Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.

I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.

Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    I don’t think rentals should exist. You could literally put a house anywhere a couple hundred years ago, and all you needed to do was build it. Now we have artificially stunted the supply of housing to make good little worker bees our of everyone. The threat of homelessness and starvation is a fantastic motivator to not rock the boat in society.

    • woop_woop@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Well, not quite. You’d have to have rights to the land to do that. Else someone could ride up and just take it from you.

    • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
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      18 days ago

      You could literally put a house anywhere a couple hundred years ago, and all you needed to do was build it.

      I think you have to go back way more than a few hundred years for that.

      In the US there were programs that kinda sounded like that but it was just the US government trying to get working class white people to displace native people.

      In Europe wasn’t everything owned by nobles snd royals who demanded a cut of your labor? Could people just build a random house anywhere in ancient Rome or Greece?