Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by rguillebert | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

rguillebert

> Kicking grandma out of her rented apartment

If she's retired, she can move somewhere cheaper so someone who actually needs to live there for their job can move in.

The rest of what you've written is completely unsubstantiated.

View on HN

Ah yes, the classic “you’re useless now grandma, the fuck on outta here” line. I bet you’re a real gem in the family.

A landlord is to housing what a scalper is to tickets (or for the nerds, graphics cards). Only one of them leaves you fucking homeless.

Ah yes, the classic "I got here first so it's mine forever".

I'd rather a grandmother be housed than be homeless, even if it means her grandchild has to live in a further flat.

If you can afford to rent a flat in London, you can afford a flat anywhere, it's not about homelessness.

but what of you can only afford it because of rent control? isn't that the actual discussion at hand, elderly people staying where they've lived forever because they can afford to due to rent control?

There's a limited supply of housing in those high demand locations, not everyone who wants to live in London can live in London because there just isn't enough units, with that limited supply, housing should go to the people who need it the most, like the people who have jobs in those locations.

Then rent control will allow the _most_ people who have the _shittier jobs_ to live closer to work. I don't think there is a real care here about anything other than "I want the power to do what I want", which translates pretty closely to "mah freedoms".

Absolutely not, they protect current renters, not people with the lowest wages, people with the shittiest jobs have been priced out already. Rent control protects the millionaires renting in Mayfair as well.

two ways of looking at things. on the one hand, there's the view that society exists to take care of people, including letting grandma stay in her appartment if she wants to. on the other hand is the view that society is a competiton, grandchild against grandparent, and so on. one of these views is insanity.

So should grandma occupy a five bedroom house by herself a 15 min walk from the city for twenty years while her children wait until their mid thirties for a deposit on a studio?

Are you advocating for an end to all property rights or full housing nationalization or something? Do you advocate for 100% capital gains taxes, including on housing? I don't understand why you target rent control as the only thing that rewards the people who already have things.

I don't support policies that actively entrench the status quo. I'm for taxation that's as high as possible without causing too much negative impact on investments. We're having a conversation about rent control here though, that's why I only talk about rent control, in a conversation about taxation, I'll talk about taxation.

> If she's retired, she can move somewhere cheaper so someone who actually needs to live there for their job can move in.

OTOH that is extremely cruel. Older people, assuming they have lived there most of their life, are the hardest hit by having to change. All their lifelong friends are near, their trusted doctors are nearby, it's all they know.

Why not have the job move to the person instead?

That'd be great of course, for a ton of jobs, that's not possible though.

That's the dream isn't it? Take all the high paying silicon valley jobs, and move it to some cheap city like detroit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com