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

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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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[–] chryan@lemmy.world 1 points 5 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.