The Inequity of Rental Housing

When speaking of the worse aspects of capitalism, we could mention the sometime devastating effects that can result from speculation on the stock market (especially in the futures market), or the exploitation of vulnerable labour in foreign countries (especially involving children); but these areas, although very important, are well removed from the everyday lives of Canadian citizens, or they are hidden away or explained in such a clandestine or complicated manner that the ordinary man will eventually become frustrated enough to put them out of his mind. What never leaves many ordinary people's mind, especially around the first of the month, is the rent.

Rent, one of the last holdovers from the past where a landowner would charge a price for the use of his land (usually in a part of the crop grown on it), and one of the few areas left for a rich man to take advantage of a poor one (in a legal and forthcoming manner), is an antiquated notion that, in a modern society that prides itself on the equality of all its citizens, needs to be eliminated.

Everyone who has ever paid rent for housing will understand the injustice of the concept and every landlord understands the advantage of owning not only the building where people live and work, but also the land that lies underneath. This is why most corporations own the land and buildings they use and why governments have always stepped in to limit the behavior of landlords as a tenant is in such a vulnerable and inequitable position.

Landlords will always argue that rental housing is a fair deal. A tenant pays for the use of the apartment (house) in monthly installments. The landlord gets money in exchange for the use of his property. This will even convince many tenants who do not think much about their situation. So an analogy is in order to best explain my point.

You are getting married. You drive to your local jewelers looking for a ring to purchase. You are not a man of unlimited means so the prices of many rings seem surprisingly high. But you argue to yourself that you will only marry once in your life and your soon-to-be wife is worth the best ring that you can possibly afford. You choose an expensive one (you do not wish to seem frugal in the aspects of love) and you leave the shop with a spring in your step thinking of how much your fiancé will enjoy the ring.

As you are of limited means you realize that an outright purchase of this ring is not possible. You have left the jeweler in order to travel to your bank in order to negotiate a loan from the institution. You sit in an office as the loan officer probes every aspect of your life, from you credit rating to how long you have lived in you present residence, from your debt load to your length of employment at your present workplace. After suppressing the feeling that a rectal examine would be more pleasant, the loans officer comes back with one of two responses to your loan request. If the answer is yes then you go purchase the ring and live happy ever after. But, if the answer is no, you return to the jeweler and tell that you were denied the loan and will not be able to buy the ring.

The jeweler then suggests a different course of action. He suggests that, instead of buying the ring, you could rent it from him. You ask, "How so?" He states that, since you can not afford buying the ring, you could give him a certain amount of money each month, and as long as you keep paying the monthly amount, you can keep the ring on your wife's finger. As you have heard of or participated in the use of a rent-to-own contract with a local store (you got the furniture for your apartment that way), you ask if the use of the ring will be of a similar nature. The jeweler replies negatively. He repeats the deal and continues with the amount he is willing to charge you for the ring's use.

As you are no idiot (even though you did get your furniture from a rent-to-own shop) you decline the offer after explaining to the jeweler that the ring is not like a car or a computer. He looks at you feigning ignorance. Even though you know that he understands the difference, you decide to enlighten him anyway. You explain that when you rent a computer or lease a car the computer or car will be worth less afterward. In fact, the computer or car will eventually in a reasonably short period of time become worthless. You explain that a computer or a car is not an investment (bad or otherwise) but an expense. The rental of a car or a computer is fair because you are paying for its use, where that use will degrade the object until is becomes unworkable and worthless. You finish by stating that a diamond and the gold around it will always hold a worth; that although it may lose some of its value from use, it will never become worthless.

Rental Housing - Page 2

Article by:
FS Staff

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