SahwaBay Area homeowners are hiring a sword-wielding man to help them kick squatters out of empty properties: ‘The average squatter has no melee experience’
dohpaz42
Wildmimicwanted to say the same thing. what a dickhead, simping for landlords.
muntedcrocodileIts all well and good to hate on the Bourgeois until you become one at which point the proletariat are your problem.
SteelEmpireSo as long as the bourgeoise exist, there will always be a problem?
Sounds like the only solution is to collectively agree to delete the bourgeoise.
OK Marx sure. So what do u replace it with? Someone has to “own” ie control all the things and if u just hand it all over to some entity “the state” you have just reinvented aristocracy.
Someone has to “own” ie control all the things
That’s an extremely silly statement. Do you really believe in a single global landlord that owns everything that everyone else must pay rent to? If one person owns everything like you say, you just destroyed private ownership.
You managed to accuse me of being both Marx and a monarchist all while you call to end any private ownership in just one post.
That is possibly the worst faith interpretation of my statement. Everything is owned by someone not necessarily the same someone. For instance I own and am thus responsible for my property, someone else is responsible for their property hence everything is owned by someone.
What’s the functional difference between communism and a monarchy? In both cased all property is owned by “the state” and can exercise control over that property however they please. Democracy doesn’t work cos the people have no control of any property and thus are completely beholden to the state. Good luck protesting against the government when you have no food, water, means to communicate, and travel. What are u gonna do about the inevitable authoritarian takeover? Die?
Ownership is simply the word we use to describe the person who ultimately controls and is thus responsible for any particularly thing. Please describe a system in ownership isn’t a thing. The only one I can think of is anarchy until someone finds a gun and announces that everything now belongs to them and that their is nothing u can do about it
No it’s not. Even animals fight over territory and property. There are cases of them sharing, yes, but they’re not the absolute norm.
animals don’t own anything. there is nothing an animal can have that you can’t rightfully take from them.
WesDym@commie @Katana314 I know that you might never understand why I'm permanently blocking you. To be frank, I don't expect you'll ever understand. That, or a great many other things.
explodicleIts all well and good to hate on serial killers until you become one at which point the victims are your problem.
Yeah but being a serial killer doesn’t add anything to society. Bourgeois ownership of property and the competition that creates (capitalism) put a man on the moon and given you a better life than the aristocrats the bourgeois overthrew. How many people have serial killers raised out of poverty?
Sorry if I’m getting whooshed, are you being sarcastic? NASA is government-run. Feudalism was even more property-based and less democratic than capitalism is.
U clearly have no idea how NASA actually accomplished man in the moon. Most of the rocket and infrastructure was built and designed by private companies being paid by NASA. NASA just did the integration, design, and analysis. Its the perfect example of a socialist policy taking advantage of capitalist industry.
Capitalism, communism, socialism, and feudalism have nothing to do with democracy. They for the most part only refer to property in how its owned, who owns it, and what is property. Marx says everything that is not a person or a person labour is property owned by the state.
This is a direct analogue to feudalism and its structure of property ownership. Under feudalism the state owns everything including you, under communism the state owns everything except you. Marx himself comments on the similarity and how that relationship can be leveraged to bring in a communist regime.
Ah, the Space Race. Something that was famously only participated in by capitalist countries.
The USSR never put a man on the moon. And what your implying here is that the USSR was communism? If so the genocides and mass starvation it caused should be enough evidence against communism.
Oh, here we go with the “little black book of communism” bullshit.
Gods, you guys are so predictable.
60million dead people is bullshit hey? That’s 10x what Hitler did in the holocaust. Being predictable doesn’t change the facts that your supporting and pushing an ideology responsible for 60million dead people. That’s literally 10times as bad as supporting Nazism if we are going by human lives taken.
citations needed
We currently produce enough food to feed everyone and the international system is capitalist. Does every death from starvation or malnutrition count as a tick against capitalism for you? What about deaths from diabetes in the US? If not, you should look more into how the numbers you’re citing were generated and see if you still want to spread them. If so, you might find that capitalism has killed more than “communism.”
Also, just as a nitpick: 6 million Jews died in the holocaust. 13 million people died altogether (not including war casualties).
I know you feel like we’re on opposite sides here, but I really do just want you to research this a little more, no need to come back afterwards if you don’t want to.
I’m counting western capitalism Europe, USA, western aligned Asia pacific nations etc as I think that’s a fair comparison to make in the context of communism given I only considered the USSR and not other “communist nations”.
