I think the landlord problem's another one of those areas where all the options are ugly because we don't do what we should do, which is have something as critical as shelter 100% guaranteed by society with zero strings.
Which is itself independent from the question of whether landlords should even be a thing that exist, but regardless of that it's only in the best interest of absolute monstrous human beings to have the question of whether someone else is homeless be up to a landlord.
Landlords that aren't trash human beings don't want that weight on them or their tenants, and obviously no one wants to be at risk of homelessness.
The answer is that we should live in a society where any given individual's ability to have SOME form of safe and secure shelter is not in question, so that the question of whether to kick out your hostile roommate is no longer a moral dilemma at all. Until we make that happen, we all have to make our own choices in those dilemmas -- this is the moral brutalization of every citizen living under unchecked sadistic capitalism.
To go further on that branch of conversation would probably be getting pretty far afield from this thread's specific topic. But I just think it's fair to acknowledge that, yeah, even those of us who hate landlords as a general class are aware that nuanced situations can exist. I think I've shared my positive experiences with landlords in previous threads on the subject. And, in the spirit of nuance, I don't think "people who are subletting a room" and "roommates who are primarily responsible for their lease" are who we're talking about when we say "fuck landlords".
That's fair and I essentially agree with you in the context you presented.
Evictions and the actions of landlords as they relate to the pandemic are absolutely on topic, but GET OUT THE GUILLOTINE posts about landlords are not.
I have to admit that I’m only just now in the process of wrapping my head around the whole “fuck landlords” thing, because where I live (Switzerland) about 50% of the population rents, and many of them do so out of choice, i.e. affording a house at some point isn’t the obvious and only endgame for many. We’re likely to remain tenants for the rest of our lives and we’re okay with this. If there is a “fuck landlords” conversation happening here, it seems to be much less part of the left-wing mainstream, which talks a lot about fair rental rates and the state needing to provide affordable flats to let, but I honestly didn’t start hearing the discourse about the systemic issues until a year ago or so, and much more during the last half year, for obvious reasons. The image of the landlord as a Dickensian horror is simply not part of the broader discourse here, it would seem. I wonder whether that is also because there is much more of a functioning social safety net than there is in the US or the UK.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I have to admit that I’m only just now in the process of wrapping my head around the whole “fuck landlords” thing, because where I live (Switzerland) about 50% of the population rents, and many of them do so out of choice, i.e. affording a house at some point isn’t the obvious and only endgame for many. We’re likely to remain tenants for the rest of our lives and we’re okay with this. If there is a “fuck landlords” conversation happening here, it seems to be much less part of the left-wing mainstream, which talks a lot about fair rental rates and the state needing to provide affordable flats to let, but I honestly didn’t start hearing the discourse about the systemic issues until a year ago or so, and much more during the last half year, for obvious reasons. The image of the landlord as a Dickensian horror is simply not part of the broader discourse here, it would seem. I wonder whether that is also because there is much more of a functioning social safety net than there is in the US or the UK.
We have weak tenant protection and even weaker enforcement, basically. And there are a lot of shitty corporate landlords who are perfectly happy to let their buildings decline into a legally uninhabitable state because their tenants have nowhere else to go and therefore no leverage, or "evict" tenants by tripling the rent or just harassing them until they leave (actually illegal, but good luck getting anywhere with that).
I rent by choice because I'm not ready to commit to a location. I think there'll always be a market for that even if basic housing is 100% guaranteed.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The image of the landlord as a Dickensian horror is simply not part of the broader discourse here, it would seem.
Could be worse.
Could be a Lovecraftian horror. That’s probably the second worst kind of landlord.
Drez, you are a constant delight, especially in these dark times.
Dare I ask what's the worst kind?
Trump?
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Update thread is kind of dead, so I'll gnash my teeth here. Czech Republic is spiking like crazy, 252 new cases yesterday and the heat map of the country is shading red in multiple areas. There's talk of re-uppiing mask requirements on all public transportation, but nothing solid at this point and they should have been doing this last week anyway. More people are masking, but nowhere near enough to make a difference at the moment. Just masks won't be enough at this point, we're going to have to start shutting down indoor spaces again, but given how slowly the government is moving on the low hanging fruit, I'm confident that more drastic steps won't happen until it's far too late.
