A Boring Dystopia

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Landlords are price gouging wildfire victims (archive.ph)

submitted 1 day ago by Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An excerpt from the article:

Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.

The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot. Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.

“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”

And now, totally unrelated to this, the definition of "parasitism":

Association between two different organisms wherein one benefits at the expense of the other.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, they suck.

But what they're gonna end up doing is renting a class down from what they were going to do, so they'll end up getting a house that would have been 60 grand a year, but is now 90 grand.

And the people who were going to do that are going to be renting a place that would have been cjlheape4, and so on.

In the end, the price-gouge4s on the high end raise rents for the rest of us. We've seen the same thing all over the country with the lack of available-for-purchase single-family homes as more and more places are build-to-rent only. That's kept renting apartments instead of buying houses, and apartment rents have skyrocketed.

There's a 1br apartment I rented about 10 years ago for $510/month. I just looked it up and it's now $1900 a month.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

$800 when I moved in, I was paying $900 when I moved out over a decade later, it then rented immediately for $1600 after I moved out, and around $2000 now.

Wages have not kept up with that.

[–] chryan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

You are arguing about the difference between price gouging of a Toyota Corolla vs a McClaren GTS - necessity vs luxury.

The price gouging has been happening legally for years and nothing has changed or been done to fix it. The high-end clients in the article clearly own property if they're willing to spend that much on rent.

I have no sympathy for that specific example because it's reported like this is some novel, new experience, as opposed to it being a systemic issue that's plagued everyone else. My sympathy goes to the others mentioned in the article who clearly aren't in the market for luxury-class rentals.

Don't want to be priced gouged? Don't rent those luxury houses from the parasites. Lower your expectations and you might find something else more reasonable.

But sympathy, or lack thereof, isn't a requirement for the practice to be illegal and action to be taken, and I never said something shouldn't be done about it.