There’s some company, blackstone, blackwater, something like that, buying up houses that go on sale for 30k above asking price. Immediately outbidding anyone who tries to buy. Corporations are also buying property all across america.
Fuck…
Nobody comes to my tumblr for this, but Americans need to understand that THIS is why my generation can’t afford to own a house outside of Smallest-Town USA. THIS is also why people my age in bigger cities struggle to find decent apartments that don’t consume half of our monthly income.
Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That’s value they can borrow against, that’s a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that’s a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It’s probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can’t afford to take you to court.
I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who’ve lived there for generations because they can’t keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the “affordable” housing for an entire neighborhood. It’s gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that’s left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you’ve instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future “improvements” that further contribute to the commodification of communities.
Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.
These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can’t it’s because we’re lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.
I hate these fuckers so fucking much.
It got so bad in Atlanta that in 2022 they passed a law limiting Airbnb-type operators to two physical addresses, and the owner is required to live in one of them. In addition to that, they are charged an annual permit fee + additional taxes.
It’s an excellent start, but only applies to the city of Atlanta – not any of the kazillions of Airbnbs in the surrounding greater metro area.
“This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.”
FYI if your employer does this, if they have done it for a long time especially, you and your coworkers could be owed huge amounts of unpaid wages and it would be an easy suit if there is a paper trail like this and your employer is placing strict requirements on your behavior while not at work. Employment lawyers generally work on contingency. Just food for thought.
my dnd party has run into an npc who may or may not be evil and may or may not decide to betray us and the dm was in chat today like “just so everyone knows…not addressing this comment at anyone in particular…his favorite colors are red and black…wink” so now i’m desperately trying to get a real physical friendship bracelet done before session tomorrow in the vain hope that i can somehow stop this npc from trying to do a murder on my party
UPDATE: the npc was in fact a shapechanged adult black dragon with violence and conquest in his heart. however he did let merry put a friendship bracelet on him and then when she was like “hm okay how big is your wrist in dragon form” he was like “you wanna see?” and then turned into a dragon and let merry measure him for a second, dragon-sized friendship bracelet. the dm described him afterwards as being deeply confused as to why he did this or let any of this happen to him. call that the merry effect
this guy is now a recurring npc because merry was SO determined to make him her friend that it actually somehow worked. he cast dream to talk to one of my party members like “hey…how’s it going…how are the tieflings in the party…not that i care…also i’m not lonely. bye” and the player was like “is he still wearing merry’s friendship bracelet in this dream” and the dm was like “yeah…”
fsdfjhskdf the dm just sent us all this image
so merry taught naeric (the dragon) the power of love, obviously, and because his heart was open and beautiful he started dating…a SECOND evil dragon. and then that gf betrayed him and cast ninth level imprisonment on him so now naeric is our damsel in distress and we have to save him from his girlfriend, the actual villain. how the turntables…
and. in the most horrible plot twist of all. the gf stole his friendship bracelet.
A cheap shot at humanity for all it's worthlessness. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. I wouldn't call it safe for work.... but it's not explicit either. #Arglemabob
ALT
