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.
Have you? In my city there are a wide range of sizes (flats/multi-room) in different areas (near different industry sectors) with different amenities (washer dryer hookups/pool/dog park/none) across different ages (new builds/recent/decades old).
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They would simply lobby to have the law repealed or, more likely, vetoed before passing.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.
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.
Was also thinking about how they could bring the average down by offering near uninhabitable rooms for $10/month. Rooms need to be 2 m² and have a communal bathroom on each floor, of course.
A milder version of this is what there is in Switzerland. In Switzerland a person cannot rent an house/apartment that costs more than 1/3 of what they earn.
While clearly there are more and less expensive areas, it kills the race to unreasonable prices (like, let's say, NY or London or... everywhere) and allows essentially everyone to have an house (and who cannot still afford there are social helps but that is for another post)
I am not Swiss but I have lived here long enough to realise they don’t do that out of simple generosity.
They realise that desperate people do desperate things.
And this jeopardise things that the Swiss value like quietness, not having to worry about crime, etc.
In the end nobody is an island and if someone is desperate the whole society is impacted a bit by that single desperate… a lot of desperate people and the society is impacted a lot by it
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.
I want reddit to pay the server costs for hosting the image while letting lemmy people enjoy it and I wanted to include the Tumblr commentary too. Is there a better way to accomplish this goal?
I think an interesting side effect would be the massive reduction of houses being bought as rental properties. If you had no real way to cover a mortgage or even some of the absurd property taxes with the rent you could get, your wouldn't invest unless you really believe in the area or are buying to fix and sell.
It would basically tank the housing market and put everyone who owns a house with a mortgage under water. Would suck for me, and I'm not a landlord.
The unfortunate risk you take owning a property. Likewise, is there really any way for the next generation to be ok with the current one not taking a hit?
Not all people who'd lose out by going balls to the walls on affordable housing is a landlord, in fact most of them are working class people who have no investment vehicle but their home.
The process of decomodifying housing is necessarily going to be a long and bitterly unpopular one in its time.
Oh noes! We're so worried for the lords of land and property owners. If you have owned your property for more than 3 years please step out of the conversation.
The minimum wage shall be the lowest hundredth dollar in a month which is still greater than three times the state's median rent for a single bedroom apartment.
That'll actually stoke class division between landlords and bosses since driving up rent will bump wages just as much.
this sounds nice hut big companies would create a refugee camp like buildings in town and rent them for dirt cheap and give you unlivable wages if they want
Companies would start to buy houses that they can rent for cheap, but never fix anything in that house. I confidently believe that this idea would worsen the situation.
Hmm. I like the concept but think there are practical issues: Suddenly everyone who owns apartments or other rental property in a major city immediately sells it (even if just to be demolished) and kicks out the current renters. Mass homelessness affecting disproportionately those worst off. Perhaps the cost of Buying a home would drop due to all that property for sale - especially if the apartments can be sold as condos, but I'm not sure if it would compensate enough, and would be a huge mess for some time.
Suddenly everyone who owns apartments or other rental property in a major city immediately sells it (even if just to be demolished) and kicks out the current renters.
Why? Paying for demo would be costing them more money. Same with sitting on it without tenants.