I’m aware of the nitpick I’m purposely presenting technically true facts in a manner most advantageous to my argument (same as any journalist does). I’ve done plenty of research I even went and read the communist manifesto so I could understand its true intentions (they got the societal diagnosis correct just the treatment is complete bullshit imo).
I think we have different definitions of “technically true,” but that’s probably true for a lot of terms. Have a good new year’s, if you celebrate.
That’s the problem with discussion like this I talk about x you hear y you respond with z and I hear w. Happy news to you to.
I’m asserting that capitalism didn’t do that on its own. The USSR is not a good example of communism, no, but it’s certainly not capitalist, and if they hadn’t provided competition at every step of the space race, beating the US out most of the time, the US wouldn’t have gotten to the moon.
If only their was a system that incentivised competition and used that as a power to drive innovation and progress.
A free market can be implemented in many economic systems.
Hear me out: I don’t blame landlords for wanting to protect their investments. But, I do have a problem with them (and guys like James here) who do it at the expense of the downtrodden. Being a landlord should not have to be mutually exclusive with helping people.
OK I heard you out. But I absolutely do blame them. It is mutually exclusive, they’re parasites and aren’t helping anyone. The guy who helps fix up your home is the property manager, for which landlords occasionally hire themselves using your rent money.
@dohpaz42 I've known a lot of landlords, and worked for some, and plenty are awful, even criminals. But they're like any large group; they run the gamut. I've also known plenty that are very helpful, doing what they can.
Pretty much ANY remark that lumps them all together is forensically invalid, and as far as I'm concerned intellectually dishonest, or at least very ignorant.
I’m not seeing it.
For there to be squatters, the landlords had to have this property open and unrented for a while. The only way that happens is if the rent is too high.
What kind of landlord can afford to have a rental property vacant for a significant period of time and not accept a lower rent? Ones who own lots of property and would prefer to lose income rather than reduce the average rent price in the area.
In the industry, withholding housing from people because you want to make more money, when you can clearly afford to get no income from it, is called “a dick move”.
For there to be squatters, the landlords had to have this property open and unrented for a while.
Huh? A squatter is most commonly simply a former renter who stops paying without moving out. The property is not vacant at any point.
You’re describing holdover tenants. Those are not the same as squatters. Holdover tenants have fewer rights in California.
Squatters could move in the day after the property becomes empty. Really it depends on when it is noticed the house is unoccupied.
Sometimes houses can’t be sold for months because of legal BS (happened with my moms house).
Sometimes houses can’t be sold for months because of legal BS (happened with my moms house).
Yes, there are always edge cases. Wouldn’t it be great if there were no corporate landlords and the problem was small enough to worry about those?
The only way that happens is if the rent is too high.
That’s not the only way. It’s not even very likely. If they are looking for too much rent and can’t get it they will lower their ask rather than sit there month after month getting nothing. Too high rent is the most easily fixable situation conceivable.
Other explanations include things like: it’s owned by someone who is elderly and due to their health or other problem they simply aren’t managing it actively or are even incapacitated and can’t make major decisions. Perhaps the owner died and the property is in the probate courts, which can take years.
Also, the presence of squatters doesn’t necessarily indicate it has been vacant for a long time.
Corporate landlords lose more by drops in real estate price and lowering of rent averages than a handful of empty properties. They have scale.
In theory. Long term vacancy is not in any corporate landlord’s plan, though. They will adjust rather than seek impossible rent forever. And aside from large apartment buildings, most residences (75% of 1-4 unit buildings) are owned by small landlords who don’t give a shit about network effects.
Counterpoint: some people would rent an Airbnb and stay after the two weeks they rented, effectively preventing the homeowner to return to their homes after a vacation. There’s little legal recourse to speedily remove them, as two weeks of occupation requires a lengthy judicial process to evict them (IIRC in California).
I dislike rent seekers too, but it happens to people with only one home as well. They think they could put their home to use while they’re not there (effectively reducing the problem of real estate under occupation), only to be exploited.
wolfkin@acockworkorange @surewhynotlem I'd put the blame here on both AirBNB and the tech algorithm that landlords use. That one that is literally (not just functionally) rent collusion. It tells you the "average rent in your area" so you don't undercharge. All that does is functionally raise the rent collectively.
I also have a suspicion that we hear a lot more about illegal squatters than legal ones on purpose to make people fear squatter's rights.
