[Diggers350] Off-Guardian: Whats REALLY Behind The War On Home Ownership?
Tony Gosling
tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Sat Jul 31 22:27:31 BST 2021
WHATS REALLY BEHIND THE WAR ON HOME OWNERSHIP?
https://tlio.org.uk/whats-really-behind-the-war-on-home-ownership/
<https://tlio.org.uk/whats-really-behind-the-war-on-home-ownership/>31/07/2021
<https://tlio.org.uk/author/tony/>TONY GOSLING
<https://tlio.org.uk/whats-really-behind-the-war-on-home-ownership/#respond>LEAVE
A COMMENT
<https://off-guardian.org/2021/07/31/whats-really-behind-the-war-on-home-ownership/>Becoming
a Nation of Renters is clearly a big part of the New Normal
Kit Knightly
The incipient Great Reset is a multi-faceted
beast. We talk a lot about vaccine passports and
lockdowns and the Covid-realated aspects and we
should but theres more to it than that.
Remember, they want you to
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/12/own-nothing-and-be-happy-the-great-resets-vision-of-the-future/>own
nothing and be happy. And right at the top of
the list of things you definitely shouldnt own, is your own home.
Emacs!
The headlines about this have been steady for the
last few years, but it has picked up pace in the
wake of the pandemic (as has so much else). An
agenda hidden on back pages, behind by Covids
meaningless big red numbers, but perhaps no less sinister.
You can find articles all over the net talking up renting over owning.
Last month, for example, Bloomberg ran an article
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-17/america-should-become-a-nation-of-renters?sref=2o0rZsF1&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=view&utm_source=twitter>headlined:
America Should Become a Nation of Renters
Which praises what they call the liquefaction of
the housing market and gleefully expounds on the
idea that The very features that made home
buying an affordable and stable investment are coming to an end.
The Atlantic published
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/why-its-better-to-rent-than-to-own/618254/>Why
Its Better To Rent Than Own in March.
Financial pages from
<https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/when-renting-is-better-than-buying-a-home?r=US&IR=T>Business
Insider to
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2019/11/30/six-reasons-renting-can-be-smarter-than-buying/?sh=57e709e41a0c>Forbes
to
<https://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-reasons-why-not-buy-162104151.html>Yahoo
and
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-01/personal-finance-here-s-why-renting-is-smarter-than-buying-now>Bloomberg
again are filled with lists titled
<https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1112/reasons-renting-is-better-than-buying.aspx>9
Ways Renting is Better Than Buying,
<https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/reasons-renting-a-house-is-better-than-buying-one-2019-8?r=US&IR=T#:~:text=Renting%20also%20allows%20you%20a,keeping%20up%20with%20other%20expenses.>or
similar.
Other publications go more personal with it, with
anecdotal columns about ignoring financial advice
and
<https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/reasons-ignoring-advice-stop-renting-buy-home-2021-7?r=US&IR=T>refusing
to buy your home. Vox, never one to sell their
agenda with any kind of subtlety,
<https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22597947/homeowner-nimby-affordable-housing-local>have
a piece titled:
Homeownership can bring out the worst in you
Which literally argues that buying a house can make you a bad person:
Its the biggest thing you might ever buy. And it
could be turning you into a bad person.
So what exactly is the narrative here? Whats the story behind the story?
The short answer is fairly simple: Its about greed, and its about control.
It almost always is, in the end.
The longer answer is rather more complicated.
Major investment firms such as Vanguard and
Blackrock, along with rental companies such as
American Homes 4 Rent, are buying up
single-family homes in record numbers sometimes
entire neighbourhoods at a time.
They pay well over market value, pricing families
who want to own those homes out of the market,
which forces the housing market up whilst the
Lockdown-created recession is lowering wages and
creating millions of newly unemployed.
Of course, this is motivating people to sell the houses they already own.
People all across America have been saddled with
houses worth less than they bought them for since
the 2008 economic crash, and are eager to take
the cash from private investment firms
<https://therealdeal.com/national/2021/04/13/institutional-investors-higher-material-costs-lead-to-rising-home-prices/?irclickid=TYIz%3AeSy6xyLRwNxiAS6PRWLUkBUNiz1H0mY1c0&irgwc=1&utm_source=impact&utm_medium=af>paying
10-20% over market value. Combine an economic
recession with a created housing boom and you
have a huge population of motivated sellers.
