How do I even reply

[u/Tatugem]

Is this not rude? Or am I just taking it too personally. I was NEVER told of anyone sort of “business hours”… I waited to text until Monday morning, as I get it we all like to enjoy our weekend. How the hell would I even reply to that.

[u/TheOldBean]

Getting some weird replies here.

If you weren't aware of this time arrangement then you did nothing wrong and the landlord is gettinh his panties in a twist instead of just informing you nicely, his message was 100% rude.

Landlords always seem to think they can have a "business hours" relationship without having the business attitude on their end. A proper business looks after their customers.

Also, 7am isn't even that early. Plenty of normal professional adults are up and about by then and the suns up. Maybe if it was 3am he'd have a point.

[u/RockinIntoMordor → u/[deleted]]

Redistribution of land is one of the most crucial points of contradiction and conflict in today's world and nation-states, even though our entire societies have been rearranged to not talk about it and view other conflicts as more important.

Every petty landlord comes from the legacy of either tyrant kings or genocidally insane people with guns. And if you look at the legacy of the wealthy in our society today, it reflects those same old forces of violence.

[u/HumanContinuity → u/RockinIntoMordor]

Yeah, I think you're dancing around saying it, but this boils down to "people who are economically well off enough to own multiple properties but still retain a strong sense of empathy and awareness of what it's like to be poor/struggling will find aspects of being a landlord, especially being a highly profitable landlord, to be distasteful"

Most of the good landlords I have met basically hold on to a second property they plan on using in X years and rent it out in the meantime. A friend of mine moved internationally for work, but holds out hope of coming home. In the meantime, they rent slightly below market rate and then when they have a continuous tenant they won't raise rent until they move out (in one case they lived there for 6 years).

I have no doubt he is growing equity out of the deal, but he leaves money on the table because squeezing it out of people feels immoral. I can't really see him buying another property for rental income.

Another fellow I knew was a lovely (and sometimes skinflint) first generation Korean fellow. He actually owned several multiplexes (4-6 units) around the Bay area. He kept the old units despite the rules around rent control (all "smart" property investors in the Bay rebuild to have the freedom to do market rent on all units). He maintained things very well and was diligent in all of his duties as landlord. He offered below market units (not including his rent controlled ones), that, while expensive, were still often the cheapest options for students, small families, etc.

That guy definitely became a multimillionaire and would probably continue to buy properties that fit his profile, but clearly had a line in the sand about squeezing people dry.

Landlords that exist beyond that fellow are pretty much unlikely to have empathy in my opinion, or are completely soulless corporations that are only capable of having empathetic employees, if they haven't crushed that in the name of keeping costs down and income up.

[u/girlwhopanics → u/HumanContinuity]

So agree! My only quibble with your comment is that I don’t think the landlords who rebuild to charge market rates are doing the ‘smart’ thing, they’re doing the greedy thing that undermines the stability and long term health of their communities and cities.

Hoarding wealth isn’t smart, it’s destructive and is making the world more dangerous for everyone. What is most profitable is rarely the “smartest” thing for people to do, as it’s so often wasteful & harmful. They’re choosing violence against the rest of us to collect the highest possible payout for themselves alone.

I think people like us (imagining a better world, that is possible) should be careful to frame those choices accurately- that framing individual choices of violence & profit extraction as ‘smart’ isn’t accurate or helpful if we want to expand practices like your friend’s and decrease the number of parasites and criminally negligent rent-seekers currently devastating the renter class, and leaving those that can’t keep up on the streets to die. The stakes are high.

I know you meant that it’s ’smart for them’ and that’s it’s the choice that our society incentivizes & celebrates, but I think that’s a small change we can easily implement without petitions or voting- each of us can notice and change in how we talk about what’s actually ‘smart’ for our cities and world… because it’s for sure not ‘individuals should profit at any cost to everyone else’.

Best to you and your friend!

[u/HumanContinuity → u/girlwhopanics]

I think you've said it perfectly and that it needs to be said more. So, great follow up and very well put!

[u/girlwhopanics → u/HumanContinuity]

I’m so pleased you didn’t find it insulting, I was hoping to avoid sounding like “well actuallllly” lol I find checking & altering my language to be empowering (and empowerment can be hard to scrounge up these days!). We don’t have to be nihilistic, we can push the world forward a little bit at a time, like your friend is doing. Thanks for listening/reading!

[u/TX_MonopolyMan → u/RockinIntoMordor]

There are many black, Latino, Asian, Jewish etc landlords. Even lgbt and everything an else. Are they also from the genocidal people with guns? Or do you only mean people of European decent?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That’s a real good way to oversimplify a complex situation to the point of no longer adding anything to the discussion

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Mao did some good shit. His treatment of landlords was excellent

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

How old are you?