Real Breadwinner 🌟
(midwest.social)
Lefty Memesstop paying landlord
landlord cannot pay bills
bankruptcy process inturrupts eviction process
live rent free until new landlord is decided (this could take many months)
probably wouldn't work unless you got a bunch of other people to do it with you, but it's fun to dream.
Doesn't mean he's living paycheck to paycheck. People often don't leave a lot of money in checking accounts from which they pay mortgages because checking accounts often offer 0% interest. So if the landlord usually has close to 0 money in his checking account expecting rent to come ahead of the mortgage paynent despite having millions in a brokerage account he'll still go into overdraft.
Not keeping a buffer that covers any upcoming bills in an account from which bills are automatically paid is deranged behaviour. I don't care how much interest you may or may not get on that money.
I would simply not buy a house I can't afford.
I can't think of any better way to express the sheer absurdity of capitalism in a single meme than this.
This is more of a critique of private landlords than of capitalism. So it’s more of a Georgist than socialist argument.
break it down for me
How is this different than literally any small business owner that doesn't collect payment on the spot, like a lawn guy, for instance?
The lawn guy is actually doing something in exchange for that payment. And him not being a lawn guy would probably not make it easier for you to enter the lawn care industry
Capitalism and parasitic middlemen - name a more iconic duo.
NGL, that's the situation for a ton of landlords that have a handful of rental properties.
When I got out of school and into my first apartment, the woman that owned the apartment building I lived in lost her other rental building because she'd been on razor thin margins with it.
Also, the guys that lived there had apparently damaged the hell out of it and she couldn't manage the repairs, so she had the bank take it back.
The family that owns the property that my husband and I have been living in actually own the buildings outright.. and we've been absolutely lucky in being able to stay in the same space for decades, which we love.
If you find landlords that are good people that don't jack the rent sky-high, take care of the space and be good to it.
Be careful thinking any landlord is a good person. We rented from a couple like 10 years ago who were as nice as you could want, and they were the best landlords I've ever had.
And yet, the two times we (slightly) threatened their bottom line, they turned into the nastiest human beings I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.
Saying we "threatened their bottom line" is actually putting it extremely, extremely strongly. The first time, I paid rent one day late because I was so busy and simply forgot. I was still a lib at this point, so I was shocked by how mean the text I got from them was. But it did teach me that landlords don't see their tenants as people, they see us as dollar signs.
The second time our landlords showed their true face, they had messed up our lease renewal. The new lease, which we'd all signed, listed our rent at about $100/month less than the verbal agreement we had with them. My partner was like "I mean, let's pay the cheaper rent that's in writing on the lease we actually signed". I was like "I'm extremely uncomfortable with that, I don't want them to sue us and I'm pretty sure they would try." So my partner gave them a call and was like "hey, the lease says this, so that's what we're paying". My partner got actually screamed at. I could hear it from across the room. They had a new lease at our door for us to sign within 2 hours. Screaming and rushing over a new lease because of less than $100 a month. Once again, tenants aren't people, we're dollar signs.
So be careful with "nice" or "good" landlords. Even the best landlord will only ever see you as a money spigot, and will do their best to ruin your life if there's so much as a suspicion that you might slightly decrease the rate of flow of money to them
Lol I wouldn't sign that shit. Their fault they cant write a contract
Yeah, we were absolutely unwilling to fight a legal battle at that point in our lives. I wish we could have though, because fuck those landleeches!
Oh god.. no.. Gotta say that's rather cynical, and in this case.. not at all accurate.
When my husband got into culinary school - this was in the early 90's mind you - he was the first person in his family to go on to higher education. The landlord - whom he'd known since he was a child - came up, shook his hand and told him "I know how hard it is to pay off the school loans, so if you get behind on rent, don't worry.." and he was true to his word. At one point, I was paying rent and working on the loans as well while husband was at the school - in Vermont - so I got behind for the better part of a year, and they were totally fine with it.
The last decade or so the landlord (and his wife) and husband and I would forget rent entirely and at one point we were three weeks late and went over and profusely apologized and the landlady said we were the last people they worried about when the rent was late - we BOTH would just forget, and it's not like they didn't live next door and I'd not see her in the back yard garden all the time doing the weeding!
Their youngest daughter is running the show now and I used to talk to her when she was a little kid (early 90's) - there was a great big leggy box alder in the back yard that had vast branches that ran past the living room windows - this is a second floor apartment, mind you - and she'd be like a squirrel in the tree, sitting outside the window on the branch and we'd chat while I was cleaning..
She came up to me a few months ago and said.."I have a hard conversation to have.." and I replied.. "It's rent.. I've been wondering when your mom was going to raise it, God knows it's been years.. What do you need.." and she said what it was, and I was like, "Yeah, that's what I expected.. No problem at all."
I told her never to hesitate to tell me what they need if rent has go up. We're not under a lease, haven't been since 1993. The look of relief on her face was all I needed to know. TBH, my husband is "family" since he'd been working for the landlords when he was a teenager, and the daughter's known him all her life. They're great kids, her dad's last parting statement to any and everyone he met was "Be good!" (He died two years ago, was a fixture here in town..)
They are.
Is it cynical to share my experience that literally every single landlord I've ever had has seen me as nothing more than a money spigot? I don't think it's cynicism to see reality as it is.
It's cool you've had a different experience to me, but I do notice your example is a single landlord(ing family) where mine is lots of different landlords over the course of decades. I think my experience might be a little more common than yours.
I wouldn't deny that. As I mentioned to the daughter when we were talking about rent, I said that we were both very thankful to be blessed by living where we do. However it IS cynical to make a blanket statement that good people do not exist. Now your replies never directly stated such a sentiment, but other replies have done so.. (this is me making a statement to the "room" in general.)
