No Stupid Questions

Any landlord that uses a residential family home as an investment is a parasite.

If you want to invest in real estate, purchase commercial, retail, and industrial properties. Nobody needs those things to live. The reason why this is harder is that the companies who tenant these properties generally have the leverage and means to not get exploited (though some small businesses still do get exploited)

I rent out my upstairs. Should I kick them out? All of my tenants have loved me, I rarely raise rent, and include Internet and utilities. Nuance.

They mean everyone. It's inconceivable that anyone would keep any wealth for themselves or their children. To .ml leftists your aunt is the same as T swift and there is no tasteful away to ever possibly have a better situation than they have.

But.

Fuckem :)

Bring me your downvotes.

Nobody needs to be a billionaire, but that's a tax and government problem. Nobody needs to starve, see above. ALSO, stupid people and smart people exist, and sometimes it's YOUR FAULT for being on the dumb end of the stick.

"Leftists"

Hmmm....

Unless your aunt is transferring equity in those homes to the tenants based on the amount they pay in rent, then yes, she's a leech. "Providing shelter" isn't the service your aunt is providing; she's just preventing someone else from owning a home.

And before anyone says "but renting is all some people can afford, they can't save up enough to make a down payment" - yes, sure, that's true. But that's a symptom of the shitty housing market (really the shitty state of the middle class in general*), and landlords aren't making it any better by hoarding property, even if it's "just" 3 to 5 townhomes.

As a leftist landlord, we mean all of them.

Yes all landlords.

It's all.

Buying a house as an "investment" is what we call "scalping" in other businesses. Not to mention the fact that this type of buying worsens housing prices and increases homelessness for personal gain, even on a small scale.

The only exception I can give is people who rent out part of their own home, as this situation actually creates available housing.

When we say landlords are bad, it's not really about the individual people so much as it's about the system as a whole. Ideally, the human right to housing should be guaranteed for everyone, along with the right to be cared for in retirement. How many elderly people don't own their own homes, and have rent to pay as an additional expense making it harder for them to retire? Sure, landlordism can provide a source of income for people who can't work, but for every case of that, there's another case of someone who can't work who doesn't have the privilege of owning a home, such that the existing system makes them even more desperate. So logically, it doesn't really make sense as a justification.

Cases like this should be considered when we're looking at how best to implement our ideals, but not for determining our ideals in the first place. The just thing is that everyone should have a secure place to live. That's the ideal. In implementing that ideal, we should consider that houses currently are used as a form of investment and many people simply use them that way without a second thought, because of social norms. If we simply seized and redistributed everyone's properties tomorrow, some people like your aunt would be disproportionately affected, compared to if they had invested in stocks that can be just as unethical. It would probably still be better for most people than doing nothing, but we ought to craft policy in such a way that we're not trolley probleming it (except regarding the people at the very top, for whom it's unavoidable), but rather such that it provides benefits while harming as few people as possible.

When society is organized justly and the wealth of the people on the top is redistributed, there will be enough to go around that everyone ought to be able to benefit from it. Therefore, it shouldn't be a problem to compensate small landlords for their properties and ensure that they aren't harmed by any changes in policy.

My landlord sends me a legal 14-day notice to pay or leave the day after my graceperiod(first of the month to the fifth) before my first paycheck of the month. This is en lieu of a simple email or phonecall. They communicate with legal threats even though I clue them in on months that would be difficult. The valuation went up on the property recently and I am halfway though a one year lease. They want to increase the rent again but can't do it without improvements and a new tenant.

As a guy who rented out one house for a very fair price i can tell you I'm the devil.

The problem in Ireland is when big American moguls go and buy up properties in Dublin to rent out en masse, effectively just sucking money out of the country. We always need people to lend out property on rent free cheaper than a mortgage. Landlords are vital for those who cannot afford a mortgage. But these landlords are the smaller ones - like your aunt.

Ideally as well economically, the tenants should be people who are starting off or not intending to live permanently - like holidaymakers or students

Making money on the back of someone else with little to no work of yours is parasitic. Having enough money at one point in life to become a parasite doesn't change anything.