If that’s true, we would all do it. No?
Are you asking why isn’t everybody stealing each other’s property?
If there’s little repercussion and everyone is broke, yes.
I think you either a) underestimate people’s desires to not be absolute assholes; or b) underestimate how often this happens.
Very possibly. But the train of thought loses me.
If squatters were a very big problem, and most squatters come from overstaying rentals, fewer people would be landlords because of the high risk. There would be squatter insurance for landlords.
I don’t see that. So in our current situation, either squatters are not really that big of a problem, or the insurance industry is not being greedy enough? You can see why I think it’s the former.
And it also wouldn’t explain the high vacancy rate.
But here’s an idea that fits what we see more closely. You have a bunch of unrentable units because they’re not up to code. The owner doesn’t want to fix it. They’re just sitting on the property hoping it goes up in value so they can sell it. Squatters see that and move in because they don’t care if it’s up to code. The owners freak out because squatters reduce the property value.
The thing is, what you describe is incredibly rare, to the point of being a statistical anomaly.
Also, if you take the “low income” piece out of it, amusing others a cheating the system to save money is “just good business.” Ask all the millionaires doing immoral but TECHNICALLY legal things on their taxes.
You’re mistaken, sadly. It doesn’t happen more often because people got smart to it and no longer put their houses for rent for longer periods.
And I don’t get your whatabout millionaires comment. My comment was that not all squatting hurts landlords, some hurt regular people. I don’t need to ask millionaires about it because it’s not about them, it’s about middle class people.
I don’t blame landlords for wanting to protect their investments.
I’m a landlord (not by choice, but shit happens). I’ve never hired goons and never would. I do blame landlords for resorting to this kind of bullshit.
Their investments fundamentally come at the expense of the downtrodden by relegating necessities behind a paywall that they have private ownership over.
Being a landlord is fundamentally against helping people. It is explicitly about utilizing the private ownership over housing in order to profit off of someone else’s inherent need of shelter.
It is mutually exclusive and there is nothing that can be done to change that. The system is fundamentally oppressive.
@Crankenstein Okay, so what is your proposed solution or alternative? A world without landlords would require everyone who can't afford to buy their own home to live in public housing. Is that your proposal?
I’d definitely claim exception there in cases when someone travels often. Picture a guy who’s going to study at the nearby university for one year, but isn’t going to put down any roots in the city.
But yes, I acknowledge that’s a comparatively uncommon case to most renters.
Schmoo@Crankenstein Fucking hell, get over yourself. This is one of the most childishly stupid comments I've seen today. Goddamn, son, people can see you.
Landlords protecting their investments is always at the expense of the downtrodden. The role of landlord is one that exists solely at the expense of the downtrodden, and it is mutually exclusive with helping people.
I disagree, though I know I’ll get roasted for it… Landlords do serve a purpose to a point. Not everyone wants to own property. Owning property ties you to a particular place, makes it difficult to leave. If you know you want to stay in an area for the rest of your life, or even just the next 10 years, absolutely, you should be able to buy, and not being able to is a societal failure. But if you don’t know where you want to spend the rest of your life, you still need shelter now, and renting provides that, and when you decide to go somewhere else, it’s relatively easy. One of my bigger regrets in life was feeling pressured to buy a house in 2005… Just in time for the subprime mortgage crisis. I had a traditional mortgage, but nonetheless, my house went from $150k to <50k in months. I was stuck. Couldn’t sell without coming up with extra money to pay off the mortgage, but I wasn’t in as bad shape as some people, I could afford the payments, so I couldn’t justify walking away, just had to wait for it to rebound, which took another 5 years roughly. Had I been renting, I would have been able to leave much more easily.
There are ways to meet that particular need without landlords. Tenant unions buying out their apartment building and making it cooperatively owned, for example, or municipally owned public housing. The alternative to private property is public property. That kind of thing isn’t available because private property owners are the ones calling the shots, and that would undercut their parasitic lifestyle.
The kind of squatters that you have to fight in court to get rid of are downtroden in the sense that all petty criminals are downtrodden. In the sense that the guy that robs you at the bus stop is downtrodden even as he treads down on you.
How much give a fuck about people’s like return on investment and shit, but property, if you actually give a shit about it, is expensive to maintain and repair. That plus an arduous legal process highly incentivizes property owners to capitulate to unjust demands from squatters, much like any other robbery uses a threat of harm to coerce compliance.