People don’t agree with me when I tell them that landlords exploit their renters to make money.
Landlords exploit renters in a similar way to how business owners exploit their workers. Except where business owners charge more for their products than they pay their workers to produce those products, landlords charge renters more than it costs to rent to them.
Landlords don’t pay their mortgage; their renters do. Landlords don’t pay for home maintenance costs; their renters do. Landlords don’t pay for financing interest payments; their renters do. Landlords don’t pay for their property taxes; their renters do.
And so on.
Any cost of owning a home is passed onto the renter by the landlord. Except, the landlord charges above all those costs. Then they pocket what’s leftover. Just like a business owner. Profit.
And that hunger for profit is what drives up housing prices. It costs more to rent a home than it costs to own that same home. Higher housing costs means fewer people can afford to own a home, and even renting a home becomes unaffordable, forcing people into smaller properties with more people in them to share the cost.
You want to fix homelessness? This would be a good place to start.
