@khird

The part your missing is that when you rent to someone you can not stop renting to them anytime you want. Depending on the country you become locked in for anywhere from one year to 5+ years.

So if you are forced to rent out your home during a downturn in the economy then you no longer have the ability to wait a few months to a year to rent it out when the economy improves, when it would be economical to do so.

@louiscouture

@freemo @louiscouture Ah okay, here that is a difference between renting and leasing. You might have to give some months' notice before raising the payments if someone rents a property from you, but if it were a lease you couldn't raise the payments at all before the lease term expires.

@khird

The fact of the matter is, if the intent of the person is to rent out their home, they will do what is most financially advantageous to them. So the only way they would let a house sit empty is if they felt that by doing so they stood to either make more money in the long run by renting it later, or would take less of a loss. No one is going to take a loss out of spite.

The only situation where I could see a house sitting empty and being financially disadvantageous would be if its a vacation home they use often. In which we are effectively trying to argue whether having a vacation home should be legal or not. Obviously I'd argue it should be and if they were made effectively illegal you wouldnt really solve any problems because it goes right back to the original point that if people are buying fewer homes (in this case no one buys vacation homes) then less homes are built or maintained in the first place.

@louiscouture

@louiscouture That logic only applies in non-capitalist societies. So sure in a communistic society that may very well be the outcome without the capitalistic consequence of pushing the home shortage farther than it already is.

But we arent talking about communistic societies here, we are talking about capitalistic ones. And in a capitalistic society where there is a free market on buying and selling homes, then no, that logic doesn't work because the end result is no one buys home, no one builds homes, and existing homes stop getting maintained until they are no longer livable.

So regardless of that, no, your logic does not work in practice in capitalistic societies and the end result is making the problem worse. So you'd first need to create a working communistic society, which so far no one has done successfully without creating extreme poverty, but hey if you can managed to do it, then we can talk :)

@freemo: well if your economic system requires that only rich people can get homes then it is a bad economic system, and communist countries like cuba where no one is even homeless, already outperforms them.

@louiscouture Luckily we dont live in a society where only the rich can buy homes. In both europe and the USA upper low class and above are capable of, and do, own homes. It is only those in poverty who are completely incapable of owning homes. Those people, however, may not be able to own homes but they do (usually) get to live in a place with a roof over the head thanks to welfare programs.

So yea, in practice CUBA isnt really ahead, both places have the vast majority of their population with homes, or to be more specific, both societies ensure everyone has a roof over their head if they go through the proper steps.

The big difference is that in Cuba everyone lives in poverty (like the picture attached which is what Cuban homes look like). Where in europe very few people have to suffer in that sort of poverty, and almost all of them have a way out if they do.

@freemo wait regular people people can afford homes in capitalist systems?

Weird, I thought if we forced landlords to lower their prices so people could afford it then nobody would build homes because it wouldn't be worth it economically

@louiscouture

> wait regular people people can afford homes in capitalist systems?

No that's not what I said, but also, even if i had said that it doesn't line up with your second paragraph.

> Weird, I thought if we forced landlords to lower their prices...

In capitalist societies they **don't** force landlords to rent out homes at a loss. So you are not making a statement here that is logically consistent. The whole reason in a capitalist society that regular people can afford homes is precisely because owning a home doesn't force you to rent it out at a loss.

@freemo I think you believe that a house costs so much to take care of thatit would bankrupt landlords if we forced them to provide affordable prices for renting. It is not true, social housing is a thing in many countries and no one goes bankrupt.

@louiscouture Social housing is, by definition, housing where the property is both owned and managed by the state, not by the landlord. So that argument is moot as the OP does not propose social housing, it proposing something entirely different.

@freemo how come the state is able to provide everyone housing but private landlords can't.

It's not that they can't make money renting to regular people, it's because they want to make more money by holding homes in hostage.

@louiscouture Because the states profitability depends on the productivity of the entire nation. An individual's profitability does not.

If a nation invests 10 million dollars into housing that ultimately makes the ultrapoor productive enough to reliably enter the work force, and thus generate more than 10 million in tax, then the state is not operating at a loss.

On the flip side if an individual is forced to loose 100,000 in assets so three people can be productive enough to generate new taxes, that landlord will not benefit from that at all, and ultimately go bankrupt.

@freemo again nobody is getting bankrupt from that investment. No banks would give a loan to someone who don’t think they could repay. And it’s just false to say that people would not build homes otherwise because the market fail sometimes and it doesn’t stop people from buying stocks and investing in the economy

@louiscouture Again this misses the point. Even if someone could afford to loose money, the fact remains if a law is in place that effectively guarantees they will loose money if they invest in a home, then they won't make the investment in the first place. People who make money are smart enough to know that if an investment isnt profitable then they wont make the investment. As such we are right back where we started where people stop investing in buying homes, there are fewer homes, and the problem is made worse.

With that said even if we dig a bit deeper your assertion fails on the point "No banks would give a loan to someone who don’t think they could repay". The bank looks at a person's income, it is true, but if we are talking about a landlord than that income is coming from their homes being rented out in the first place. So while a person may very well would have been able to pay when they bought the homes and before any laws were in place that would make renting out homes unprofitable, by virtue of passing such a law they would no longer be able to pay when once they could. So yes, they would still go bankrupt. Not to mention knowing that renting leads to bankruptcy no one will continue to buy homes and rent them in the first place. So that point you made is also moot.

@freemo why are you acting like somehow it will happen for a certainty

@louiscouture Because I looked into this issue in some detail before as a Data Scientist and my personal conclusion is that this is and will be the inevitable result, aside from also being common sense given the nature of free markets.

The inevitable result whenever this has been attempted is that the situation is made worse in the long term, rather than better. Price of houses skyrocket, availability of homes for rent plummet, and people who have the money for multiple homes instead invest in bigger land rather than additional homes.

The result has always been, and always will be (in a capitalist system) an increase in homelessness and a lack of availability of homes.

@freemo so free markets capitalism can’t make it so EVERYONE can have a home.
Thanks for the clarification

@louiscouture Nope, never said anything of the sort. In fact I said and explained the exact opposite earlier.

Free market capitalism can and does provide everyone with a home. Those who are upper-lower class and above can afford a home. Those middle-lower class and below are provided a home via welfare.

In capitalism, like in communism, the only people without a home are the people who do not or will not take the steps to get one, for example people with mental disorders who can not function tend to be homeless in any system simply because they do not have the ability to go through the process to get one. But even then they can and often do wind up in mental institutions.

@freemo welfare is not free market, and even with welfare, you might not be able to afford a home, heck, people can’t afford rent even while having jobs

@louiscouture The existence of welfare does not imply that the system of government is not a capitalism, so your point is moot. Welfare can, and does exist within capitalistic forms of government.

As for your claim that not everyone on welfare can afford rent, that depends entirely on the government in question. Obviously it is possible a government provides no welfare or such a minimal level of welfare that a person wont have a place to live. But again that's a non pointer as I specifically mentioned the case where a capitalistic country DOES provide adequate welfare, so again a moot point on your part.

@freemo welfare can exist under capitalism (aka mixed economies) but it cannot exist under free market capitalism, because it requires government intervention in the economy.

@freemo and also what I said was how are you sure that free market capitalism will inevitably make such a crisis that people can’t afford their homes.