![]() But then, the notion is, that the “landlord” swoops in and grabs the housing and the extorts poor people to pay to live in it. A hard all-American worker breaking his body to build housing. The author of the letter echoes a weird but interesting idea that a “housing provider” is the guy in a hard hat with a tool belt who builds the housing. ![]() But there is, and when there isn’t, it isn’t because of a greedy landed class beating the peasants, it’s because local juntas limit the supply of housing to satisfy angry neighbors or through extorting developers. The term “landlord” implies that there is no choice for consumers about where they live and what they pay. And like any other consumer-oriented business, a service is provided and if the customer is happy, the business will succeed. The process of building and operating housing is risky, just like opening a bar or a restaurant. But I don’t have an hour to spend with 300 million Americans. I absolutely know that if I could spend an hour with the individual who wrote this letter and walk him through any housing balance sheet, he’d understand this. It’s just like mortgage lenders want to know that a homebuyer earns significantly more in monthly income than the mortgage payment. Most DCRs are set at 1.20 or even as high as 1.25, which means there must be 25 cents for every dollar of rent flowing from the payment of rent after expenses. The Debt to Credit Ratio (DCR), for example is a critical measure of what banks and lenders require for loans. When I managed and built housing professionally as a non-profit developer, I learned to understand how housing is financed. It seems lost on many people and elected officials that housing is a marginal business just like any other business if there is money left over after paying loans, taxes, repairs, and other costs, then there is a return on the investment. Presumably, next, “laugh all the way to the bank” as I’ve heard some people say. “What landlords do,” says the letter writer, “is demand too much of our money, pocket as much of it as possible and then use the rest to pay those who actually do make a contribution of one kind or another.” It’s all passive income the hardest work a person operating housing does is the once-a-week trip to the post office to pick up the rent checks. I explain to my audiences that people think that rental housing is purchased or built with cash, and then rents are set based on boat payments and gathering enough cash to take that long trip to Mexico or the Bahamas. But this point illustrates one I make over and over again to housing providers to explain why they can’t seem to get ahead of harmful legislation. The author of the letter didn’t use the term, but many on Twitter talked about the idea that what housing providers do is purchase property and “hoard” it, holding it for “ransom,” and forcing people to pay unreasonable prices for it. I’ve argued that changing the narrative is key to get better housing policy the reaction to the editorial makes my point. But people generally believe things that simply aren’t true about housing and how it is operated. This is certainly not the case as evidenced by an avalanche of policies being passed across the country to punish people who operate housing ranging from banning the screening of potential residents to extending Covid-19 related eviction bans well into 2022. ![]() The proposal is a first of its kind effort to update language from the middle ages, language that characterizes people who operate housing as having all the power in rental housing. Last week I had an editorial in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains. ![]() (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images) Print Collector/Getty Images After his death in 1976, his successors introduced social and economic initiatives that reversed many of Mao's policies. As Chairman of the People's Republic of China and of the Chinese Communist Party he set about transforming China, but his attempt to modernise the country's industrial base (the Great Leap Forward) and the disastrous Cultural Revolution caused dramatic upheavals in Chinese society. The son of a peasant farmer, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung) (1893-1976) led the Red Army which undertook the epic Long March and overthrew the Nationalist Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949. applause of a group of People's Liberation Army soldiers. Mao Zedong, Chinese Communist revolutionary and leader, c1960s-c1970s(?).
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