Good times.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I have to admit that I’m only just now in the process of wrapping my head around the whole “fuck landlords” thing, because where I live (Switzerland) about 50% of the population rents, and many of them do so out of choice, i.e. affording a house at some point isn’t the obvious and only endgame for many. We’re likely to remain tenants for the rest of our lives and we’re okay with this. If there is a “fuck landlords” conversation happening here, it seems to be much less part of the left-wing mainstream, which talks a lot about fair rental rates and the state needing to provide affordable flats to let, but I honestly didn’t start hearing the discourse about the systemic issues until a year ago or so, and much more during the last half year, for obvious reasons. The image of the landlord as a Dickensian horror is simply not part of the broader discourse here, it would seem. I wonder whether that is also because there is much more of a functioning social safety net than there is in the US or the UK.
Germanic countries have rent control, fixed rates for rent increases, and price fixes or freezes as well as a functioning renters association and many laws favoring renters. It's not that way at all in the US.
I have to admit that I’m only just now in the process of wrapping my head around the whole “fuck landlords” thing, because where I live (Switzerland) about 50% of the population rents, and many of them do so out of choice, i.e. affording a house at some point isn’t the obvious and only endgame for many. We’re likely to remain tenants for the rest of our lives and we’re okay with this. If there is a “fuck landlords” conversation happening here, it seems to be much less part of the left-wing mainstream, which talks a lot about fair rental rates and the state needing to provide affordable flats to let, but I honestly didn’t start hearing the discourse about the systemic issues until a year ago or so, and much more during the last half year, for obvious reasons. The image of the landlord as a Dickensian horror is simply not part of the broader discourse here, it would seem. I wonder whether that is also because there is much more of a functioning social safety net than there is in the US or the UK.
Germanic countries have rent control, fixed rates for rent increases, and price fixes or freezes as well as a functioning renters association and many laws favoring renters. It's not that way at all in the US.
They are also actually keeping up with housing demand through a combination of slower population growth + actually building enough (including a lot of publicly-funded) housing. You need both or you just end up replacing high prices with not actually being able to rent a place to live in (without waiting for months or years).
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
Edit: Mod already smacked down this bullshit earlier this morning.
Enc on
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
Present circumstances notwithstanding, you sign a contract for renting, you choose to abide by it or lose access. The landlord isn’t allowed to arbitrarily evict you. A lot of the thesis here seems to suggest they are solely responsible for choosing if you get a home or not, which is problematic.
BUT, that said, not entirely wrong. Collusion amongst at-scale land barons is common and racism is endemic. By volume in the market, these are the folks who rent the majority of properties and, frankly, I have little sympathy for such folk as this circumstance is the risk of their chosen investment, and in many ways, our economic problems are significantly tied to rental market inflation by these folks after the housing crisis.
Looking past that though, the majority of people who rent out properties are NOT these people, and though the volume on the market is small, but sub-let, rented out rooms, or second properties are the majority of folks who are doing renting and their concerns and situations are typically very different. Subletting a room and needing to kick someone out for flagrantly violating the lease agreement via nonpayment or violence or threats is totally valid. Most small scale landlords are either renters themselves who have had circumstances change to price them out of their own homes or those who just barely broke through and managed to luck into a bedroom they aren't using to help pay for their property costs. Some end up with two or three properties and end up much closer on the gradient to the land barons, and as that happens lose any sense of sympathy from me as it scales up.
Our present circumstances are unprecedented, and most of that second group of renting folk SHOULD be standing with the protesters. This is a failure of government, as is the lack of alternative housing markets or controls on rent to keep people from being priced out from housing rental or ownership via too-low of wages. The cycle begins and ends with preying on both renters and small scale landlords to benefit the super wealthy mega-landlord barons, as it always has, and we should acknowledge there is nuance here.
Do I care about the CEO of ZOM*'s bottom line is? Fuck no.