Of course, many of these sellers dont realise,
until its too late, that even if they attempt to
downsize or move to a cheaper area, they may be
<https://www.marketplace.org/2021/04/13/institutional-investors-are-stiff-competition-homebuyers/>priced
out of the market completely,
<https://www.vox.com/recode/22407667/home-sales-boom-rent-housing-single-family-rental>and
forced to rent.
As such, in the last year, the private investment
share of single-family home purchases is
estimated to have increased ten-fold, going from
2% in 2018 to over 20% this year.
As more and more people are forced to rent, of
course, rental properties will be in higher and
higher demand. This in turn will drive the cost of renting up.
Market Watch has already reported that, in the
last year, rent has
<https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shock-rents-rising-three-times-as-fast-as-official-inflation-figures-11627397608>increased
over 3x faster than the government predicted.
This problem is likely to get worse in the near future.
Last night, Congress accidentally failed
<https://thehill.com/homenews/house/565699-house-democrats-scrap-vote-on-bill-to-extend-eviction-ban>to
extend the Covid-related eviction ban.
Which means, this weekend, while Senators adjourn
to the summer homes they probably dont rent, the
ban will officially end and a lot of people are
likely to have their
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/evictions-loom-after-biden-congress-fail-to-extend-ban-congress-joe-biden-covid-white-house-americans-b1894255.html>houses
foreclosed or their landlords kick them out.
The newly empty buildings will be a feeding
frenzy for the massive corporate landlords. Who
will descend on the banks like starving hyenas to
snap up the foreclosed properties for pennies on
the dollar. Just like
<https://www.marketplace.org/2016/03/08/what-happened-all-those-foreclosed-homes/>they
did in 2008.
None of this is any secret, its been
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-landlords.html>covered
in the mainstream. Tucker Carlson even did
<https://video.foxnews.com/v/6258491904001#sp=show-clips>a
segment on it in early June.
The Wall Street Journal headlined, back in April,
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801>If
You Sell a House These Days, the Buyer Might Be a Pension Fund, and reported:
Yield-chasing investors are snapping up
single-family homes, competing with ordinary Americans and driving up prices
However, since then, something has clearly
changed. The propaganda machine has kicked into
gear to defend Wall Street from any backlash.
No better example of this shift can be found than
The Atlantic, which ran
<https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/>this
story in 2019:
WHEN WALL STREET IS YOUR LANDLORD
With help from the federal government,
institutional investors became major players in
the rental market. They promised to return
profits to their investors and convenience to
their tenants. Investors are happy. Tenants are not.
and this story
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/blackrock-ruining-us-housing-market/619224/>last
month:
BLACKROCK IS NOT RUINING THE US HOUSING MARKET
The real villain isnt a faceless Wall Street
Goliath; its your neighbors and local
governments stopping the construction of new units.
Going back to the
<https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble>Vox
well we have:
Wall Street isnt to blame for the chaotic housing market
Which ran just a few days after the Atlantic
article, and is practically identical.
Both these (oddly similar) articles argue that
Wall Street and private equity firms cant be
blamed for buying up houses, and that the real
problem is the lack of supply to meet demand.
You see, all the selfish people who already own
homes (they did say it makes you a bad person)
are blocking the construction of new houses, and
thus driving up the cost of property through scarcity.
This has been a logically flawed argument around
the housing market for decades.
That there arent enough houses for people to buy
is patently absurd when the US census data says
that there are over
<https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf>15
million houses currently standing empty. Thats
enough to house all of Americas roughly 500,000 homeless people 30x over.
Theres plenty of houses, theres just not enough money to buy them.
The reason for that is the same reason the
California has massive
<https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/999969718/high-cost-of-los-angeles-homeless-camp-raises-eyebrows-and-questions?t=1627743305413>homeless
camps in its major cities, and that so many
people are having to become renters instead of
owners:
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/>wage
stagnation.
