Why Everyone Hates Landlords Now
Leeches. Parasites. Maybe even bed bugs ? There are various names for homeowners, but none of them are auspicious. The couple who run the “15-Airbnb empire” went viral on Twitter last week, highlighting an increasingly common online message: everyone hates landlords.
This negative attitude towards landlords is not just another case of “highly online” collective intelligence. As a stand-up comedian in the real world, I’ve seen that hating landlords is a pretty safe – maybe even sly – twist. Could there be a more egregious sign of someone’s public reputation than being turned into a punchline?
If you’re wondering why the hatred of landlords is getting louder and louder, I would point out two reasons that seem to explain every cultural trend these days: social media and the pandemic. Here is an anecdotal (but impassioned) account of the current position of the landowners in the eyes of the public and whether their status as a public enemy is fair.
Do landlords really deserve to be public enemy number one?
About a third of U.S. households are renters, most of whom are familiar with the brutal months-long rent increases that seem to have no end in sight. While tenants struggle to find and afford a place to sleep, landlords resent the public’s perception that they are doing nothing to generate their passive income. I’m not here to fight these homeowners, but to share the common opinion of the young and/or progressive communities on Twitter .
It’s one thing to hate the system, the game – do we need to hate specific players as well?
Short answer
Yes.
long answer
Hell yes.
The pandemic helped turn landlords into the highlight
When it comes to understanding the hatred of landlords, a lot comes into play. There is a diminished view of homeowners as inherently immoral. This is an enlarged picture of you and every person you know who has had a shitty experience with a shitty landlord. The two have successfully merged during the pandemic, especially since social media is giving a generation a language to talk about housing and human rights. We are now in the current cultural moment where dragging landlords online is a popular activity.
Being a landlord is not a “real job”
While landlords claim to be providing an essential service, reading a landlord’s point of view is little sympathetic, as in these Curbed interview responses . Rhetorical questions like “ Because housing is a human right and I shouldn’t be in business? Do not incline me to the side of the landowners. In fact, it more justifies the tenant’s instinctive causticity. Also, have you ever looked at the landlord’s bulletin board ? You will find a lot of greedy, predatory landlords speaking out loud the quiet part: they want to use the tenants in any way they can.
Rents are rising and landlords’ sympathy is limited
Ignoring the Marxist elephant in the room, more and more tenants seem to be expressing their conviction that making money from owning real estate isn’t really hard work. Just take a look at the responses to this article about homeowners who struggled during Biden’s eviction ban last year. The answers lack empathy, and I understand that. When I hear about landlords talking about losing money and ” hitting hard “, all I hear is that someone is expecting the same kind of sympathy as, say, someone who has lost their job. Landlords are not “fired” when rent becomes more affordable. It’s less like losing your job and more like a bad investment—an investment that takes other people’s housing rights and places it in your hands.
Now, on the cusp of a housing crisis , landlords are seen as feeding off the misery of many tenants. Their predatory behavior makes housing unaffordable to those who need it most. However, you might argue that not all homeowners are evil people. But there must be good ones too. You might argue that every profession has a couple of bad guys. Here’s my take: Do you know what group of people are likely to have a low tolerance for this “bad apple” argument? Perhaps the generation that has watched these allegations be debunked over and over again during the 2020 protests against police brutality. No doubt this framework has helped a lot of people start questioning all other systems taking advantage of them.
I wish I had alternative solutions for landlords today. I highly recommend borrowing Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in an American City, from your local library. Or for a quicker read, this tweet sums it up nicely: “Landlords provide accommodations like scalpers provide concert tickets. In other words, many believe that landlords should not be credited with providing basic services. They abuse the system for profit. At least, public opinion continues to move in this direction. After all, perhaps the “radical beliefs” of one generation are the “common sense” of the next.