I want to do something for my local community, and this cause is a good one. A few years ago a private home rental firm moved in our small city, buying up any housing it could get as it went up for sale. Townhouses, apartment buildings, 4-plexes, snapping them up off the market and raising the rent higher and higher. Now its gotten to the point that the average rent for a family home is up maybe 400 dollars in two years, and so few places are managed by anything that is not this company. They have a horrid reputation of poor maintenance of their buildings, and of evicting whole complexes full of tenants to renovate before jacking up the rent in a newly acquired place. It’s also reached a point of the increases in rents raising the overall average for the entire town, including housing owned by other landlords unrelated to them.
I am a renter myself (though not in a building that’s been bought out thankfully.) I’ve told people as they get madder and madder over the rising cost of housing and the trouble making ends meet, to fight what they think is right. I’ve told them to protest, or to write letters. So far no one will. There is a lot of poverty here, a lot of of people desperate to maintain some kind of stability. Most it seems to me are just too scared to risk it by fighting for anything. They will just keep paying and paying as rents go higher and their pluming breaks down.
It occurred to me that this could be the kind of thing some magicians mean when they say they want to do something bigger, something that effects a whole community. I see that left hand can be a as much about justice and fairness as right hand can. I’m new to this, but still I want to try to take on this community minded cause. My goal is to get this rental company OUT, by any means that will not directly harm the renters. Let them go bankrupt and have their properties sold to someone less corrupt, have them fined huge amounts for some crime no one knows about yet… I’m good with either or more. Is this really possible? How would you go about this?
Oh and if any of you happen to want to help me by lending your own intentions to this let me know. I’ll PM you the target’s housing application or something.
[quote=“Blazewind Bluebird, post:1, topic:5676”]I want to do something for my local community, and this cause is a good one. A few years ago a private home rental firm moved in our small city, buying up any housing it could get as it went up for sale. Townhouses, apartment buildings, 4-plexes, snapping them up off the market and raising the rent higher and higher. Now its gotten to the point that the average rent for a family home is up maybe 400 dollars in two years, and so few places are managed by anything that is not this company. They have a horrid reputation of poor maintenance of their buildings, and of evicting whole complexes full of tenants to renovate before jacking up the rent in a newly acquired place. It’s also reached a point of the increases in rents raising the overall average for the entire town, including housing owned by other landlords unrelated to them.
I am a renter myself (though not in a building that’s been bought out thankfully.) I’ve told people as they get madder and madder over the rising cost of housing and the trouble making ends meet, to fight what they think is right. I’ve told them to protest, or to write letters. So far no one will. There is a lot of poverty here, a lot of of people desperate to maintain some kind of stability. Most it seems to me are just too scared to risk it by fighting for anything. They will just keep paying and paying as rents go higher and their pluming breaks down.
It occurred to me that this could be the kind of thing some magicians mean when they say they want to do something bigger, something that effects a whole community. I see that left hand can be a as much about justice and fairness as right hand can. I’m new to this, but still I want to try to take on this community minded cause. My goal is to get this rental company OUT, by any means that will not directly harm the renters. Let them go bankrupt and have their properties sold to someone less corrupt, have them fined huge amounts for some crime no one knows about yet… I’m good with either or more. Is this really possible? How would you go about this?
Oh and if any of you happen to want to help me by lending your own intentions to this let me know. I’ll PM you the target’s housing application or something.[/quote]
What would happen to the people who rented from them, out of curiousity? Mayy want to consider all consequences before approaching, including the chance that the owners of the company may magically fight back
Some thoughts about this as I have seen similar situations… Think it through, with all the considerations of what does it mean if all the rents drop by 400$ a month through the whole community.
Yes it’s possible, and it might solve a problem but open up new issues that are unforeseen. I’d think about what the community needs in the whole realm of infrastructure. In one way you say the buy up low end places, that no one else is, and then renovate them. This seems like a benefit to the overall community. On the other hand extorting the rents through monopolization is another.
A lot of the big players in real estate clean up cities in the same way. Buy up the blocks, renovate and jack the prices. There is a reason for this.
The facts are that the lower the average income, the higher the street crime. So although these kinds of moves are hated by the people that lose their homes, it eventually makes that specific local community more prosperous, as only people with money can live there, and thus the ‘community’ improves. Although what really happens is that mostly different people are living there. It takes time, years.
It’s sad for the people who have trouble making it.
It’s one of those situations that isn’t black and white, but it’s something for something. Depends on your goals for the future of your community.
Either shutting them down to help the people keep their homes, or helping to raise the communities standards by improving the infrastructure. Both are a good thing, depends what you want your local world to be. Once you know what you want then go ahead and do it.
I was going to say what Narius already pointed out. They buy up the undesired real estate and jack up the rent in hopes the poor people that commit crimes, the ones that commit crimes because they have no income and think of stealing as the only way to get what they need, will not be able to afford the rent and they will end up going elsewhere, moving to a more affordable area.
It’s more of a movement to push the undesirable criminals to the same centralized location, so those people will not bother the people with money and decent homes. They figure that if they can force them all to the same location, maybe they will steal off each other since they are used to doing that so frequently, instead of stealing from the guy that worked his ass off to earn the nice things he has by making the nicer homes further away from them and more inaccessible to them. Sure it does jack up the real estate prices over all, but in the long term, some communities feel safer with all the thieves and drug addicts out of their way.
So it may hurt those who are not criminals but are forced to live in more undesirable neighborhoods solely because of their lower income which is not fair, but I can see the broader picture here. But there is a line between doing this for the good of the community and doing things like this that truly hurt others. With things like this, it would be very easy for them to break the law and fair rent practices, or whatever the equilivant of that would be in your country.
Wherever you go,there will always be people willing and being able to do crimes in all neighbourhoods. But it is not the criminals who are the problem here, is there? As we read it all started with these property developers moving in, buying up houses and buildings, doing them up and hiking the rents, regardless of how it harmed those who had been living there, paying somewhat lower rents, and thus being able to manage to live. It is the rent rises that cause the problem being dealt with here.
These particular property developers are the ones that should be targeted. Block them from buying up any more properties. make them to lose any of the prestige they have gained in the community, by causing their private scandals to be exposed. Causing their dirty dealings to come to light, so no one would want to do business in the area. Then targetting the person at the head of the business, so they see and understand there is something more than just bad luck at work, causing the rains of difficulties to continue falling on his head; I guarantee you won’t need a year to be rid of that company. i have done this kind of work several times.
What i said previously was not my opinion, I was speaking for the majority of the rich people. We have a few landlords like that in our area, two of them. What property one doesn’t own, the other owns. They never fix anything, their tennants live in sub-standard buildings that are out of date when it comes to keeping up with local codes and inspections, and they both think like this. They are trying to push the poor people out of town by jacking up the rent prices too high, but even then, paying the price he charges should get you a really nice secure apartment yet, they never fix anything. They go to great lengths to renovate when they want someone new to move in so the apartment has that initial curb appeal that persuades people to rent, making them think they have a great landlord, but as soon as they move in all the nice things go away, no more improvements and everything goes to shit. They won’t update anything unless it’s something that jeooardizes their entire complex like a busted pipe. So they want richer people to move in their apartments, but they expect them to live in poor conditions.
So, I do not agree with the rent increases but, that’s most likely what they are doing. They want the neighborhood to appeal to the rich so only people that can afford their rates will move in and hopefully they never have to deal with people always late on their rent, always damaging property etc.