Quote:
Originally Posted by ozone
This is a simplistic and erroneous view of the typical renter. You shit on all renters and yet the truth is that the renter often cares more than absentee landlord does
|
While the tenants live there and so they will be more caring about immediate events than absentee landlords, the sad fact is that tenants don't have the financial stake in the properties that landlord owners do, and both groups of people will be much less likely to care about a neighborhood than owner-occupiers, who both live there AND have a financial stake in it.
When owner occupiers don't improve their properties, nearly always it is because they can't afford to do so and are they are barely hanging on, given the size of their their mortgage and other debts.
This was certainly the case in the 2008-2014 period when many owners were "upside-down", "underwater" or had "scuba mortgages", where what was owed against the property was more than the property value. We were fortunate not to have a more severe property crash simply because most owners stayed put. They mostly stayed put because:
1. Forgiven debt was counted as "income", giving those who walked away from their mortgages a huge tax penalty,
2. Inertia (moving is a pain), and
3. In most cases abandoning the home meant paying as much or even more to rent somewhere else anyway. So the owners might as well stay put until property values rebound, as they have since done.
As for absentee landlords? When gentrification happens, they suddenly DO have a stake in improving their properties, so they can charge higher rents to more affluent tenants. Tenants are fungible.
Absentee landlords are also vulnerable to being "underwater" or "upside down", just like owner occupiers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ozone
and it's really the neglectful property owners who are most to blame for the poor conditions of neighborhoods.
|
As above, not so. Being "upside down" or "underwater" is a much larger factor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ozone
It's the renters who provide the labor force for those neighborhood jobs and it's the renter who will be the most consistent in putting money back into neighborhood businesses. And it's the renter who allows the property owner to own the property and make a profit and therefore is the market . So to say that the renter takes on none of the responsibility is a complete misunderstanding of how the economy actually works.
|
However, tenants are fungible, and if more affluent tenants willing to pay more for a place can be found, they will be found.
While it is a bummer that decent lower income people are often pushed out of gentrifying neighborhoods as well as the riff-raff, I don't see how this can be prevented without hampering gentrification, which on balance is (1) always better than the alternative of stagnation and (2) often inevitable, as BillSimmons noted with respect to Oak Park getting the "spillover" from Midtown and in fact becoming a "Midtown Annex".
As the old saying goes, "The rain falls upon the just and the unjust alike", and just as rent controls hamper gentrification because they try to prevent landlords from winning, I don't see how we can prevent the impoverished but decent people from losing. In the end, the market is and will be more powerful than any political edict.