Do I care about the guy who will lose his vacation home if he doesn't evict his renter for nonpayment? Eh, not really. That sucks for him but someone having a house is more important.
Do I care about the guy who will lose his home because he also is facing economic hardship and let out one of the rooms in his family's house to help make ends meet? Absolutely, though renting is still an option if things go sideways with the house.
Do I care about the subleting renter who will lose their apartment and ability to get another one when their roommate flakes out on rent? These are the folks I care about the most, because its this or homelessness.
(*one of the largest rental companies in the country)
I don't know where to put this, but I really need to vent about this.
My birthday was at the beginning of April, when our case counts nationally were at 32k. In North Carolina, and specifically my town, case counts were in the sub-100s.
My county issued a lockdown pretty early, and everything closed.
I was pretty upset, because I normally don't do things for my birthday, but this year I had made explicit plans, and was excited about them. But whatever, life goes on, it's a pandemic not normal times.
However, I'm getting mad all over again when I see people I know, who are also people posting things about how we should be masking etc, going out to eat at restaurants now, for their birthday. Cases are THROUGH THE ROOF now, and this is the worst time to be doing this.
It also just, sucks, because I gave up doing something I'd planned for a literal year because going to a restaurant is a Bad Idea in this pandemic, and now it's like "oh great, my sacrifice means fucking nothing."
Just, argh
The metaphor that this is a big group project, and we're all failing it, keeps hitting home again and again. I rarely leave my house. I wear a mask and bring hand sanitizer when I even walk around my neighborhood to get my mail. I haven't gone anywhere but the grocery store and my office (on a campus that is closed for the summer, and I wore my mask!) and I see people who should know better posting smiling photos at bars and restaurants in areas with huge outbreaks.
I don't know where to put this, but I really need to vent about this.
My birthday was at the beginning of April, when our case counts nationally were at 32k. In North Carolina, and specifically my town, case counts were in the sub-100s.
My county issued a lockdown pretty early, and everything closed.
I was pretty upset, because I normally don't do things for my birthday, but this year I had made explicit plans, and was excited about them. But whatever, life goes on, it's a pandemic not normal times.
However, I'm getting mad all over again when I see people I know, who are also people posting things about how we should be masking etc, going out to eat at restaurants now, for their birthday. Cases are THROUGH THE ROOF now, and this is the worst time to be doing this.
It also just, sucks, because I gave up doing something I'd planned for a literal year because going to a restaurant is a Bad Idea in this pandemic, and now it's like "oh great, my sacrifice means fucking nothing."
Just, argh
The metaphor that this is a big group project, and we're all failing it, keeps hitting home again and again. I rarely leave my house. I wear a mask and bring hand sanitizer when I even walk around my neighborhood to get my mail. I haven't gone anywhere but the grocery store and my office (on a campus that is closed for the summer, and I wore my mask!) and I see people who should know better posting smiling photos at bars and restaurants in areas with huge outbreaks.
I'm also in NC and still regularly see our office's security guards walking around with either no mask or it pulled dow to expose their nose, and our UPS courier refuses to mask up at all cause he just admitted to believing the virus is a hoax.
Meanwhile I, the only person in the mailroom for two weeks at a time, am always wearing a mask and gloves even when there's no one around cause my boss actually gives a shit.
At least my sister's October wedding has been indefinitely postphoned- not because of any rational action on her part, though. The venue said Fuck Everything and shut down, which forced her hand. But hey, at least I don't have to worry about my parents potentially dying of a pandemic because of that wedding, now.
Mx. Quill on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
The image included in this NYT tweet makes me dizzy.
Schools are not planning to follow a traditional bell schedule.
Instead, individual pods of students will travel through unidirectional hallways at specific times, including, in some cases, for pre-scheduled bathroom breaks.
Edit - "Pods of students." Fucking hell did I wake up in a cyberpunk hellscape?
Schools are not planning to follow a traditional bell schedule.
Instead, individual pods of students will travel through unidirectional hallways at specific times, including, in some cases, for pre-scheduled bathroom breaks.
