More people would work in places like London if rent was less, tall about adding nothing to society yet being able to prey more and more on it
Government housing seems to be the most peaceful solution where it forces the rent down providing great places to stay and gives a portion of the housing shares to the government which can now effectively regulate the real estate market
There's some narrow slice where a "landlord" does something useful for money like maintaining the property. I don't want to deal with the plumbing or repainting.
But almost all of the time it's just taking money for nothing, or charging way more than that's worth. That's not admirable. So fuck them.
There is really nothing wrong with the idea of shelter as a service (i.e. renting a place to live). The problem is more with buildings as an investment, whether in the form of landlords or home owners living in their investment. NIMBYs are in large part caused by the latter to take just one negative example.
I read this and immediately wrote a letter to the faceless corporation that owns and manages the building where I live. I told them how much I appreciate them and how I defend them when people criticize them for frequently out of service elevators, constant false fire alarms, and any other thing that people don’t like. I offered to pay more rent because I feel so bad that they get criticized at all. They said yes, so now I’m paying twice as much because they’re such heroes and I’m just a lowly renter. All hail beautiful landlords.