you worried about what happens to all the people that bought a house to live in with your plan? If my house halved in value I’d be well fucked, the house losing value won’t make my mortgage go down unfortunately.

      Edit: I guess I crossed a threshold in that comment which puts me in the “landlord sympathiser camp”, which is far from the truth, I’m not too surprised about that though. Look, my preferred option is annihilation of capitalism, but just crashing the real estate market without doing anything else about the system itself would be devastating for a lot of common folks, not just through housing prices but all the other economic effects it would have.

      • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I own my apartment too and if its value dropped to zero it would have no effect, I would still be living in it with no change.

        Something should probably be done about housing bought with loans but even if it isn’t anyone who bought a home to live in will continue to do so, it’s value being pretty much irrelevant.

        • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          There is a change which is that you can’t move anymore, better hope you chose that house really well and never need to move ever again (which is extremely unlikely for us and I would think for most people). Not to mention the sheer insanity to be paying monthly for another 25 years for something with no value.

          • kase@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It might be frustrating if the value of my home dropped after buying it, but I don’t imagine it would mean I couldn’t move. I sell my current home for a lower price, but wouldn’t that be okay because the price of the house I’m buying is also lower now? (/gen curious, I don’t know a lot about this topic lol, just thinking out loud)

            • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              If you’re “underwater” (your mortgage is higher than the value of the house) then yeah you’re stuck unless you want to pay off that difference. That happened to friends of mine after 2008. If you own the house outright then yeah it matters less.