this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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The issue is that all of those apartments are owned by one person getting filthy fucking rich from rent.
Then organise the renters, let them buy the house to transform it into syndicate or cooperative housing. Social apartment construction isn't impossible.
The issue here is, in my country at least, the people who could possibly afford to buy one aren't wanting to live in an apartment and the people who live in apartments aren't capable of buying one.
It's not impossible, but it's also very unlikely
It's the only option though. Bulldozing nature to build more cheap low density housing is not a viable plan.
If it were the only option, it would be happening more.
Just because the other options are bad doesn't mean very much. They're still happening.
It's literally banned in most of the US, that's why it's not happening more.
What a fuckin great idea. Immediate downside is who's in charge of the bills?
ask yourself this: if the apartment is owned by a company who is in charge of bills?
in the case witht he syndicate, the syndicate is in charge of the bills, the bills are split up among the members, this stuff all already exists btw.
yeah the apartment I rent, bills are already separate so it wouldn't be that different. We'd still all be paying the water company and power company. And for garbage. Like we already do.
No way, that's cool! Where in the US?
I guess I would've thought that the collective unit is in charge of stuff like property taxes, but you can't have that many names on a property deed, right? Or can you?
Have you heard the term "Condominium"? Often shortened to "Condo"? Shared ownership, with an entity (usually organized as an HOA) shared by the owners who pay the shared bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium
Very, very, common throughout the US, probably the most popular way of dealing with the issue of more complex land/ownership than "single building on plot all owned by one person"
As the sibling post mentions, there are Housing Co-ops too, but, for example, if you wanted to get a low cost property in Florida, ideally with someone else doing the maintenance, but with you owning the property itself, you'll almost certainly want to buy a Condo.
I suppose but HOAs are dicks. That's a single controller. The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?
HOAs are the name given to a type of legal association, there's nothing in the law that says they have to be made up of "Karens" (and male equivalents), or even have the powers that you generally see in the suburbs.
Additionally, for an apartment block, they literally can't have the powers you generally see in the suburbs that people complain about. How are you going to paint the outside of your 3rd floor apartment? What grass do you need to keep short? How is the deputy chief officer of the HOA going to sneak into your non-existent yard and fine you for planting the wrong sorts of flowers?
Literally all an HOA can do in this instance is pay for (and organize the) maintenance of common areas and pay the taxes. So for these kinds of situations, it's a positive entity.
The HOA pays the taxes, you pay the HOA. If you don't pay the HOA, then the HOA can get a lein on your property and ultimately force you to sell it, like a local government would if it was a single family home and you refused to pay your taxes. Which given it is, ultimately, levied for the same reason as local government taxes, seems appropriate. Do others suffer in the mean time? In theory, they could, in the sense that they'd have to pay increased HOA fees, but ultimately there's no incentive to not pay the HOA, any more than there is to not pay taxes.
Around half of them are in New York: https://www.housinginternational.coop/co-ops/united-states-of-america/
The coop owns the property and you as a shareholder get access to one home.
That seems to be what's going on The Arconia apartments in Only Murders in the Building (in New York). They have a coop board, drama over who is the president of it, people not able to pay taxes on their apartment, auntie sold the apartment, now I have to move, etc.
... Have you actually farted glitter?
🤣💨✨ ✨ ✨
I only the know the version of that in Germany and Austria where the property is being held by a GmbH, similar to a LLC, whose half owned by an e.V., a registered voluntary association acting as the united juridicial person of the inhabitants and half owned by a syndicate e.V. that acts as insurance and solidarity among the syndicate and makes sure that no one can overtake and profit from the property. Inhabitants pay off rent-like loans and but can leave anytime. Rent is usually really low and acts as solidarity towards other houses.
It's called Mietshaussyndikat
bro a significant percentage of swedes live in housing co-ops, it's literally a normal form of housing here, you're not clever.
I get that my text came off as sarcastic. I wasn't being clever.
Let me retry:
I think it sounds like a great idea but I have concerns such as, who will pay the community bills? Who will be in charge? And other related administrative duty questions.
Right, well again refer to the fact that this is a solved problem in many countries, including the US. Housing co-ops consist of a nonprofit cooperative organization that owns the building and then residents own the right to live in an apartment, which comes with a monthly fee for maintenance and voting rights within the co-op.
It's the same principle as HOAs owning and maintaining common infrastructure, just within a single building rather than a group of houses.
Not necessarily i don't know about the situation all arouns the world but in atleast the herman speaking countries we have the concept to buy flats like one would buy a house and own it. So not all of it is owned by the same person. You still have the house maintainer which looks after the infrastructure but afaik you don't pay them rent.
Yeah I'd say it's pretty normal all over Europe, it might just be a common case of Americans being weird.
The type of arrangement I'm used to, property of the building is shared among the owners of the flats, who vote on how to run it in an assembly. They also appoint (and pay for) the maintainer you spoke of, but their role is more centered on overseeing/administering the building, handling paperwork, hiring contractors and such. Also, even for very large flats you end up paying a couple hundred euros a year for their services, so it hardly compares to rent.
We have em in the US too. They're called HOA's. Most get a bad wrap for being ran by shitty people/busybodies with nothing to do but fine other homeowners. All condos have em here.
The problem, in the US, with the picture is that a condo would cost you pretty much the same as a house with a yard so why opt for the condo at all. If they were cheaper I would own one to live in now VS just trying to save to buy a house since they're all expensive.
More supply would fix that.
Canadian condos are like that, generally individually owned and there's a condo board made up of residents that deals with management of the building. I don't know of many buildings that are mostly owned by corporations in Toronto.
Right? And the only thing adjacent to an apartment that you can own is a condo, which you still have to pay rent for, plus buy the damn thing, and on top of it all, you get to be forced into an HOA.
Woo.
And fuck HOAs. Fucking little tyrants designed to enforce racial segregation.
While of course fuck hoas, they do serve a legit purpose for maintaining the building at a steady cost if managed properly.
The US needs to reign them in. They arent nearly as powerful in Europe.
They need regulation badly. Petty tyrants living off the fat of the housing crisis. They're like employers during times of high unemployment.
Maybe in the US. In Germany this defintly isn't the rule. Many people own their own flats and a lot of people own 2-4 flats to rent them out as an extra income.
No, maybe you are in a more wealthy environment. It is not possible that everyone has multiple flats to rent out. In fact, Germany has one of the lowest ownership rates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate
Where did I say "everyone"?
But it is defintly not a given that an apartment has to be the tool of a slum lord, the way they portrayed it to discredit the idea that appatments are a more sustainable way of living...
Apartments can be owned by the people who live in it and this is quite common in many countries.
If one person rents out 4 appartments, that means that at least 4 others do not own their home. It's the same with houses of course.
Germany is just a particularly bad example unfortunately. Low ownership is a problem because it increases wealth inequality, which is also worse in Germany than many other nations.
True, but even here their statement that "all of those apartments are owned by one person" is far from a given. Especially with new developments this is rarely the case, even here.