• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle



  • It gets sticky with the semantics but I don’t think any reasonable person would call me a landlord for renting out my apartment for a week while I take a trip. Sure they are technically landlords but a host to short term tenets is not the same level of responsibility or cost. The contracts are different, the rights are different, and few people comfortable with short term tenets would be willing or able to accommodate long term tenets. That said, it shouldn’t be more cost effective to run a 24/7/365 airbnb versus renting the same property to a long term tenet. Like all things it can’t be explained so simply as “ban airbnb”. If that’s the real problem you want to solve then I think a good start would be at property taxes for properties without long term residents (landlord and tenets alike). But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with renting out spare rooms at will and that shouldn’t be discouraged or taxed as anything other than income, in my humble opinion.


  • Everyone who has a bit more room than they currently use has a moral obligation to be a landlord? to have flatmates during retirement? or should they be compelled to sell part of their lifelong home outright? Who sets that price, who retains rights to what, who pays for the renovations required to get separate utilities run? Do I get to evict them if I decide to use the space for a workshop or library as I pick up retirement hobbies? If the goal is to get people efficiently crammed into affordable living spaces, why on earth would you not just support affordable housing developments instead? It’s better for the quality of life of everyone involved, is actually feasible, and they can be built taller, cheaper, safer, and better for the environment if you include a light rail or bus line. Why do we need to drag people down in order to lift up others? Why can’t we all go up?




  • I feel like “houseless” is mostly a PR stunt by outreach groups to migrate to a word with less negative connotations, which I can support on its own. But I totally agree with you semantically. To me, and probably to most, a home is a place where you feel comfortable. A place that can reliably shelter you, that you can return to at any point and feel safe. What homeless people lack is not simply a generic shelter, as ‘houseless’ implies, but a place where they can exist, reliably, without fear. Shelters have a capacity, overpasses have cops, everywhere has thieves. Saying “home is where the heart is” is ridiculously insensitive to the struggles they face. I feel like it’s more empathetic to acknowledge that what they are lacking is fundamental safety.