Patriot Act: Rent in the Time of Coronavirus

[zoaster_toaster]

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Patriot Act returns to Netflix amid quarantine to talk about how coronavirus is causing a rental crisis in America amid its existing housing problems. For those who are concerned about their area's rental legal protections, the show has created the site Don't Get Kicked Out as a database for how renters can protect themselves from eviction.

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[soulhades]

But buying home/building homes is extremely pricy ? So renting is the only other solution ?

And if suddenly everybody could build a house because of some state policy to grant them the funds, there would be virtually 0 building because to build them that would mean that like 10 people decided to own their own flat at the same time and to divide the cost of construction between all of them ? If they had the funds, most people would prefer their little home, so that would create cities developping themselves horizontally and not vertically and the impact on the environnement would be bad ?

And more importantly, very often the initial cost of building get way highter than expected or it doesn't but then, bad luck the heating system break after 10 years and it cost 25'000 dollars to repair it, what if half of the family lives in minimum wages and they can't support the cost of changing the heating system ?

I don't think there's any alternative than renting honestly... There should be lots of talk about the cost of rents, how sometime it's way higher than what it needs to be, but other than that wanting rents to disappear seems like a total fantasy ?

[irajaxon]

the fantasy you're talking about is everyone having a roof over their heads and housing security, and it should absolutely be the goal. the same way it is unethical to have a for-profit medical system, it is unethical to have a for-profit housing system. healthcare and shelter are basic, fundamental human rights.

[soulhades]

I agree, shelter is a basic human right and no one during covid19 or even before should be expelled from their flat if it's to end up in the street. But housing security can be achieved via a better financial support-system for poor people. That's where the main problem lies, that some people have so little money and so little help that they can't even pay their rent.

I mean, I live in Switzerland and even if there's still cases where people can be thrown in the streets in some case (often undocumented poor people which is a huge issue), the system make it that if people ends up pennyless for whatever reason, they can ask for social service to pay their rent (and they have to repay the social service with 0% of interest AND only if they end up finding a job that allow them to start repaying a small amount each month while still being able to pay all their other important bills)

[hahahey]

It’s not about people having enough money, it’s also about the companies building unnecessarily exclusionary housing complexes and overpricing it to make it impossible for people to live. And that’s outside of people buying up property and renting it at twice the price it’s worth or renting it as an exclusive Airbnb

[truth_and_facts]

You're right about cost of rent, in terms of housing there should be 1. Rent control to protect those who can afford to pay rent from scumbag landlords. 2. Large numbers of quality Government housing for those who can't afford rent.
Thinking of abolishing renting all together is not only impossible but also counter-productive.
Just like healthcare, there should always be a quality government provided option for all but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be private practices.