Edit - "Pods of students." Fucking hell did I wake up in a cyberpunk hellscape?
Podding is necessary and had been shown to slow down rates in schools.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Oh I'm not objecting to the act. It's the phrasing that's unsettling to me for some reason.
Good hot fuck Jared Kushner is an embarrassingly, transparently, incompetent sociopath
No wonder he’s been able to endear himself to Trump
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TetraNitroCubaneThe DjinneratorAt the bottom of a bottleRegistered Userregular
The Atlantic has an article out today that's very important, in my opinion, entitled We Need to Talk About Ventilation. I recommend giving it a read.
It seems baffling that despite mounting evidence of its importance, we are stuck practicing hygiene theater—constantly deep cleaning everything—while not noticing the air we breathe.
How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we still have so little guidance about this all-important variable, the very air we breathe?
Strikingly, in one database of more than 1,200 super-spreader events, just one incident is classified as outdoor transmission, where a single person was infected outdoors by their jogging partner, and only 39 are classified as outdoor/indoor events, which doesn’t mean that being outdoors played a role, but it couldn’t be ruled out. The rest were all indoor events, and many involved dozens or hundreds of people at once. Other research points to the same result: Super-spreader events occur overwhelmingly in indoor environments where there are a lot of people.
For example, current WHO guidelines don’t recommend masks indoors if a distance of one meter can be maintained. Similarly, the CDC makes scant reference to the distinction between indoor and outdoor transmission in its mask guidance, and recommends masks in public settings, “especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” However, an aerosol regime would suggest that distancing isn’t as protective indoors as one would hope, especially since people eating and drinking tend to be talking while unmasked. (The CDC seems to recognize this when it recommends hosting gatherings outdoors, though it still officially stresses transmission through droplets).
Under an aerosol regime, we would have different rules for the indoors and the outdoors (especially since, in addition to the diluting power of air, sunlight quickly deactivates viruses.) We would mandate masks indoors regardless of distancing, but not necessarily outdoors. Marr told me that she wears her mask outdoors only if she’s interacting with people, if she’s in a crowd, or if she cannot maintain distance. Yet, in the United States, many locales are mandating masks indoors and outdoors under the same rules, forcing even the solitary person walking her dog to mask up. And there are places, such as Chicago, where beaches are closed because officials fear crowds, but indoor restaurants and gyms remain open with mild restrictions.
There's a lot of good information in the article, with good sourcing. It really does seem to be becoming quite apparently that airflow and ventilation are the critical factors we need to be paying more attention to - more than sanitizing and wiping down surfaces.
Schools are not planning to follow a traditional bell schedule.
Instead, individual pods of students will travel through unidirectional hallways at specific times, including, in some cases, for pre-scheduled bathroom breaks.
Edit - "Pods of students." Fucking hell did I wake up in a cyberpunk hellscape?
"Unidirectional hallways" is a helluva thing. The school my wife works at is basically built in a spoke pattern where all the hallways are dead-ends with exit-only security doors. So, unless they intend on having the kids leave the school, walk across campus and re-enter the main building by the front office, this ain't gonna work.
Even if their plan was "one-way at certain times" there's numerous other issues like the fact that getting children to do things en masse is like herding cats.
Scheduled bathroom breaks do not seem like a good idea.
The way schools work is already deeply unsympathetic to newly menstruating teens. I can't imagine having to deal with scheduled breaks (in groups, no less!) on top of that.
I assume all of that requires a good number of students to stay home per day simply because all of that has to limit the number of kids who can be at school compared to normal times?
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Update thread is kind of dead, so I'll gnash my teeth here. Czech Republic is spiking like crazy, 252 new cases yesterday and the heat map of the country is shading red in multiple areas. There's talk of re-uppiing mask requirements on all public transportation, but nothing solid at this point and they should have been doing this last week anyway. More people are masking, but nowhere near enough to make a difference at the moment. Just masks won't be enough at this point, we're going to have to start shutting down indoor spaces again, but given how slowly the government is moving on the low hanging fruit, I'm confident that more drastic steps won't happen until it's far too late.