I understand the warning. With a crystalline clarity.
I grew up in the back of a 1969 VW bus in the early 70's and spent time homeless as a child. Dad and mom were fuckups. Full stop.
Mom was a hippy and had the peace beads, poncho, went to Woodstock, "turned on, tuned in and dropped out.." then ended up in Palo Alto and we lived on the edge, hopping from apartment to apartment and sharing rooms in other peoples homes until my education was shot and I got shipped back to New England to live with my alcoholic aunt and finally my dad, so I could graduate High School with an actual education. (..and I did, with honors. Go figure..)
I understand how landlords can turn. I was literally sitting in the front row seat.. of some CRAZY shit. Which was why I have felt it necessary to speak up as I have. Those good people are gems, they are often hidden in plain sight and they should be the example of what renters should look for, and what other owners could aspire to.
My landlord was like this until she saw housing prices increasing. Decided to divorce her husband and take over the property we were living in. Because of the state we live in and that she had not signed a paper lease with us that year (and we did not bring it up for fear of rent increases), she kicked us out with 30 days notice, after never missing a payment for nearly 10 years. She did move in but now the place is rented out again.
We anded up buying a house by crushing all our savings and overbidding with inspection waived in a market full of house flippers and corporations at the highest prices of all time. We make high salaries and our housing costs tripled, just in time for Trump 2.0 so now all of our other costs are doubled. We are house poor and living like we used to when we had a shitty apartment right after my wife graduated college, when we made less than a third what we do now.
All the progress just to be backstabbed by a landlord. No, I don’t trust them, I don’t trust any of them. Mao was right.
Meanwhile the apt I've lived in for 5 years has changed ownership 3 times, each time rents raise.
Flippers are the bane of human existence.
Bacon grease goes down the drain in those apartments
I wonder what fraction of the damage caused by that would be felt by the landlord and not felt by you more immediately. Like it needs to be in the part of the sewer lines that affect their property, but preferably not just the ones that affect your apartment, or you inconvenience yourself more than them. And if it goes further, could contribute to problems for your municipality to handle.
I always just rinse my greasy pan with hot water to make sure it doesn't solidify in my apartment pipes
if you are in that situation your "good landlord" should form a cooperative and give you a share of the property since you've both gonna lose it otherwise
Oh, we got that.
30+ years w/o a lease and a rent that has consistently been a third of the rental market value. (and no, the apartment is not a dump) Heat, hot water and half electricity included.. AND off street parking. (this one is the REAL Golden Ticket)
Am at the point now where we've saved so much we could buy a home outright - no mortgage. Been looking at places where people are leaving from.. Find something small, not too run down and put a bit of sweat equity in and fix it up. Get in and make a scene with other artists and musicians and open a restaurant or a secret kitchen dinner club.. Something like that.
But when we do leave, we're gonna jet like we've got rocket boosters on. Our families are finally all gone - grandparents, our aunts and uncles, parents have died (just my mom is left and she's living in a tent off the grid in Hawaii doing the counterculture vulture thing with no internet, computer or smartphone even - just a 4G flip phone and a 12 year old Toyota pickup! She's an absolute savage!) so we're no longer tied to the area. Put in our 25 years of looking after our elder relatives - his and mine - and we're so DONE with that. Doing the liquidating of family heirlooms thing - keeping a few decent items and the rest gets sold.
NGL, this city lost it's identity when it hit Forbes "Top 10 Cities in America" list back in the mid 2000's. We're just hanging on and saving everything we can until we can't hang on here anymore.
When I got out of school and into my first apartment, the woman that owned the apartment building I lived in lost her other rental building because she’d been on razor thin margins with it.
Also, the guys that lived there had apparently damaged the hell out of it and she couldn’t manage the repairs, so she had the bank take it back.
I swear to fuck, you're screwed either way. You rent, the landlord takes too much cash, gives you a shitty place to stay. You have renters, they destroy your property and don't pay on time. Fuck sake.
What is your favorite flavor of shoe polish?
The banks make money whilst its slaves point fingers amongst themselves.
Yeah, the landlord here is nothing more but another wage slave looking for a way to be less dependent on his wage/salary when the mortgage of his rental property is finally paid off. A symptom of a larger issue, maybe an asshole, but probably just trying to provide for his own family like we all are. Doesn't sound like a millionaire.
∗ahem∗
I mean yeah exactly, the corporate ones are the bigger problem. This is just one guy. The corporate landlords are pricing even the private landlords out of the market, let alone first-time homebuyers.
Blackstone's real estate divison in particular should be disbanded and its' assets sold at auction to private individuals ONLY. Everyone (not here, but in general) talks about Blackrock, a company that mostly focuses on providing ETFs and other financial instruments, while Blackstone is literally out there buying up America's single family homes and people barely talk about them.
sold at auction to private individuals
Then you're still not comprehending the problem:
Housing should be FREE.
Don’t pay rent and let him sue. It takes at least 6 months to the court, but he will be bankrupt way before then :3
If he wants housing to be an investment, he has to take the risk too.
Keep in mind having the eviction on your record will make it significantly harder to rent another place in the future
"lol" said the scorpion
"lmao"
What record?
You can find evictions in a background check, which is common to run on new tenants.
Only do this after buying your own home then
Or idk, probably just don't do it at all I guess. The landlord here is an asshole, but he's a symptom of a systemic issue, not the cause of it. He goes bankrupt and the house gets bought by the next opportunistic asshole who probably will charge the next tenant even more rent, especially if he doesn't get as good a deal on the mortgage (interests are up compared to 7-8 years ago after all). And you'll have a permanent mark on your record.
Now of course if this was done by millions of tenants at once... That would really be something. Probably crash the housing market altogether, make houses affordable again
Yep, and Minnesota doesn't seem to get it either.
