Corporations are people too!

There's no reason corporations should be involved in housing period. Housing is a human right and we should be treating it that way

Why stop at single family housing?

I live in a house that was sold at below market rates, under the condition that I will also sell to the next homeowner at a below market rate, there is a fixed equity gain each year to cover general home owner costs. I own the house, the city owns the land the house is on, HOA covers outside upkeep like roofing, window cleaning and driveway maintenance. This is known as a Community Land Trust.

There is no reason this method of housing can't also be applied to folks that live in an apartment. Fuck corporations they shouldn't own anything.

This is completely untrue.

The Mom and Pop owners have less resources to handle if you suddenly break your lease and leave due to crumbing conditions so it’s in their best interest to keep their properties updated.

Corporations often will ignore your complaints, and then just absorb the costs for a couple months until they can move in someone else into the same broken property. Corporations do not care when it comes to their properties, while individual owners do care because there are actual people behind them.

Also, regardless if “renting is the right choice for some people”, the housing shortage is due to corporations buying up single family homes with the express purpose of renting them, which pushes potential owners out of the market entirely.

Not when they are essentially a cabal :/ https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent

Just a single data point but as soon as a corporation bought my apartment complex they "attempted" to illegally increase my rent through hidden fee increases. They also "accidentally" sent me the wrong leases with the rents increased multiple times.

If I need to sue a corporation for something like this, it's going to be a lot of time and effort for me but nothing for them so they can essentially get away with the illegality. Mom and pops it's a lot of time and effort for both of us so it's in both of our best interests to do things by the book.

Yes, renting is absolutely the right choice for some people. I completely agree. That is why I never said apartments shouldn't exist or that people couldn't own multiple homes to rent out. However, I think people who own multiple homes should be taxed higher on them.

Housing should not be a retirement vehicle. It should be a basic human right.

Also, I don't think it's true that corporations have to obey stronger laws than mom and pops. I'm pretty sure rental laws are just rental laws, and corporations just have lawyers who make sure they are following all applicable laws. I could be wrong, though.

Sure hope this doesn't end up morphing into a law that fails its core objective and end up fucking over poor people somehow!

u right thank you, editing my comment

To your point, this rule, whether it becomes an enforceable regulation or not, isn’t even targeted at increasing supply. It’s targeted at preventing money laundering.

Oh I know; that was aimed more at the people talking about corporations owning housing, as if that's particularly relevant. I'm quite skeptical that the corporate boogeyman is really a meaningful target when it comes to housing costs though. We've been drastically underbuilding for decades now - with quite a lot of that directly coming from extremely onerous zoning laws. The sheer fact of the matter is that in most American cities (where people actually want to live - empty shacks in rural Nebraska are not particularly helpful here), there are far more people who want to live there than available housing, and the inevitable result of this is that the wealthiest people are those who get to live in them. This will be the case regardless of whether the housing is owned by a corporation or a mom and pop. The fundamental problem is lack of supply; anything that doesn't address that will not meaningful reduce housing prices and is at best a band-aid.

And are those vacant houses in places where people want to live?

In NYC, for example, the vacancy rate is a bit above 2%. Vacant houses in Oklahoma have zero relevance to homeless people in NYC. It also has to be considered that a lot of vacant residences are only temporary; either caught up in legal issues or briefly empty while the owners find tenants. But again, geography is critically relevant here. Vacant properties only help if they're in places where people actually want to live and where jobs are available. It doesn't matter how cheap a shack in Nebraska is if there's no job around beyond farming.