Their price increases? Yeah it is laughably ridiculous

Oof, good on you for trying and asking. I'm sorry they were disagreeable.

It's like you are being purposely obtuse.

For you, a single landlord, perhaps you arent price gouging and seeing record profits, great you might be one of the good ones.

But when you look at big companies and realestate investment firms you see those enormous numbers in their PROFITS.

I don't need to know their operating costs, I dont need to know their revenue, all I need to know is that their profit it INCREASING!

If you charged someone $100 rent last year, your operating costs were $60, and you made $40 fine. Next year you charge $120 because your costs went up $80, your profit is still $40. Fine!

But if you charge $250 the next year just because you feel like it and your costs still only went up $20 to now $100, you just made $150 profit for no reason. You are now an asshole!

Good business means you are including in your costs savings for improvements and emergencies. If a company sees an up in their costs and then ups their prices their profit wouldn't increase it would remain steady. Instead we see massive leaps in profit and that should be unacceptable.

It is true that this is a problem everywhere. At least it seems they bothered to make some upgrades with the floors and counters for the next person.

We agree there. They are shitty for the same reason every nee thing is shitry quality, greed. Lower build cost means more profit when they charge their obscene "luxury" prices.

There is this wonderful thing that the government has access to which is a company's income records. That's where they have to disclose those details of their revenue and their costs. Have you seen those numbers? Do you know their profits? Do you know the increase year after year of those profits?

You sound like a child.

If you don't know those numbers then you have no idea why they are charging what they are charging. But we collective know they are increasing their prices over the increase in costs because their PROFIT IS INCREASING!!

Just because someone will pay what they charge doesn't mean shit when it is a survival need like water, medication, and HOUSING.

Ah so if I wasnt born to a family in a good school district, had an illness that put me on a medication that led me to drug addiction, couldn't physically do a trade or afford college I should just suffer??

Nah, your human right is access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We went so far as to put that in our constitution. By right of being born I should be allowed access to the means to survival AND the opportunity to do more. If I choose to do more, sure I can have nicer/better things, but I shouldn't have to suffer or struggle to survive. If you disagree with then you should look at who told you that wasn't deserved by everyone by birth right.

Hahaha you actually made me laugh out loud with your first line 😂😂

You are absolutely off base if you consider for profit housing failures comparable to HUD failures. Your own links point to the exact fact that HUD programs and properties fail by design because the Republicans in power let them. It is a never ending cycle of wanting to profit so they make affordable housing inaccessible, withholding funding for government housing up keep, letting that gov housing fail, and then pointing to its failing as a reason to keep for profit housing.

The certainly both have issues, but they are wildly different and can not and should not be compared by the same measures.

Supply and demand pricing is a bullshit for a basic survival need. We're fighting hard as it is for medication, education, and food to be accessible and housing is having the same issues.

It has never and will never be the answer to tell someone to move or leave when the problem is fundamental. You dont tell someone who's depressed to just be happy. You dont tell a starving person to just eat. And you dont tell a homeless or underprivileged person to just move.

Moving is a HUGE privilege when you can do it by choice and can be devastating if it is forced.

Thank you for the advice. I am actually hoping to do exactly that and suggest to the new tenants if I can that they fight for new windows and new flooring. The flooring is original and beautiful, but it's in poor condition and has terrible insulation. The problem is I will probably never find out who has rented my unit and even if I do before they move in, once they sign a lease they lose a lot of bargaining power.

Ah yes, survival is all we plebs should hope for. Thank you for reminding us that we should never expect more than survival out of life. Shame on anyone not living in survival housing for pointing out the harmful practices that keep other people in survival housing.

I appreciate the concern, it is important to prepare for the arguments you can forsee when this topic comes up. Forever and always, voting against racists is the right thing to do.

For privacy reasons I wont confirm the company I live with, but if you've seen the same increases as I have this year it's a shame.

We are so close to agreement.

The point of the government to do exactly that, facilitate necessary exchanges for the greater good.

When most rentals were just single family homes owned by small landlords or other single families I would have agreed that the number of units available on the market would go down to a devastating degree if landlords left the game completely, but that is no longer the case. One of the biggest issues is the consolidation of available housing under single entities like companies and investment firms. If rentals were no longer profitable, those companies would sell off the units and if apartment buildings and broken up homes were sold as condos to the existing renters the companies wouldn't be donating anything. The risk/cost would fall on the creditor that funded the renters new mortgage. If that lender was the government then it would certainly be it's own issue to manage and collect of those mortgages, but that ask isnt impossible or even unreasonable given the current crisis.

