Kirsten Anderberg: Mortgages Versus Rent

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 10 2005 @ 04:09 PM UTC

I just had a woman write me about this article saying that it is ridiculous to say that landlords are uncaring greedy pigs. She actually tried to say that MOST landlords are caring, kind, giving people!!! I am sorry but I can only LAUGH at that fiction!! Maybe in class insulated middle class land landlords are humane, but not in poverty world!

She then went on to say that immigrants from Asia come here and buy houses and stores, so anyone could. So, let me get this straight - by her theory of hard work buys houses, every single farm worker in America would own a house from picking her food 8+ hours a day, before SHE would! And geez, the whole American Indian on reservations thing, that genocide, is the American Indians' fault, according to this theory. I mean, Condi Rice is black and not poor, so that PROVES there is NO racial discrimination in America, right?! NO! NOT RIGHT!

She then went on to explain how her mom was poor and she is not and that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty by "not taking vacations," and by "saving, saving, saving..." Jesus Christ! So a welfare mom, earning min wage, paying childcare min wage to work, is supposed to save money from WHERE again? She does not have "vacation" money to save!!! Oh my god, the insulation of the middle classes truly shocks the hell out of me! But she exemplified this article beautifully. - Kirsten A

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 10 2005 @ 07:43 PM UTC

I often wonder why land reform is a non-issue in the US. It is a disgrace that homelessness can exist in a country with such a staggering land area.

For years, I dreamed of buying a piece of property and putting up a straw-bale house. There are few places left in the US where building codes--namely, the absence thereof--makes this possible. Johnson County, Missouri, reputedly has no building codes. (They do come under federal guidelines requiring at least one acre for a residence with a septic system.)

I have trouble understanding why more people are not highly pissed that they can't purchase an acre or more for a reasonable price and build anything they want on it--and live in a camper trailer while they build, if they so desire.

If people in this country must live at a subsistence level--which they mostly do--they would be far better off living in self-sustaining communities relying on subsistence agriculture, on land they occupied as freeholders. (As opposed to sitting in a cubicle all day at work, for the priviledge of living in a rented box somewhere--and facing the prospect of homelessness with every layoff.)

It seems to me that there should be someone out there who would be willing to buy a 100+ acre farm, give it away in parcels to the poor and/or homeless, and let them establish a community on it. There are doubtless many objections to this. I live in a poor rural community, myself. There are people here who do live in camper trailers, and who are unlikely to ever build anything better, since they have no money. There are people here who do without water for days or weeks, because they can't afford to have it hauled, and who have septic failures they can't afford to fix. Yet, in the past four years, this community has made mighty progress: Housing and properties have been cleaned up and fixed up. Some of us are planning rainwater-collection systems. We've made progress simply because most of us own our homes--modest though they may be. And by modest, I mean that a lot of the homes here are single-wide mobile homes--often old ones, at that.

And we have a great community--where people routinely help each other, check on each other, and share work and tools and firewood.

Sound grim? Poverty, bad housing, bad plumbing, iffy water supplies, cutting firewood to keep warm in winter? The folks up in the city have many of the same problems. The big difference is that we can solve our problems: We are working toward rainwater collection; we can cut firewood for heat, and we know how to fix the plumbing ourselves. We could probably grow our own food, if push came to shove.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 11 2005 @ 05:47 AM UTC

check out culberson county, in texas. i bought 5 acres of land for $500

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 10 2005 @ 10:42 PM UTC

I've had the sad experience (i.e., disappointment) of suffering with landlords who claimed to be left communists, as well as bosses who claimed to be anarchists. This is a particularly sad experience because we all want so much to believe that when people profess to hold an anti-capitalist ideology -- especially one to which we, ourselves are dedicated (I, myself, am sort of an anarchist turning into a left communist), they are going to live up to their beliefs regardless of their economic circumstances. But I have found that class position almost always determines behavior far more than desired or professed ideology -- whether we're talking about bosses or landlords.

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Authored by: Anarcho_NerD on Friday, February 11 2005 @ 05:50 AM UTC

its still important to recognise that we are indeed, much to our dismay, living in a capitalist society. Bosses or landlords may be anarchist(perhaps feemarket... which is not much of an anarchist at all) or former anarchist or commies..... We all have to make do. Being poor, hungry, and unhealth does not make for an adequate anarchist. In fact, these are the things we are fighting against.

---
It takes a long time to die from a watsed life

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 11 2005 @ 07:35 AM UTC

Yes - it is not easy to buy a house. Now that the stock market is being treated as the gambling house that it is, rich people are buying up more and more housing as a "safe" investment. And even for middle class people - housing is not easy to come by. <br><br>

BUT - owning a home is one of the best ways to fuck the landlords. What better way to screw the landlords than to not contribute month by month into their skeezy pockets. Teaming up with others (whether that's a partner or a best friend) is one of the best ways to buy a house, although difficult with banks. Then again, you save and save and then - op, you get laid off (which is probably gonna be my story in the next two weeks). Or, you save and save and then your kid breaks an arm. In many ways, it's difficult to win. And it sounds like cohousing is a bust idea for working class folks. But there are organizations that exist specifically to help poor people buy homes. Given that a social revolution or even economic redistribution is not on the horizon any time soon, owning a home seems like the best option to me.

And for those who can afford to buy homes, don't become landlords. Or if you must rent out rooms, don't be a shitty absentee landlord. And if you're a renter, rent from individuals who might have an extra room or two homes, not hundreds and hundreds.

