“But we also think that the responsibility for the safety of [low-income people] — and let’s face it, it’s low-income people who have this problem — that’s a responsibility for society at large, for everyone, not just for the people who happen to own the buildings where these people make their homes.”
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.
deleted by creator
America is not the only place in the world. In places without mass corporate landlords, private landlords happily fill that void and are absolutely still the problem.
Show me a landlord that genuinely finds efficiencies that arent just ‘hire a cheaper contractor than they would hire for their own home’.
deleted by creator
Then youre miss informed about where our housing supply is going and who’s driving up rent. Here it is predominantly private landlords.
Absolutely correct, same principle applies to lots of other areas too. Such as food supply.
You DO realize that if we sold all our properties that millions of people would have no place to live? Just because we put them up for sale doesnt mean a current tenant could afford to buy them. What does that mean? They would likely be snapped up by corporate property management companies. And that means rent would go UP as companies would control all the rentals and can set whatever price they wish. The existence of mom and pop landlords is what keeps prices DOWN especially if they are for basement suites.
Perhaps cities, provinces, and/or the federal government could buy up those properties instead of corporate landlords. Then they could charge geared-to-income rent instead of whatever the market will bear.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one stops thinking only in terms of housing as a commodity
Perhaps cities, provinces, and/or the federal government could buy up those properties instead of corporate landlords.
This is what needs to happen, not a one-time subsidy for a landlord. This way the province gets something out of its investment and continues to supply proper housing. Handing out cash is just throwing money away.
Who pays for that? The taxpayer, which means a MASSIVE increase in taxes because the average house in Canada is now about 700,000.
Lets say the gov wants to buy 1000 homes in a city, thats 700,000,000. How much do you think taxes would have to go up to spend nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars for 1000 homes in a major city? If they did that in 30 Canadian cities thats 21,000,000,000.
21 TRILLION DOLLARS! Currently Canadas entire national debt (the highest in Canadas history) is 1.4 trillion. So you’d have to make it 15 times bigger to buy those houses. If everyone taxes TRIPLED we couldn’t pay that off.
You think thats workable? Not a chance. And thats just for 1000 homes per city. Vancouver for example currently has about 125,000 rentals, Toronto has 550,000 rentals so 1000 is barely a drop in the bucket.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.
I agree! The correct number is 21 billion, not trillion. Don’t worry, you were only off by a factor of 1000!
$21B is about 1/8th of what Carney is proposing to spend annually on defence.
Absolutely doable.
TRILLION
Huh, you are indeed correct. Hoisted by my own petard.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Just make it illegal for corporate ownership. Mass housing for sale will drop prices
I agree however the problem becomes ‘what is corporate ownership’? I have some LL friends who own three houses who have formed a corporation but its just a single owner. I have some that own a rental however they manage them through a broker who does all the management and maintenance for a share of the rent and any capital gains. Then there are the guys who form a corporation with a few other guys so they can buy an apartment block but without those three friends pooling their money it would likely be owned by an international company.
I think the delineation is that single family homes should not be owned by corporations that have more than 4 shareholders with a set financial limit. If you want to buy a 16 unit apartment with three friends, go for it. But if you’re Blackrock with billions of dollars and 155 million shares then you have no business buying ANY residential housing.
Since we have a terrible housing crisis, my belief is a residential home should be owned by a family and not corporations or international invovlement. Apartments can be like our Strata Condo we live in, the strata is a legal corporation but only owners of the units belong to it. We had a no rental clause. But our Canadian government overrules that during the pandemic.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Landlord brain: Charge the city then raise the rent due to increased value.
that’s a responsibility for society at large
You’re right, let’s nationalize your properties.
Wrong country. If you want communism you gotta move to one of those super successful countries like North Korea. Good luck with that.
Yep, there’s the way things are happening now, and nothing else. Any other way of doing things is impossible.
Like how every mature democracy is veering toward fascism and there’s not a damn thing we could have done differently.
Well ‘nationalizing’ private property isn’t exactly ‘another way of doing things’ it would be a complete makeover of our society’s core values and very unlikely to happen with the consent of the owners of that property. So unless you’re proposing forced compliance and starting a revolutionary war, how exactly would we “nationalize” trillions of dollars worth of private property?
Right, Canada’s never nationalized anything private, aside from rail networks, hydroelectricity, and mining operations. All cheap and cheerful. And when has a government ever managed housing?
Doing anything about rent would surely require the blood of millions.
So you think buying a railway network is the same as buying single family houses from MILLIONS of Canadians, some of whom, like me, live in them or actually built them ourselves? Ok then, good luck with that brilliant plan. Im sure there will be no pushback on that idea.
I think you can figure out the difference between your housing situation and rental.
… oh, I just skimmed your comment history. Fuck off.
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
Well that’s how the system is set up, not much choice. Besides direct action and organizing which is an up hill battle
Yeah well they can go fuck themselves
Gosh yes. The landlords as victims. A novel concept.
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.
