Landlordship from the Perspective of a Working Class Home Owner
One of the biggest arguments we on the Left — that is, the faction that still actually supports the working class’ economic interests rather than operating as a wing/proponent of the system exploiting us — are often embroiled in the de-commodifying of certain essentials. One of these in particular is home ownership, i.e., decent shelter as a human right, rather than as an luxury you enjoy only if you can pay for it.
As a result, landlords — who make money by owning property rather than doing work to earn it via paycheck — are not looked at very fondly by progressive socialists. In fact, there is a common trope depicting all landlords as being amoral, miserly rich folk who charge inordinate amounts of money for working class people simply to have a roof over their heads and protection from the mercies — both natural and man-made — that come with being forced to dwell on the streets (or in the woods; take your pick of outdoor environments).
Not to mention the stultifying stress of worrying about ending up on the streets if you experience one of the periodic economic crises all too common for members of the working class. This fear can be crippling and it’s a source of much mental anguish that sometimes to leads to mental and physical illness. I know that I worry about it all the time.
This trope is certainly not fictitious in our capitalist society, as there are many filthy rich robber barons who make a fortune off of bilking working class people for the necessity of a dwelling place. Rent is often a huge expenditure of the very limited monthly income at the disposal of increasingly large segments of the working class. And if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford your own home due to having decent enough credit to get past the loan officer, than your “landlord” becomes the bank for a great many years despite what it says on the deed — and your mortgage payments become the equivalent of tenant rent payments for the duration.
Further, the multitude of property taxes you will have to continue paying even after your debt with the bank is (eventually, as in after a couple of decades) squared effectively makes your city and county governments secondary landlords of a sort.
As a result, we have far too many homeless in the USA today, at a point in time where our post-industrial society has more than enough resources to comfortably house everyone (there is currently an estimated 28 vacant homes for every homeless person in the USA). Yet, both remarkably and predictably, we are now just beginning to question the commodification of housing and other necessities in our winner-take-all, you can-only-have-it-if-you-can-pay-for-it capitalist system.
So, Now That I’m a Home Owner…
Like many workers at this point in time under neoliberal capitalism, the only way I could possibly acquire a home is to inherit one. This is something I recently did. So, are my opinions changed?
No, not at all… albeit with certain caveats for financially strapped working class people who manage to inherit a home that they want to make a go of renting for very needed supplementary income; as opposed to wealthy real estate owners that can just as easily make heaps of money off the speculator market. This I will explain.
Let us consider how things are very different for struggling workers who manage to acquire a home than those wealthy misers who are the main antagonists of many stories in both real-life and fiction.
Capitalists do not tend to do any useful work. They simply own productive property and services workers need for both physical survival and/or to maintain proper psychological health. Or, which help us live more comfortably. This is not including all the junk we’re sold and the plethora of things — both useful and otherwise — which we have to constantly re-purchase due to the capitalist scourge of planned obsolescence.
For one thing, working class owners of homes (and small businesses) are, as I noted, often struggling. Hence, they absolutely need the type of income that renting out, say, a two-family house can bring them. We do not have trust funds to cover our asses, and cannot rely on family to bail us out of our mistakes or pitfalls (and I’m not saying that we should).
We often have to contend with skill sets that, while possibly helping us make important contributions to society, are nevertheless not financially lucrative under a capitalist system that requires us to pay for everything outside of the air we breathe (at least as of now!). Thus, we do not earn a living materially commensurate with the contributions we may make.
We are also told by Right and Left pundits alike who support the neoliberal capitalist system that we cannot and should not expect to rely on the system itself to bail out workers who get crushed by that system, even as we watch them frequently bail out corporations and banks that routinely fuck up, and which contribute nothing useful to society (as Biden recently did with SVB and Signature banks, something his three predecessors in office also regularly did).
Helping workers in such a fashion is commonly derided even by members of our own class as “hand outs.” The capitalist class, on the other hand, rarely have to do any serious pleading to get such bail-outs when their ventures fail. This is understandable considering how their donations literally support the two man political parties of the duopoly.
How Do I Feel About Having to Participate in the Capitalist Game of Housing Commodification?
Yes, it does suck when I, as a working class socialist, have to charge fellow workers enough rent not only to make a profit so as to supplement my meager income but also to cover the expenses of maintaining the house, including the exorbitantly high city and county taxes. And then there are the quarterly water & sanitation taxes, etc, which can often fly drastically upwards any given year with no prior warning.
This is especially true for workers like me who are not handy and thus have to hire the services of a property management company to handle maintenance tasks. And said tasks can take huge bites out of any profit I may make from the rent payments during the months where they occur, especially if they happen over the course of several months. And this is not to mention the 10% of the rent I need to pay the property management company each month for their services.
The reality of the situation is this, however: like everyone living in this system, I cannot opt out of operating under capitalist rules. That means, unfortunately, that it’s literally impossible to live in a 100% ethical fashion according to socialist/progressive principles in a world that is all about business and commerce rather than common ownership of the industries that would guarantee everyone a nice home. I have to charge for certain services and accoutrements that I provide despite wishing I did not have to. The same goes for every small business owner or those who own a com-modifiable asset.
So, What Would Happen to Struggling Home Owners if They Tried Not to Play by the Rules?