And - consider moving to the Southeast. There's cheaper housing here than anywhere else and LOTS of good work to be done.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 11 2005 @ 09:07 AM UTC

(in reference to the first comment) speaking as an Asian immigrant who came here at age 6... i need to remind people that a lot of us were already middle class back in the old country. but upon coming here, my parents couldn't get decent jobs despite their college degrees. so, they toiled like other working class people toil. but, they had a strong middle class backing back home to always be there for 'em. and the American middle class was always there to coddle them, at the expense of their American working class peers.

middle class people stick together, in any country.

much much more than the working class, which in America, has fallen under the spell of the middle class so much that it's fucking frightening.

but we all know about all that, so i'll stop here.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 12 2005 @ 07:55 AM UTC

I have had several people write me and say that they had a house and lost it during costly life situations, but I STILL SAY that they were in a hell of a lot better situation STARTING WITH HOME OWNERSHIP going into these crises than someone who had ZERO to begin with, who had a high priced rental, not a home they owned. I do not understand why this is so hard for people to comprehend. Yes, having property equity when you all of a sudden have high cost necessities, is OF COURSE, going to be easier if you START with property! Even if you lose the property, I consider that a safety net most poor folks never had the initial luxury of having. Let's put it this way - if I had to choose between having property I owned or having no property to save or pawn when heading into financial struggles, I would prefer the first scenario and that says it all to me. Again, having something to lose is not the same as having nothing to lose. ~ kirsten anderberg

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 12 2005 @ 09:51 AM UTC

I agree with you overall, but the blanket statements you make about home ownership are not very accurate. When somebody buys a house with a mortgage, they own nothing. The bank owns their house, and all they have is a huge debt to the bank. For the first several years, an overwhelming percentage of what is paid out in mortgage payments only covers the interest, so equity is built extremely slowly. And regardless of equity, missed payments can mean foreclosure, which means the supposed "owner" will lose everything she has put in, including her down payment. Predatory lending practices aimed at low-income home buyers are often designed with this very outcome in mind.

Many "homeowners", who in fact own nothing except for a large debt, are working poor and have been manipulated by an unrealistic vision of homeownership that can leave them worse off than before. Homeowners, including landlords, come from a broad spectrum of class -- although obviously they don't include the desperately poor -- so it doesn't make any sense to paint with such a broad brush, and it's actually unfair to those who are struggling to cobble together some kind of social security for themselves amidst a govt that has completely rescinded that responsibility.

Mortgage payments can often be no higher than rents. The major obstacle to home ownership is coming up with the down payment and satisfying the bank's requirements to become a borrower.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 12 2005 @ 02:10 PM UTC

Hi.

Hopefully, you can be relieved in that I am a land "lord" who makes no profit off of the people renting his house. Surely I'm the exeption and not the rule. I make about 55K a year (at a job where I'm not medically insured) and admit that any financial problems I've had are of my own making. I've had a good experience in renting my house out to some people I know. They've taken good care of it. In return, I'm very lenient on due dates (if any). We all have a verbal agreement that works for all of us.

I long for a classless, propertyless, and stateless world and I do what I can to make it happen.

check out my blog http://www.livejournal.com/users/born_stubborn

I've come around to a more anarcho-syndicalist way of thinking, but I feel trapped by this society. Still, I help those less fortunate than me any way I can. I live simply (with my in-laws).

Love you all. :-)

There are some heartless bastards out there.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 13 2005 @ 09:42 AM UTC

"Hopefully, you can be relieved in that I am a land "lord" who makes no profit off of the people renting his house."

When you say you make "no profit" off the renters, we need to look at that. If you mean you are splitting the mortgage payment among the renters, and not charging more than your mortgage, that is still making a profit as they are buying you property.

To actually make NO profit off your renters, their rent would need to be actually buying shares of ownership in the property by paying its mortgage. - Kirsten Anderberg

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 13 2005 @ 12:59 PM UTC

Yes, you're right. Ideally, every rental situation should be rent-to own. And while I'm not disupiting that the owner is a lot more privileged than the renter, there are a lot of expenses involved that I'm not sure the renter would be willing or able to take on.

I don't know what the poster above meant when he said he's not making a profit off his renter. I own a two-family house that I live in, and I do make a profit off my renter. However, if I wanted to make her into a half-owner of the property, she would have to contribute to half of the expenses. She would have had to pay $1500 up front for half of the $3000 roof repair, $500 for half of the cost of renovating her aparment, $200 for half the cost of a new hot water heater, half of the $200 a month heating bill in the winter, half of the $750 a year insurance bill, and half of the $1500 a year in property taxes, plus half of the monthly mortage payment. This would total a lot more than what she pays in rent, since she has a Section 8 housing subsidy, and more than half of her rent is paid for by the city.

It's true that the reason she could not possibly afford all of this is because of the unfair economic disatavantage she finds herself in in the first place. I agree that it isn't right, but what would be the practical solution? This issue is not nearly as simple as you're making it out to be.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 13 2005 @ 02:27 PM UTC

It actually IS as easy, to the lower class, as saying REDISTRIBUTE THE DAMNED WEALTH so that the privileged do not get this power over land and people. That is the answer. But that would mean people with privilege have to accept having LESS RIGHT NOW. And that answer is not easy for the privileged, but it IS that easy for the disadvantaged. This is all about liberal people wanting to keep their class privilege with no guilt, otherwise the answer is easy, redistribute the property NOW. It is not nearly as complicated as the middle class and up would have you believe. It is actually HARDER to maintain this gross unnatural class chasm, maintaining these hierarchies, than it is to share naturally and live cooperatively, is my assessment.

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