Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
I’m sorry if you feel offended, but I’m using this terminology objectively. I do not believe that being a landlord automatically makes someone a bad person. However, landlordism is an harmful feature of our predominant mode of production. It relies on the prevalence of homelessness as a credible threat, after all.
I don’t think I listed any anecdotes. You expressed interest in emotional reasoning as to why people resent landlords so I copied some examples of it that I had already written. The ethicality of being a landlord isn’t relevant to the economic role of landlords as parasites.
The fact that landlord’s do not collect rent based on any labor that they do hasn’t been in question since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations at the latest. Rental income is also known as passive or unearned income. That’s the appeal of it to landlords or prospective landlords. It’s an established concept. Even if you think that residential rental agreements are perfectly free and voluntary, that’s irrelevant to the fact that landlords do not produce or provide anything.
Anyway it’s lunchtime and I need to go be objectively extorted out of the fruits of my labor by some parasite wielding a license to withhold food from me and the credible threat of starvation.
Bon appétit!