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Rent collections are down in New York

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Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#281
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part These laws seem quite unrelated to the problems. There needs to be laws to protect the renter against bad landlords and there needs to be laws to protect the landlord against bad tenants. Nowhere there it implies there should be insane laws that make no sense. Such as creating a system where someone can skip paying ren…

I’m not denying any of that. If you don’t pay rent it makes sense that you’re evicted. This is completely okay with me, and the city should change their rules around it. The issue is that housing is a necessity, and the relationship isn’t an equal one. A landlord can usually absorb vacancy, repairs, or a bad investment decision; a renter can’t easily absorb losing their home or a sudden 20% rent increase.

> a renter can’t easily absorb losing their home or a sudden 20% rent increase

Right, so let's pass laws (where not already in place) that prevent sudden eviction (e.g. nobody should be able to be evicted if they are a few days late or even a few weeks) and prevent sudden 20% rent increases.

No need to pass laws that prevent eviction for years. We can solve all these problems without causing other problems.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#282

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

> We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons. Not paying means no ownership means subjugation to the worst actions of the worst members of society We tried cramming people from generational poverty into one place and it didn't go super great, therefore public housing as a concept must be the failure, and not our hilariously bad implementation? Singapore, Austria, Finland, and even a number o…

Singapore doesn’t have crime like the U.S. There is also no free public housing. You still must work and the housing is subsidised. But not free.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#283

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

I don't understand why we can't just copy another country's housing strategy. There are many countries in the world where housing is affordable, relatively high quality, and the homelessness rate is low. What are we doing that makes this problem so seemingly intractable? Why is our approach to public housing seemingly worse than any other approach in history?

What makes the problem intractable is that we have a system where for a huge chuck of the country your retirement is based on housing prices appreciating. It's clear if you directly own a home but even if you don't lots of the places you park your money to watch it grow are ultimately investing/speculating on real estate.

Some might call it housing asset based welfare. Even if you don't like that mouthful another simple example is the University of California putting 4 billion into Blackstone's REIT with "a minimum 11.25% annualized net return through January 2028." That REIT is 90% rentals. So probably at least a few people will feel the squeeze from it.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/university-californ...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10901-009-9177-6

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has it been successful, and what counts as success in that? I genuinely do not know.

It's been exceptionally successful in Singapore, for one.

Singapore doesn’t have social housing. HDB is government built and sold for 99 year lease hold.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why we can't just copy another country's housing strategy. There are many countries in the world where housing is affordable, relatively high quality, and the homelessness rate is low. What are we doing that makes this problem so seemingly intractable? Why is our approach to public housing seemingly worse than any other approach in history?

A bit of a misnomer. Housing is, actually, extremely affordable across the US - just not in major cities. You can plunk $10-$20K and get land and a homestead in dozens of states. Agree with the other comment that overbuilding is a reasonable strategy, but if you look at Detroit downtown (mid 2010s) having an overbuilt downtown is bad too. It's a hard problem.

10k??? Yes because I want to live in east bumfuck in a food desert and drive 40 minutes to the one megamart and where the services barely work and my police/fire/usps is on the next town over 20 miles away.

Did I mention the legions of uneducated anti-Christians who would probably kill me for being queer?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#286
post #167

Why isn't it automated yet? You delay your rent and your door key stops working. Also perhaps there should be a new field for startups (yes i'm aware of 'proptech' but there has to be more than that), that will collect dirt on tenants to threaten them with legal consequences unless they pay.

> Why isn't it automated yet? You delay your rent and your door key stops working. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has an excellent scene where something like this happens to a kid down on his luck.

and in cyberpunk 2077 there are neon signs above each apartment door indicating rent payment status, gotta bring public shaming into it too. This is the future our loyal soldiers for capitalism fight for on this platform in every thread lol.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#287

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

> We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons. Not paying means no ownership means subjugation to the worst actions of the worst members of society We tried cramming people from generational poverty into one place and it didn't go super great, therefore public housing as a concept must be the failure, and not our hilariously bad implementation? Singapore, Austria, Finland, and even a number o…

The thing that goes wrong again and again and again with public and low cost housing is that they build housing, and nothing else.

Stick a bunch of people in a tower in a field with no entertainment, no work nearby, building rubble surrounding their environment, no maintenance happening, no follow through on planned facilities, and the consequences are absolutely 100% predictable. Literally last night I watched a pair of bbc documentaries about a new estate, one from when it was new in the mid 60s, one from the late 70s. The residents are there in the 60’s, going “well it’s a pain having to walk all the way up but we trust that the lifts will be installed soon, and we’re looking forwards to the leisure centre” - fast forward 15 years, still no lifts, no leisure centres, and surprise surprise the kids are setting fire to cars to have something to do. If government won’t uphold the social contract, why should citizens?

The implementation is entirely the problem, and unfortunately few seem to realise that it can be done well. You can’t just make containers for humans and expect that to solve everything.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primarily Vienna. There's nothing complicated about what Vienna did - other cities just prefer to please billionaires instead of providing services to citizens.

Do you actually know what Vienna did? Because the overwhelming number of people who reference the city basically just repeat a few dubious talking point about restricting rent.

I don't know about restricting rent but they certainly had a progressive tax on high rents, a 1% income tax to fund housing, and then used that to build a ton of high quality social housing with balconies and amenities for all. I also like to think it helped that they slapped a big sign on each to proudly let people know it was their tax dollars at work.

I didn't stay in social housing while I living there but I never once heard people complain about it. They basically just didn't think much about it at all and felt it was a good system and then would ask me why the US only makes it for poor people.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#289
post #98

> The uptick in rental delinquency isn’t new. It started six years ago It has nothing to do with Mamdani, for those of who don't want to bother to read. Most of this occurred under Eric Adams's watch. Anecdotally, I do think covid made people a lot more aware of how deeply backlogged the housing courts are. It seems like a lot of people (like the anonymous one in the article) realized they could not pay rent and avoi…

Politico is an Axel Springer rag, in case anyone was wondering why they would put a photo of mamdani in the article. It's propaganda.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#290

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

> We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons. Not paying means no ownership means subjugation to the worst actions of the worst members of society We tried cramming people from generational poverty into one place and it didn't go super great, therefore public housing as a concept must be the failure, and not our hilariously bad implementation? Singapore, Austria, Finland, and even a number o…

Public housing isn’t actually free in the countries you listed. It’s subsidized, but the people who live there still have to pay. The affordable housing units in New York are also subsidized. The question is what do we do if people stop paying even the subsidized rent?
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