• flora_explora@beehaw.org
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    7 months ago

    Playing the devil’s advocate here: Under capitalism, you could also see it as a provision of services where the landlord invests in the means of production (the building) and provides the service of letting people stay there for a certain amount of money. The offered services include the maintenance of the building. If a landlord is keeping a building poorly maintained and/or expects an over the top rent, then this is simply a bad service.

    But well, this obviously doesn’t work out as soon as you consider a safe place to live a basic human right that mustn’t be commodified.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      7 months ago

      you don’t need to play the devil’s advocate. There’s plenty of libs here doing it earnestly.

      • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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        7 months ago

        Well, I tried to find any arguments that could speak in favor of landlords. From the additional comments I got here it is pretty obvious that there isn’t really any justification for housing to be in the hands of landlords.

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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      7 months ago

      You’re describing a property manager. They can be the same person as the landlord, but they don’t have to be.

    • zurohki
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      7 months ago

      It also assumes that the landlord is paying for the building with his own money instead of getting a loan.

      The bank provides the money to build a house, the tenant pays the bank off and somehow at the end of this process the building belongs to the landlord.