If I did not charge rent for the two-family home I own, not only would I be in severe financial jeopardy myself, but I would be unable to maintain the expenses of keeping the house up for my tenants and in accordance with city safety codes, not to mention paying all the exorbitant local property taxes I mentioned up above.
Moreover, I can end up in serious financial trouble if I do not go through the unfortunate process of screening prospective tenants for credit scores etc (my credit would certainly prevent me from renting a decent place, so I feel it, man!).
This is not a convenient excuse or rationalization but a simple and incontestable fact of life under capitalism. The same goes for my publishing business, but that is a whole other article. I’m going to stick to home ownership for this one.
This is one of the things that totally sucks [insert disgusting image of your choice] about living under capitalism.
Does this make me a hypocrite? If it does, then it can be very cogently argued that capitalism forces many, if not all of us, to be hypocritical to our personal beliefs and values to varying degrees simply in order to survive and to continue offering a certain service to people. This is one of the reasons why I am so opposed to a system that puts me, and everyone else, in such a position.
Whose Side Did I Take During the Moratorium on Eviction During the Pandemic?
There is a problem with the above question: it assumes that in every instance where there is a conflict of interest, that you must always take either one side or the other; and that you invariably have no choice but to take the side that specifically benefits you. It’s part of a common logical fallacy known as a false dilemma.
Yanno, sort of like when you feel the reluctant need to take your spouse’s side even if you know they are a volatile asshole with a big mouth who too often starts the fights they regularly get into. Taking the side against them would be the inherently right thing to do, but it could impact very negatively on you personally, thus creating one of the worst conundrums you could possibly find yourself in: whether to do the right thing in essence or do the beneficial thing for you personally.
It also presumes that this one-sided choice requires me to break with my principle of supporting the working class under capitalism.
Both of the above presumptions are wrong, however. So, let me answer the question in a very straightforward manner.
Regarding the situation during the pandemic, and with the current housing debacle in general: I support the situation of both the tenants and the owners when both are members of the working class who desperately need a place to live and desperately need the income provided by renting the home they own, respectively.
This is in no way akin to siding with wealthy real estate owners who profit off of needlessly fleecing working class tenants and are often guilty of kicking them out of their homes in favor of gentrification.
It is also entirely consistent with a set of socialist principles that I support everyone in the working class, rather than one faction over another (and always choosing the faction I happen to more easily identify with, either emotionally or in terms of circumstance).
What this means is that during times of economic hardship, including during the height of the recent-at-this-writing pandemic where tenants were ordered by the government to stay home from work despite having so many bills to pay (including rent); and working class home owners were disallowed to evict anyone despite requiring rental funds to live, upkeep the house , and pay property & other taxes…
I strongly believe that the government should have stepped in to pay the full rent of the tenants to the home owners (in addition to covering other expenses made extremely hard for all workers by these measures).
In other words, no evictions forcing working class families out into the streets, cramming into overburdened shelters, or begging for the largess of family to take them in (problem tenants who routinely cause trouble for the owner and neighborhood on the legal front may be exceptions to this rule, and possibly should be required to take government-subsidized housing; but that is also a whole other article).
And no struggling working class home owners left unable to support themselves and upkeep the house, or forced to sell the house (which would also cause problems for the tenants).
Such a win-win solution for both factions of workers is considered a crazy idea here in America! That, despite such a solution being compassionate, rational, practical, and understandable to everyone concerned considering the mandates of the government.
However, 14 nations did this for their working class citizens, including tenants and small business owners (which is more or less what home owners are), with Spain even going so far as to establish a basic guaranteed income for low-income people.
This not only destroys the claim by conservatives that the government “can’t afford” such measures (sorry, Tim Pool!) but it indicts the idea of a post-industrial society running on a money-based system for the distribution of readily available resources in the first place (the above linked stats make it clear that we do not have a physical “shortage” of housing).
What did the U.S. government do for us despite having among the strictest national quarantine mandates during the two years of the corona virus panic? One lousy $1,400.00 stimulus check with a paltry follow-up that fell short of the first despite Biden’s campaign promise, and unemployment benefits extended for a few weeks.
Of course, Senate “progressives” proposed a $2,000.00 monthly stipend for workers during the duration of the pandemic that didn’t pass. Surprised?
Moreover, are you surprised that the governments of other capitalist nations see passing such policies for workers to be a practical no-brainer to keep their beloved system as stable as possible rather than something considered too loony to even consider, let alone set up barriers to prevent the passage of this legislation?
For as long as capitalism continues to exist, and for as long as necessities such as homes are commodified, then the government needs to step in and do these things for the workers. These are not hand-outs but practical, rational policies that are absolutely needed to keep too many workers from becoming so destitute that they cannot live And also to stave off another massive recession due to so many millions of people not only being unable to keep a roof over their heads but bereft of any sizable amount of disposable income to buy products and services from a system that is based on production for profit.
Also, if so many workers are to continue to be paid such small wages for professional labor, then the government is going to have to step in if the wealthy want their system to continue without provoking a crisis of the level that finally causes the working class to turn on them instead of (more typically) each other. This is why even many conservative politicians are now considering a universal basic income (UBI).
So, in Conclusion…
Again, it sucks to be put into this position as a working class home owner. But it’s not something that is preventable under a capitalist system.
Moreover, it is not something for which I have to take sides against another faction of workers over, specifically those who are tenants. This is particularly the case since I am a tenant as well as a home owner, so I feel and empathize with their pain and hardship completely.