I like the idea, but realistically those bastards would probably find some backdoor deal so they can both profit off of you.
Capitalism doesn’t need to be fixed, it needs to be dismantled.
Either that or companies like Walmart would buy a 6 unit building in any town they had a store then rent them for like 250 bucks a month so they had to pay like 4 bucks an hour.
They wouldn’t fight the landlords because a lot of them are landlords.
They would simply lobby to have the law repealed or, more likely, vetoed before passing. Failing that, they would exploit every loophole and edge case to take advantage of it and cry to lawmakers and voters that the law is the problem rather than their circumvention of it.
I thought we were against putting trash in our water. I think bucket -> compost is better. There are plenty of strong backs that would love to put in the work for the benefit.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just implement good old rent control that limits the price per square meter/square foot.
There wouldn’t even be a class warfare because bosses are landlords. We are seeing this now already, bosses are forcing people back into office because their real estate is losing in value. So they would fight the law just as they are doing with rent control.
And the second proposed system could even be heavily abused and create a worse situation for everyone. For example, landlords have 0 incentive offering bigger units anymore. So they mostly offer the legal minimum to fulfill all regulations. Bigger homes would become “benefits” offered by your job. But obviously if you lose your job, you will lose the housing provided.
Doesn’t work - this also eliminates any investment and repairs into a property that has already reached that cap. This is where you get slum lords and no future builds.
On the other hand, put in a mass government housing development program that is rent controlled and doesn’t need to profit would both increase housing stock, improve investment in quality to attract tenants and lower rent prices.
What about differently sized apartments with different amenities? Sounds like this would force standardization and a race to the bottom on minimal amenities.
The issue is that you’ll just have an influx of the highest yield housing types. I think the best bet would be requiring a percent of your owned properties in a market, say 20%, to have rent not exceeding a cap tied to minimum wage. That’ll ensure at least 20% of the rental homes are at an affordable price for minimum wage earners, and open up the other 80% to be higher cost, better amenities, etc.
This adds additional nuance, and I like the idea. Thank you for taking my question seriously.
The NL has a points system with its rent caps, so nicer flats have a higher cap. I’m not saying there isn’t a housing crisis in the NL though.
Interesting! Do you see more builds being built at the higher cap, thus attributing to the housing crisis? Thank you for taking my question seriously.
@Ookami38@sh.itjust.works’s idea of having a portion be mandated for Minimum Wage rent has some teeth.
To be honest, what I see is that the market is frozen, and while there are a lot of different houses, almost all are occupied. I rent from a corporate landlord in a high-rise, and the law keeps them decent. That said, their occupancy is basically single digit units free out of tens of thousands in the NL. It’s bonkers.
I guess what I’m saying is that these measures, like min wage help band-aid over the absolute worst problems, but they don’t make the market good. More building, more units, especially if built by the government to alleviate problems, would be good. If I understand correctly however, the previous few governments were all leaning neoliberal, so that did not happen.
We see barely any building ever since the government introduced higher taxes on social housing corporations. And the nitrogen emissions are also very high due to industrialised agriculture, causing new build projects to stall (too many emissions in a certain area =/= no permit to build).
The bare minimum legally allowable is already the blueprint that landlords use. Have you looked at rentals lately?
In addition to the many other downsides listed here, renting anything other than a pokey, one bedroom apartment would become impossible.