For decades now, wage increases have lagged
behind increases in the cost of living. In the
1960s one full-time job could afford a decent
standard of living for a family of four or more.
These days both parents work, sometimes multiple jobs each.
It was huge amounts of financial de-regulation
which created this situation. So, whether you
believe Voxs BlackRock apologia or not, one way
or another Wall Street very definitely is to blame.
But this isnt just about money. It never is.
Just as the war on cash isnt just about
efficiency, and the environmental push isnt just
about climate change. Ditto veganism. Its about
control. Just like vaccines, lockdowns and masks.
It always comes down to control.
Its an oft-used cliche, but no less true for
that, that homeowning gives people a stake in
society. A family-owned house is a source of
security for the future and something to leave
your children. It is also sovereignty and
privacy. Your own space that no one else can control or take away.
In short: A homeowner is independent. A renter is
not. A renter can be controlled. A homeowner can not.
Its the same reasoning behind the way working
people were encouraged to take out loans and
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEFX0wSIIE>become
debt slaves. If you limit peoples options, if
you make them rely on you for a roof over their
heads, you have control over them.
Theres a great article about this situation
called
<https://gen.medium.com/meet-your-new-feudal-overlords-e18709541d61>Your
New Feudal Overlords.
Under Feudalism, land wasnt owned by the working
class, but provided to them by landed barons,
hence the term Land Lord. If you disrespected
your Lord, or broke his rules, or he perceived
another peasant/farm animal/crop would be a
better use of the land, he could take it back.
Essentially, the behaviour of serfs was kept in
check by their reliance on the nobility for a
place to live. Thats very much the dynamic theyre going for here.
Rental agreements can be full of any terms and
conditions the landlord wants, and the more
desperate people get the more of their consumer rights they will sign over.
Maybe youll agree to smart meters which monitor
your internet or power-usage habits, and then
sell the data to behavioural modellers and viral marketers.
Maybe youll have to agree to certain power
limitations or water shortages in order to fight climate change.
Maybe it will get worse than that.
Maybe theyll go full Black Mirror style
corporate dystopia. Maybe, through affiliation
programs, the mega-equity firm which owns your
rental house has ties to McDonalds, and as such
will require you to not eat at any competing
fast-food franchises, or demand you observe at
least ninety seconds of Disney advertisements per day.
Maybe it will be as simple as including vaccine
status in the tenancy agreement, making it
impossible for the unvaxxed to find a home.
Maybe they just want to make poor people miserable.
After all, the super-wealthy have got all the
money they could ever need, and all the luxury
they could ever use. Their living standards are
as high as physically possible. So maybe the only
way they can keep winning, is to start driving
the living standards of us proles down.
No air travel. No vacations. No going out at all.
Live in a <https://www.tinyhouse.com/>tiny house,
or
<https://www.timeout.com/news/how-pod-houses-are-providing-a-way-out-of-homelessness-072021>a
pod. Eat
<https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/may/08/if-we-want-to-save-the-planet-the-future-of-food-is-insects>bugs.
Get rid of
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51366123>your
car. Rent
<https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/jul/20/renting-fashion-can-be-green-argue-clothes-renters>your
clothes. Or
<https://www.capetownetc.com/property/why-millennials-are-choosing-to-rent-instead-of-buy-their-furniture/>your
furniture. Pay taxes <http://x/>on sugar.
And<https://www.dumptheguardian.com/society/2021/jul/13/alcohol-caused-740000-cancer-cases-globally-last-year-study>
alcohol. And
<https://www.dumptheguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/04/uk-health-professions-call-for-climate-tax-on-meat>red
meat.
Theyve been very clear about this. Theyve told
you about the Great Reset and the
<https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22387601/smart-fridge-car-personal-ownership-internet-things>Internet
of Things. Thats the plan.
You wont own a house. And youll be happy
or
else the mega-corporation youre forced to rent from will kick you out.
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And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them,
he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and
gave to them.
<http://biblehub.com/luke/24-31.htm>31 And their
eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he
vanished out of their
sight. http://biblehub.com/kjv/luke/24.htm
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