Ah yes, me, who could only afford it with a roommate and co-signer, am the root of the housing crisis....

Sure if you want to jump right to that conclusion...

If the government was truly run and operated fairly and equally and made equal housing available to anyone and everyone that wanted or needed it then everyone would be housed.

But you know that isnt the argument at hand and that your take is just argumentative and disingenuous.

Why? Why is a home allowed to be a business when you need it to survive?

Glad to see that spending is up for HUD and many of their programs. Unfortunately I worry that a lot will go towards mitigating the severe situation left by COVID and not the issues that existed beforehand. A big one is that while they are increasing the value and number of vouchers available to those that qualify, they are not putting enough into regulating the quality and safety of the properties themselves that take vouchers or the number of properties that do.

What even is your point, if you have one? Racism killed support public housing so we should just accept that the racist side has a point for why we shouldn't have it..

The only arguments I've seen for weakening public housing is because for profit landlords would lose profits.

Unfortunately, we agree that individuals cant do much but vote for the people we best believe will fight for those changes.

God forgive me for being happy I got a good deal and also upset that the next person doesn't....

What if, hypothetically, you turn 85% of these rentals in to condos at a mortgage equal to their rent.... the housing wouldn't freaking disappear it would just mean that your rent now becomes equity and when you are ready to leave that unit for a home or another condo you get that equity back. This idea that the housing would just disappear is bonkers, it would just mean that how people own/rent/use property would need to change and that's to our benefit.

Thank you for sharing your experience. In your Specific example, you are actively improving the unit and then charging to make up the cost over time. That is normal and expected.

If you instead didn't make any changes to the unit, but charged "market rent" for it, you'd be an ass. Those landlords that are charging so much for a unit because they know people need housing and will pay whatever they ask are causing issues.

Making a profit isnt a problem so much as price gouging on a resource people need to survive is.

To an extent I can see how you came to your conclusions. My question would then be how do you feel about this happening in other industries?

We're seeing this all around right now, but let's use the example of electric/power. You have to have it in your home and for most places there is only one option for provider DLC. If you found out your electric bill went up $200 because the power company in Cleveland started charging more to their customers would you be upset?

Thank you for the well thought out response. It's nice to have these conversations and find other like minded people. I can see and agree with all of your points, the issues are deep and complex and there is no single solution, let alone an easy one.

I hold out hope that a lot of it can be tackled methodically with time and concentrated effort, but I worry we wont even start down that road before there is some catastrophic catalyst first.

We completely agree. Costs have gone up and it is okay for prices to reflect that, However there is importantance in separating cost, revenue, and profit.

Just to spin a hypothetical here are some numbers: I am renting a unit for $100, so I made $100 in revenue. I then paid $60 in upkeep costs so my profit is only $40, but that pays my bills and I'm happy. Next year I find out my costs are going to be $80, I dont want to only make $20 profit so I raise my rent to $120.

That whole situation is fine so long as that $40 isnt my sole income and if the house burns to the ground or the tenant dies, I dont lose everything.

The issue is when the same scenario plays out like this: The next year I find out my costs are going up to $100, so I plan to raise rent to $140, but before i do i find out my friend down the street just built a new unit and rented it for $300. I figure since someone rented that apartment at that price i can ask that price from my renter so i do. They agree to it because their kid just started school and they want to stay in that school district. I bring in $300 revenue, costs are $100, I make $200 profit.

The next year it's the same. Cost increases $20 but another friend has built a new unit and is charging $500. I figure I'll try again since someone rented in the area for that price. My current renter can't afford it and moves out. I lower my price to $450 and get someone who couldn't afford $500, but can just squeeze by at $450. I bring in $450 revenue, costs are $120, I make $330 profit.

I am now an asshole....

Just because I could and someone did pay it I raised my rent enormously and made huge increases in profit.

That's just business, we agree on that, but that was and is someone's home. Legally, I shouldn't be allowed to do that. I priced a family out of their home, I'm making it so it's harder for the current people to save for their own future. If all my friends are doing the same thing we are collectively pricing whole communities out. If the whole country is doing it we are ruining people's chances to have stable housing.