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Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

binghamton.edu

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Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#31

Post by Aurornis »

robotburrito wrote: post #21

Most times your land lord won't let you make anything nicer. They basically want the place to degrade around you so that they can low key force you to leave causing you to abandon your rent control.

Most rentals across the US and even the world don't have rent control.

You've highlighted one of the downsides of rent control: It changes the incentive structure dramatically in ways that aren't always a win for the tenant. I had a friend in a rent controlled apartment who would quietly do things like upgrade his appliances and fix things because his rent was so low he didn't want to rock the boat for any reason at all.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#32

Post by ggm »

Glyptodon wrote: post #19

Nobody has incentives or cashflow that will change this. At best if we built more housing it's something landlords might face competitive pressure over. In which case it might change. But currently cases where someone has a choice between two equivalent rentals and can try to pick the efficient one are pretty few and far between. Most people just try to balance as low of a monthly rent payment as possible with their…

You're describing a problem which regulation is designed to fix. People argue about how effective that is, and post counter intuitive outcomes, but I think the central point remains: there's little evidence a deregulated housing market fixes it either.

Corporate landlords probably have more motivation to repect enforced obligations. So the ultimate corporate landlord is some level of government, and then we've arrived where I think we should be: public housing is a right.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#33

Post by cptskippy »

antonymoose wrote: post #2

Considering that tax credits cover only 1/3rd of the materials (not the installation) and have hard caps of 1,500 it should come as no surprise that landlords don’t care and won’t cover improvements. They’re not paying the power or suffering the cold at the end of the day.

This is pretty much it. Most renters are paying for utilities and don't realize why they're so high.

My kid has been renting the same apartment while in school and their fridge failed over the summer. She manages the utilities and mentioned that their power bill halved as a result of the replacement. She said what they were paying before didn't seem outrageous so it came as a surprise to see the newer bills were consistently half of what it had been before.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#34

Post by tehjoker »

immibis wrote: post #24
mystraline wrote: post #3

[flagged]

A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. But they perform important functions in our society, like providing housing. Even though landlords don't actually produce housing, without landlords there would be no housing and that would suck.

If there were no landlords we would have a robust public housing program. The government would build out housing then lease/sell it to the public and then they would be obligated to sell it back to the government when they finished with it - eliminating the market and preserving personal liberties to use the property.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#35

Post by ChadNauseam »

jmyeet wrote: post #29

There is always going to be an adversarial relationship between landlords and renters. Make no mistake: that we allow this to happen is state violence. Why? Because we are allowing individuals and corporations to deny housing to people by raising prices to make it unaffordable. We even allow them to collude [1]. The only solution to this that demonstrably works is for the state to provide a significant amount of hous…

What I don't get is what are you really supposed to do if you don't want to buy a house and being a landlord is illegal? I often hear people online say that being a landlord is incredibly unethical, but I have no interest in buying a house. So I don't understand how someone is wronging me by renting me one. And I'm in a lucky situation where I probably could afford to buy a house if I wanted to. Many people could not.

That said, I would obviously support the government building a large amount of high quality housing, assuming they could do it at a reasonable price.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#36

Post by gruez »

immibis wrote: post #24
mystraline wrote: post #3

[flagged]

A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. But they perform important functions in our society, like providing housing. Even though landlords don't actually produce housing, without landlords there would be no housing and that would suck.

>A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing.

No, they provide capital. In modern society it's hard to picture what "capital" actually is aside from some wall st bankers in suits, but at the most basic level it's forgone consumption. Every dollar invested in a company or a house is a dollar that could have been spent on an iPhone or a nice steak, and whoever forgone that consumption needs to be compensated for it, otherwise nobody would bother doing so.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#37

Post by jvvw »

In the UK if you sell or rent out a house it has to have an energy certificate with a rating (specified by a letter). I'm pretty sure that you aren't allowed to rent out properties with less than a certain rating and that rating which is higher than you might expect.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#38

Post by ghaff »

Aurornis wrote: post #20
ghaff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things are less standardized than others. That said my kitchen was totally redone after a fire. Dishwasher was basically a 1 for 1 replacement pre-fire but everything else had to be redone.

Most kitchen appliances are very standardized. Refrigerators come in certain widths (30", 32", 34"). Over the range microwaves are a standard size. Dishwashers fit into a 24" wide space unless you specifically get a compact or oversized dishwasher (rare). Ovens come in certain widths. It's rare to have a kitchen appliance that requires a specialized space that you have to build the kitchen around. Unless you're deali…

Pre-fire, I got cabinet above fridge taken out because fridges have basically gotten taller.

And the over-the-range microwave is what caused the fire in the middle of the night in the first place while I was sleeping.

Dishwashers are pretty standard as are stovetop widths although I decided to shift to a range from my prior double ovens and cooktop.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#39

Post by acheron »

Aurornis wrote: post #18
antonymoose wrote: post #2

Considering that tax credits cover only 1/3rd of the materials (not the installation) and have hard caps of 1,500 it should come as no surprise that landlords don’t care and won’t cover improvements. They’re not paying the power or suffering the cold at the end of the day.

And the tenants have to be moved out of the unit and housed somewhere else during some of these renovations, which is going to cost the landlord far more than $1500. This article is silly.

Most Internet commentary about landlords and renting is very silly, yes.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#40

Post by gruez »

tharkun__ wrote: post #11
foxglacier wrote: post #5

Could be solved with more free markets. What a funny phenomenon this is: "reluctance to make even basic upgrades" -- landlords don't care because they have too much market power and aren't even attempting to compete with each other. Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing. We'd say that market isn't functioning well. Perhaps the p…

Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations and even those they try to skirt.

>Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations

The fact that people buy EVs and hybrids at all, despite their higher upfront cost, suggests that at least some care about fuel efficiency.

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