A place to discuss all the news and events taking place in the province of Ontario, Canada.
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if a landlord can't afford to install air conditioning where air conditioning is required, they should be forced to sell any and all properties that don't comply.
actually, hold on, let me fix that for me:
landlords should be forced to sell any and all properties except the one they live in. period.
Landlord brain: Charge the city then raise the rent due to increased value.
running any business comes with risk. “help” should go to the tenant before the business. if a landlord cant afford a business then they should quit and get a normal job instead of being a piece of shit human.
landlords should not exist, to begin with. they are garbage people.
Landlords are not philanthropists. You are not going to find a big group of homeowners who want to rent at a loss out of the goodness of their own hearts.
I would love if the government took strong measures to encourage home ownership and discourage treating real estate as an investment. Really, I would. But that will take many years of hard work and economics PhDs to concoct a plan that works. So, until we find a government with the balls to do that for real, we have to understand that dealing with landlords in a realistic way is a necessary evil.
Because if you nuke rentals without first ensuring people can afford to buy, all you'll accomplish is to create a mass housing shortage worse than you've ever seen.
Saying you want real estate to not be treated like an investment is a pipe dream. It is the most expensive purchase most people will ever make - looking at it without a financial lense is a terrible idea!
Fortunately, what you want has a straightforward solution, and requires few if any economics phds. Because an economist already solved the problem a long time ago. Henry George noted that landlords provided a valuable service to people by building and maintaining housing - but that the value of the land that their building was built on (which made up the bulk of the reason people were willing to pay their rent) was made by the community. A 300 sqft studio in Boston rents for more than a 2000sqft house in bumfuck Nebraska because it is in Boston. The public infrastructure, the businesses, the other peoples homes, the parks, the universities - all these things contribute to the value of that studio in a way the landlord had nothing to do with.
The land itself has value depending on where it is, and we should not let landlords capture this value. Instead, it should be returned to the community, which is the source of the value in the first place. Hence, George proposed issueing a tax on land values, such that landlords would be unable to profit on the value of land itself. Instead, they would be required to earn value from the land by building and maintaining something of worth on it. And when something of worth is built, this improves the community further!
I highly recommend looking into Georgism.
This is the first time I've ever actually intentionally saved a comment on Lemmy or Reddit.
This makes a lot sense, but the obvious question is how do you prevent people from being forced out of their homes, just because the government decides to spend it's money on the military instead of building more cities?
Like right now, if you were to implement that in Toronto, a whole lot of people would be taxed out of their homes so that a developer could buy the land and build denser housing on it.
All the most valuable housing that's near subway lines is already at a relatively ideal density, consisting of townhomes, rowhouses, and semi-detached houses, whereas our suburbs and in-city suburbs are generally not near transit, and thus not nearly as land valuable and not as well suited for density.
It seems like we would end up tearing down all our ideal housing and replacing it with over dense housing, rather than building transit out to the less dense areas where it's needed.
we have to understand that dealing with landlords in a realistic way is a necessary evil.
What is this supposed to prove?
That we don't in fact have to deal with the parasites to have housing avaliable for working people
House ownership should be a right not an investment.
I agree! However, it will take a lot of time and carefully crafted policy to make that happen, without perverse incentives appearing. In the meantime, we have to live in the real world and deal with landlords as a (hopefully temporary) fact of life.
landlords should not exist, to begin with. they are garbage people.
This. Landlords are simply unnatural. An abomination of nature itself.
that’s a responsibility for society at large
You're right, let's nationalize your properties.
As a renter who just recently bought, im almost upset this isn't comimg fast enough after years in 30+ temperatures in the summer. However I do have 1 small complaint about how they intend to implement it.
"[Those buildings] are not very viable economic propositions," he said. "And it's society that has imposed that on the property owner. And now, at least in our view, it should be for society to help solve the problem that society has created
This qoute is in the context of an old building trying to be sold instead of the landlord updating. We've fucking catered to landlords enough in this province. We don't need to bail them out. If they can't sell a property because of a condition it is in, thats their fault for maintaining it at that level. If no one will buy the property because the rent to price ratio is too high, then i guess they'll have to lower their asking price. Our province has bigger financial problems to tackle than helping landlords sell their neglected buildings or helping landlords bring them up to modern standards. Those risks and responsibilities should be on the landlord who has been profiting this entire time.
We need to get rid of the 'grandfathering' law. We have standards but existing building can be exempted. A majority of ontario houses would never meet code because of this BS.
My current slum lord is one of those investment landlords who promise the world but refuse to do any maintenance or bare minimum if required by the law.
Fuck invesent leeches and outdated laws
refuse to do any maintenance or bare minimum if required by the law.
This is the business model but they also were able to reap a lot of wind fall due to rising prices for housing.
This should be fucking illegal instead of status quo.
And investing is like gambling, you do it wrong and ya loose. But in todays society we say no, they always win and everyone else can get fucked. Sick and tired of that bullshit
Gosh yes. The landlords as victims. A novel concept.
Yeah well they can go fuck themselves
Ya sure. We are low income and our low income shit building charges $250 cdn per air conditioner per season. Like they are going to put airco in. Fucking pipe dream.
My landlord wanted at least an additonal $100 per month if i were to install a window shaker.
I am shocked we don't have this already with new record temperatures every year. 26 is a perfectly reasonable temperature as a MAX and boohoo landlords who would rather leave people live in life threatening heat.
Landleach tears are delicious.
No they don't. They've been profiting off of doing no work for decades. They can sell their cottage if that's what it takes for their tenants to have a single reasonable home.
Well, if there was one thing Mao did right...
An air conditioner unit for a single room is as cheap as $140 brand new at Walmart and often used they're just $40 on marketplace. But the tenant pays the power bill. Sure I'll buy you a couple, not exactly a big deal, its your power bill.
Oh no. Anyways