Landlords are Parasites, Using Extortion to Take Money From Tenants

Now that the election date has been set, I look forward to seeing policies being issued by parties on the ‘left’.  Not that there’s much ‘left’ about the current Labour Party, but I continue to live in hope.

I’m particularly interested in seeing if any policies are issued that focus on the near impossible situations being experienced by people who are renting their houses, a rather significant proportion of the population. 

Renters face continual rent rises imposed by landlords, and are powerless to do anything about it.  A landlord once told me that he had to raise the rent to keep up with the market. I looked at him rather quizzically and asked him to define that market, and where the ability to bargain or negotiate the price was. The so-called rental market doesn’t meet the definition of a market, “ a place where buyers and sellers can exchange goods and services” and where both have negotiating power.

This clearly isn’t the case with renters. To be blunt, landlords use blatant extortion, knowing that tenants have no power at all to bargain or even to look for an alternative rental – for a start the rent would be similar, moving houses is so expensive, and the cost of establishing new rental agreements just adds further insult.  

You could say that landlords subscribe to the Godfather method of doing business, by making tenants an offer they can’t refuse. 

They just put up prices to a level where they think their tenants can get by,  and by matching their rents to those being imposed by their landlord peers, such as basing annual rentals on the advertised rentals for new listings.  

They try to justify increases on rising costs, but never seem to reduce rentals as the costs decrease e.g., reductions in interest rates or the very advantageous tax changes handed to them by the group of rental property owners masquerading as our current government. And, isn’t it strange, the rent increases are usually far greater than the actual rise in costs. 

Life is particular hard for lower income people, especially beneficiaries, who are paying increasing proportions of their very limited income straight to their landlords. As is well documented,  every time beneficiaries get an increase, especially in accommodation allowances, landlords immediately put up rents. Ask university students what happens every time their accommodation allowance is increased. Greed. Avarice. 

Parasite is too kind a word for landlords, yet what’s effectively what they are.

The elderly are especially vulnerable. Due to life circumstances increasing numbers of the elderly do not own their own houses and are forced to rent, having to meet rental costs from their national superannuation. This is barely adequate as it is to cover day to day living, without having a substantial proportion sucked off by greedy landlords.

I know of a profoundly deaf man in his late 70s, who is now having to pay $425 per week in rent ($22,100 per year) out of his national superannuation, and this leaves him with barely enough money to live on. That is outrageous. 

There is nothing moral about landlords reducing their tenants to penury, in order to finance their lifestyle – this person’s landlord is most definitely not short of money, in fact the opposite. 

And the same applies, I feel, to most landlords – they effectively extract a very significant proportion of their tenants’ income, using it for their own lifestyles and to build up their already bulging bank accounts. If they used a gun to take the money we’d call it robbery. Not much difference, is there? 

We should not be conned by their claims they are providing an essential service. This is blatant nonsense, there is nothing altruistic about their business model. Pure greed.

So a question for the parties on the left – what do you propose to do about this? The ball in your court. Given the percentage of voters who are renting, there are a lot of votes out there waiting for you to come up with the goods.

I’m not holding my breath.