Good times.
Update thread is supposed to move slower than this one. And yeah, Czechia seems to be caught in that same second wave rise I just posted about being seen elsewhere in Europe. SARS2 wasn't eradicated, and once conditions return for its spread, it spreads again. Damn virus just perfectly exploits all our weaknesses like sadistic governance and complacency.
Update thread is kind of dead, so I'll gnash my teeth here. Czech Republic is spiking like crazy, 252 new cases yesterday and the heat map of the country is shading red in multiple areas. There's talk of re-uppiing mask requirements on all public transportation, but nothing solid at this point and they should have been doing this last week anyway. More people are masking, but nowhere near enough to make a difference at the moment. Just masks won't be enough at this point, we're going to have to start shutting down indoor spaces again, but given how slowly the government is moving on the low hanging fruit, I'm confident that more drastic steps won't happen until it's far too late.
Good times.
Update thread is supposed to move slower than this one. And yeah, Czechia seems to be caught in that same second wave rise I just posted about being seen elsewhere in Europe. SARS2 wasn't eradicated, and once conditions return for its spread, it spreads again. Damn virus just perfectly exploits all our weaknesses like sadistic governance and complacency.
Yeah, but now it’s even slower because there’s just not a lot of new news coming out about this. How it spreads, what it does (sorta), what limited treatments there are for it, all that. We’ve been reduced to watching what countries and their citizens do with this information. Or not do mostly. Sigh.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
So on a lighter note, Internet historian has collected some of the odder/embarassing parts of this whole fiasco (as well as having an incredibly creepy add for Nord vpn). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rRIqrWuYy4
Posts
Which is itself independent from the question of whether landlords should even be a thing that exist, but regardless of that it's only in the best interest of absolute monstrous human beings to have the question of whether someone else is homeless be up to a landlord.
Landlords that aren't trash human beings don't want that weight on them or their tenants, and obviously no one wants to be at risk of homelessness.
That's fair and I essentially agree with you in the context you presented.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
My girlfriend's stepmom just passed away. No covid test confirmed but the main contributor to her decline was breathing problems, so, yeah.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Could be worse.
Could be a Lovecraftian horror. That’s probably the second worst kind of landlord.
Drez, you are a constant delight, especially in these dark times.
Dare I ask what's the worst kind?
We have weak tenant protection and even weaker enforcement, basically. And there are a lot of shitty corporate landlords who are perfectly happy to let their buildings decline into a legally uninhabitable state because their tenants have nowhere else to go and therefore no leverage, or "evict" tenants by tripling the rent or just harassing them until they leave (actually illegal, but good luck getting anywhere with that).
I rent by choice because I'm not ready to commit to a location. I think there'll always be a market for that even if basic housing is 100% guaranteed.
Trump?
Good times.
They are also actually keeping up with housing demand through a combination of slower population growth + actually building enough (including a lot of publicly-funded) housing. You need both or you just end up replacing high prices with not actually being able to rent a place to live in (without waiting for months or years).
BUT, that said, not entirely wrong. Collusion amongst at-scale land barons is common and racism is endemic. By volume in the market, these are the folks who rent the majority of properties and, frankly, I have little sympathy for such folk as this circumstance is the risk of their chosen investment, and in many ways, our economic problems are significantly tied to rental market inflation by these folks after the housing crisis.
Looking past that though, the majority of people who rent out properties are NOT these people, and though the volume on the market is small, but sub-let, rented out rooms, or second properties are the majority of folks who are doing renting and their concerns and situations are typically very different. Subletting a room and needing to kick someone out for flagrantly violating the lease agreement via nonpayment or violence or threats is totally valid. Most small scale landlords are either renters themselves who have had circumstances change to price them out of their own homes or those who just barely broke through and managed to luck into a bedroom they aren't using to help pay for their property costs. Some end up with two or three properties and end up much closer on the gradient to the land barons, and as that happens lose any sense of sympathy from me as it scales up.
