AskProfWolff: How will Socialism Affect the Rental Housing Market?

A patron asks: "Dear Professor Wolff, My husband and I worked for years to save up and then we started our own real estate company. We provide rental houses to families. I'd like to think us as good landlords because we hate slumlords and we try to stay as far away from being slumlords as possible. My question is how will socialism affect our business? My reservation with democracy in the work place in our case is the people who work for us don't understand what we are trying to do and will vote to follow the conventional way (because everybody understands how the conventional strategy works in housing)."

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[ShadowSaberBaroxio]

For Housing, rather than a Worker's Co-Op, shouldn't it be a Renter's Co-Op? The people who live in the house should be the ones in charge of how it's run and where the money goes.

[LordKorgyab]

I work as a maintenance technician for apartment homes. There is vast inequality in this industry. We are run by individual that have never done ANY of the actual work involved in keeping the business running but become millionaires while those that actually DO the work fear becoming homeless. It makes no sense and so many people I work with continue to vote for those political leaders that maintain this corrupt system. More people need this kind of message. We are all not so stupid we chose to be slaves, we are either unaware we are slaves OR so wrapped up in the struggle of everyday life that we feel we can't afford to do anything else. This Must Change.

[woozalia]

It's possible Dr. Wolff suggested this and I missed it, but I wanted to make sure that the idea of making tenants part of the co-op was mentioned.
One obvious plan would be that instead of paying "first and last months' rent" when signing up, tenants would buy a *membership* in the co-op -- which they could then sell back to the co-op when they move out, or possibly have the option to retain if they want to stay involved with governance. All members would have voting privileges. This would give tenants more involvement in decisions affecting their quality of life, in exchange for helping to maintain the co-op's cash reserves.
This plan still gives advantage to those with money over those without, but still seems better than the current top-down system.

[gabeb]

Also consider another model -- a retail co-op. Retail co-ops are owned jointly by workers *and* customers. Give your tenants a voting stake in the enterprise, and it will never resort to slumlord-like behavior because it's not in its constituents' interests.

[dinnerwithfranklin]

Excellent advice. I believe you spoke once with a construction contractor who spoke at length about the time it took for new people to understand and fit in with the co-op organization. I think he said after living entire lives in a top down system it took a while to be comfortable as a partneer

[joserivas]

Great explanation...Question. .If we the USA has a printing machine...and we can print as much money we need..why is so hard to get money for small businesses? who do we need to pay back that money ( Government) if we own the printing machine?

[VictorWaid]

Professor I appreciated your explanation re worker coop. It occurs to me a state government is very similar worker coop; ie participants are employees, owners, producing services for the public who are also owners, ; the coop is funded by taxation. V

[danieljones]

"How will Socialism Affect the Rental Housing Market?"

One effect might be Fair Arbitration and price controls.

[mehdi]

So we do have solutions. We do have alternative

[kathryntate]

What about guidelines, rules, law, etc.??

[anon]

The question is bizarre. If you have such a low opinion of your workers, why would you even consider turning you business over to them?

[antimattv]

I find it a somewhat loaded/ignorant question. Slum lording is a personal choice based on being a jerk. What difference does it make if it's capitalist or WSDE?

[brucewick]

Colonial powers, divesting themselves of their "colonies, " offer another example of the dominant power needing to prepare the subordinate power for their new role. The problem for both colonial powers, and for employer-owned businesses moving to worker coops: while the relationship exists (colonies and colonizers, employers and their employees) it is simply NOT in the interests of colonizers to prepare the colonials for government; nor for employers to prepare employees for management and ownership responsibilities.

[criticality]

How much should the landlord be able to charge workers for purchasing the business?

[criticality]

How do you "own" a co-op? Doesn't that make then not a co-op?

[adspropaganda]

You should see Britain housing. It's insanee! Landlords think they're gods, treat people like shit. Last week I viewed a house and the landlord changed the price of a single room to a double room in my face, so he wanted me to pay the price of a double telling me that I was wrong about the prices and I didn't see it well, putting the blame on me. The price of the single room was already very expensive.. Fucking fraudsters and criminals.

[nHautamaki]

Prof Wolfe maybe a minor point but I think the way you keep phrasing things as 'you change', like when you say 'however you change people's attitudes, you also have to change the structure', is not the best way to say it. That's precisely the kind of phrasing that plays into the fears of conservatives that socialism necessarily requires tyranny. It may be a tyranny of the majority in some cases, but in any case what they fear is another group of people forcing change on them. Setting aside the hypocrisy (of course conservatives have no problem being the ones enforcing policy and thinking on others) I'd think a far less threatening and more inclusive way of advocating for socialism would be to phrase it more as a natural evolution. Not, 'you change', not even, 'we change' but simply, 'things change'. Change happens, constantly, much to conservative consternation, but conservatives can and do learn to live with natural, common sense evolution. Evolution in policy to better adapt to a changing social and economic environment is okay. A sudden tyrannical enforcement of socialist thinking and policy, even if such thinking and policy had 50+1 majority support, is scary to conservatives. I'd phrase such a sentence as something like 'however much people's attitudes change, the underlying structure has to change too'. It takes some of the impetus out of the statement, I understand. It removes the revolutionary force that socialists love. But that revolutionary force is exactly what conservatives hate and fear in equal measure. I believe that social changes that come about naturally, as a natural response to changing social, economic, and political environments, tend to be the most lasting and successful ones anyway.

[slavkofilipovic]

In that case workers at the botten going to have two bosses and be exploited by two insteed of one ?

[patriotusall]

Any advice for a homeless bum like me?

[ihaveone]

Capitalism is not what we have today.... It is corporatism which is akin to Feudalism.... Servitude was sought after as a "lifetime employment" for it provided for steady income, and btw it is NOT equal to slavery even though it is presented as such in the history we learn.... That being said please tell me what is the difference today when we go and seek employment....? Aren't we in wage servitude to corporations????