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Landlords are evil because the system enables them to be evil. The profession will still exist. But transition to a service profession. Similar to agents who manage properties for people.
If housing stops being an asset, it becomes a commodity. People who manage commodities still exist.
You haven’t actually answered the question.
What do you propose people who can’t or don’t want to buy a house/condo should live in? I suspect if we go far back enough whoever you got this argument for will say ‘we should socialize unoccupied housing and grant it to poor people’, the answer to which is ‘yeah, you can do that, but they’ll destroy it and the bureaucrats in charge will be utterly unprepared for that’, and that’s before the second order economic effects become a big deal much faster than you probably suspect.
Speaking as an ex bureaucrat who did indeed deal with social housing, why would we be unprepared for that? Damage to property from public tenants though social housing stock is entirely predictable and we would indeed budget for that. You can even then employ your own government contractors to fix said stock.
You can argue about how much it costs or whether it passes cost-benefit analysis but why would you think government bureaucrats will be unprepared for it? Government bureaucrats deal with the public a lot, they're second only to police in how jaded we can get about how people act.
Because the people who are demanding the process in the first place are doing so based on ideology, and their ideology deemphasizes any costs created by the poor, and specifically costs created by bad tenants. So nobody will be prepared for those costs.
And the people demanding stuff of bureaucrats can and have oscillated between literal capitalist privatizers and literal socialists. Doesn't mean your bureaucrats who deal with with where the rubber meets the road will be unprepared. They might not get a budget for it of course but thats not the same thing. Thats just business as usual.
Don't confuse ideology for competence. Anyone with experience maintaining housing stock will know that lesson.
And will probably have a notarized memo in triplicate of exactly when they raised that point to elected member number 94. Most career bureaucrats everywhere in my experience from communist Russia to the USA, the UK, China, and more are not very ideological as much as they are disillusioned with the public.
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I guess I'm confused, what is different between landlords and normal homeowners here? The incentive gradient is the same. The landlord is providing a necesary service, I find it difficult to call that evil. The case would make more sense if scoped to the individuals actually lobbying to keep housing stock low.
I think we single-family homeowners count as lords of our own land also. Along with everyone else who doesn't want to live in an anthill.
Condo owners as well. Why alienate your allies like this?
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