Our present circumstances are unprecedented, and most of that second group of renting folk SHOULD be standing with the protesters. This is a failure of government, as is the lack of alternative housing markets or controls on rent to keep people from being priced out from housing rental or ownership via too-low of wages. The cycle begins and ends with preying on both renters and small scale landlords to benefit the super wealthy mega-landlord barons, as it always has, and we should acknowledge there is nuance here.
(*one of the largest rental companies in the country)
My birthday was at the beginning of April, when our case counts nationally were at 32k. In North Carolina, and specifically my town, case counts were in the sub-100s.
My county issued a lockdown pretty early, and everything closed.
I was pretty upset, because I normally don't do things for my birthday, but this year I had made explicit plans, and was excited about them. But whatever, life goes on, it's a pandemic not normal times.
However, I'm getting mad all over again when I see people I know, who are also people posting things about how we should be masking etc, going out to eat at restaurants now, for their birthday. Cases are THROUGH THE ROOF now, and this is the worst time to be doing this.
It also just, sucks, because I gave up doing something I'd planned for a literal year because going to a restaurant is a Bad Idea in this pandemic, and now it's like "oh great, my sacrifice means fucking nothing."
Just, argh
The metaphor that this is a big group project, and we're all failing it, keeps hitting home again and again. I rarely leave my house. I wear a mask and bring hand sanitizer when I even walk around my neighborhood to get my mail. I haven't gone anywhere but the grocery store and my office (on a campus that is closed for the summer, and I wore my mask!) and I see people who should know better posting smiling photos at bars and restaurants in areas with huge outbreaks.
I'm also in NC and still regularly see our office's security guards walking around with either no mask or it pulled dow to expose their nose, and our UPS courier refuses to mask up at all cause he just admitted to believing the virus is a hoax.
Meanwhile I, the only person in the mailroom for two weeks at a time, am always wearing a mask and gloves even when there's no one around cause my boss actually gives a shit.
At least my sister's October wedding has been indefinitely postphoned- not because of any rational action on her part, though. The venue said Fuck Everything and shut down, which forced her hand. But hey, at least I don't have to worry about my parents potentially dying of a pandemic because of that wedding, now.
Edit - "Pods of students." Fucking hell did I wake up in a cyberpunk hellscape?
Think of it like whales which travel in pods. And whales are cool.
That grouping is called a murder.
*nods*
Okay, the second.
No wonder he’s been able to endear himself to Trump
There's a lot of good information in the article, with good sourcing. It really does seem to be becoming quite apparently that airflow and ventilation are the critical factors we need to be paying more attention to - more than sanitizing and wiping down surfaces.
This is purposeful politicide, they wanted to harm and kill their political opponents.
Seriously there have been coups d'état for less
I was thinking two kids in a trenchcoat.
"Unidirectional hallways" is a helluva thing. The school my wife works at is basically built in a spoke pattern where all the hallways are dead-ends with exit-only security doors. So, unless they intend on having the kids leave the school, walk across campus and re-enter the main building by the front office, this ain't gonna work.
Even if their plan was "one-way at certain times" there's numerous other issues like the fact that getting children to do things en masse is like herding cats.
The way schools work is already deeply unsympathetic to newly menstruating teens. I can't imagine having to deal with scheduled breaks (in groups, no less!) on top of that.
Update thread is supposed to move slower than this one. And yeah, Czechia seems to be caught in that same second wave rise I just posted about being seen elsewhere in Europe. SARS2 wasn't eradicated, and once conditions return for its spread, it spreads again. Damn virus just perfectly exploits all our weaknesses like sadistic governance and complacency.
"we will serve you no matter how you feel"
Kansas journalist:
We are so screwed.
I do not believe most of these governments are willing to crack down on this stuff.
Yeah, but now it’s even slower because there’s just not a lot of new news coming out about this. How it spreads, what it does (sorta), what limited treatments there are for it, all that. We’ve been reduced to watching what countries and their citizens do with this information. Or not do mostly. Sigh.
Ooh, speaking of Coronavirus, how is India doing?
Abdhyius was saying that they were doing pretty good and I kind of remember them being a shit show.