Anti Landlords

AUS makes it easy for criminals to launder money through real estate

in some cases.. "concealing illicit money flows as rental income, and investing illicit cash into property improvement activities,"

the AUS government fails to prevent this. "The state’s real estate laws have not been updated in the almost decade since that ruling."

use of real estate for money laundering continues to be a problem all over the world. speculation over worth makes it attractive to criminals and hard to detect.
governments should not allow housing to be a collectible asset traded by criminals.

My landlord has a storage closet in the house and he told his friend to come in today while I was at work. The front door has a deadbolt so rather than using the side door he jumped in through my bedroom window and went and got whatever from the storage and left.

My landlord texted me to tell me he was very disappointed that this is the second time in a row that I was not allowing access for his random friends and family to come over and check on the place (last time I actually was at the doctor's office when apparently his mom couldn't get in without more than 1 hours notice).

He's sending over his mother in the morning which he messaged me at 9pm. I really want to just leave the deadbolt unlocked and just call the cops and tell them she's trespassing when she shows up.

Also the icing on the cake of all of this is apparently the thing that his friend was coming to get was a gun that he was storing with my landlord because he is a prohibited possessor, not allowed to have guns because he has domestic violence charges.

Update: The mom did end up coming over. She started saying she's in charge now and went back and forth about asking me to do maintenance on the outside of the property that I'm not responsible for and just talking bs I said that they can just evict me if they want and then started screaming up until I said "If there isn't anything else can you please go". That made her pretty irate and she said she was calling the cops.

She started tossing things around the kitchen and I went into my room locked it and called the cops. They showed up in about a minute and asked her to leave and she said that the whole reason that she had came there was for a piece of furniture or something. They took her over to a couch that was probably bigger than her car and she tried dragging it for about 3 feet then said she doesn't need it and left.

The landlord ended up messaging me afterwards telling me I was never a tenant here and he's going to get proof and then asked if I could be out in a few weeks.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14800185

anyone else getting docusign spam to their email after re-signing their lease?
this has now happened to me twice in two separate occurances.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/387793

And the worst part is that, with so many companies shifting to work-from-home. it will create a culture (especially for early-career workers) that's less "work from home" and more "live at work." You'll be on call 24-hours a day, reachable at all times. And, for early-career workers getting out of college, it won't even seem like a strange transition from college dorms and fraternity/sorority houses to company housing.

Not only will this lead to a culture where just living on your own at all is a major achievement, it will create a culture where workers don't own much of their own, because they have little storage space. It also means that leaving or job or (god forbid) getting fired or laid off will also render you homeless almost immediately.

Maybe I should shh up before I start giving these companies ideas.

florida eviction

Richardson-based RealPage Is Facing a DOJ Investigation Into Its Rent Pricing Software
The real estate software company RealPage has been accused of using its rent pricing software to help landlords inflate market rents. Now it faces 11 lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

YieldStar uses data analytics to suggest appropriate pricing based on apartment availability. But property managers can let units sit vacant and off the market, which the algorithm interprets as a supply crunch that warrants higher prices. The program allows landlords to see anonymized, aggregated data showing competitor pricing. Many property managers that use the software control thousands of apartment units in individual markets, and the ProPublica story alleges that RealPage executives and developers were aware of the impact YieldStar had on pricing.

“We are concerned that the use of this rate setting software essentially amounts to a cartel to artificially inflate rental rates in multifamily residential buildings,” said the letter, which was also signed by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey).

Citing an unnamed source, ProPublica said the matter has also renewed questions regarding the merger between RealPage and its largest competitor, Rainmaker Group, in 2017. That source said that some DOJ staff flagged the merger for further scrutiny then but were overruled by Trump appointees who chose not to challenge the merger in court.

Measure H ties rent hikes to a fraction of inflation and creates an independent board

The rent control measure is a first for Pasadena, an expensive city that in recent years has often been at the forefront of the region’s wider tensions over housing affordability and an even broader clash between state and local control over development decisions. Earlier this year, Mayor Victor Gordo was involved in a protracted dispute with the California attorney general related to the city’s response to the state housing law SB 9; after months of legal threats and tense discourse, the state authority ultimately recognized the city’s right to declare certain exemptions to the controversial law.

The measure, which takes the form of a new city charter amendment, is likely to apply in full to about 25,000 apartment units in the city, representing a major disruption to its rental landscape.

The measure creates a new independent rental board to oversee the program and a registry to keep track of rent-controlled apartments. For qualifying properties, it will restrict annual rent increases to three quarters of the inflation rate and implement just cause eviction protections and relocation assistance mandates.

The legislative effort was financially backed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and labor groups and also championed by a wide umbrella of housing and progressive groups, including the ACLU, L.A. County Democratic Party, Abundant Housing LA and the Pasadena Tenants Union.

Advocates are calling on President Joe Biden to sign an executive order that would tie yearly rent increases to inflation. This comes after the Federal Reserve further increased interest rates last week.

Brooks-Davis and Gadley joined hundreds of other tenant rights advocates in Washington, D.C. this week to urge President Biden to sign their draft executive order that would force landlords, particularly corporations and private equity firms, to hold the line on rent increases. The proposal would cap annual rent increases at 3% or 1.5 times the rate of inflation, whichever is lower, and also apply the rule to government-backed mortgages.

“We’re challenging them on every level,” Gadley said.

The White House met with members from the Homes Guarantee Campaign Monday on tenant protections and rental affordability issues.

“Renters deserve access to safe and affordable homes that allow them to remain stable,” Bush said. “It’s not enough just to have housing. You need to have stable housing. You need to not worry about tomorrow.”

Consistently I'm the only tenant putting up a fight.