Behind the closure of virtually every bar, restaurant, corner store; every mall, apartment home, and school campus, is a landlord. Rental rates are not arbitrary. They don’t rise and fall with the tides. An individual, or group of individuals comprising an entity, is responsible—they set the curve. To think otherwise is to accept the charge. Even the companies that feel entitled to our every loving moment: many lease their business properties. I think it’s too convenient to blame our situation entirely on policymakers and CEOs when landlords are right here among us.
Engravable knick-knack retail chain Things Remembered began going out of business by terminating leases where sales no longer warranted cost-of-rent, including the store I worked at when I was a teenager. Creative commons.
“Politicians do not work for their constituents. Politicians work for CEOs, other politicians, and landlords: the loudest voters with the most capital.”
The superior bank for wealth is property. Unlike cash or possessions, property is the commodity best at retaining its value. Money, cars, mansions, jet planes, all come and go. Land on the other hand is practically forever. You can inherit it, farm it, mine it, lease it, bequeath it. It distinguishes money from capital. Money has an end-goal: “I bought tickets to see the show.” Capital, however, is money used to generate more money, and only exists in terms of earnings potential. Property, if only ever valued hypothetically, can always sell for more than its worth.
Inheritance is a royal English obsession we inherited from our country’s British founders. This is also where the term “capital” comes from:
“The word “capital” was first used in its current meaning in England around 1611, derived from ‘capital grant,’ meaning a grant of land from the King—i.e. the head—which would be the basis of a new estate, and so meaning ‘original’ funds, thus carrying in its genealogy a mirror of the changing sources and origins of power.”
It’s how you codify oppression: by nestling it in language. It is no coincidence the term “landlord” survived the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The kingly attitude with which a landowner calls their property a dominion echoes that supposedly divine right to rule. Combine that with a Calvinist equation that wealth = God’s obvious favor, and you get a hoarder who can self-justify overcharging tenants. Landlords are, definitively speaking, true capitalists that unlike politicians and CEOs, mostly live among us.
Best tenants rights protection per state according to Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy Volume XXVI, Number 1, Fall 2018. Creative commons.
Picture a favorite diner or café that is no longer with us, or a shuttered neighborhood bookstore. Think of the malls and shopping districts that now stand hollowed and labelscarred. Count the city centers with skyscrapers completely devoid of occupants. I’m sure you’ve heard of at least one business, hospital, or college campus that closed because rent became too much. We pass judgement without investigating, scrutinize the spending habits of a whole generation with zero curiosity, corroborate the tired old narrative of laziness. Worst of all, so many people we pass on the street once had homes they could no longer afford. None of this is accidental.
Landlords know the game, that a large part of keeping up appearances involves looking like they follow the law. It’s why they exert so much pressure on politicians, to soften those laws and stop new ones from forming. Furthermore, landlords frequently possess the financial and community resources to run a hellish recall campaign. It’s possible politicians seem so ineffectual because their jobs depend on it. Tenants are inconsequential beyond the polling booth, and compared to landlords, less likely to have friends in high places. Politicians work for CEOs, other politicians, and landlords: the loudest voters with the most capital.
Why are we allowing landlords to get away with one egregious offense after another? How can we, their tenants, tighten the leash? What will it take to be taken seriously?
Vacant storefronts, empty condos, ghostly malls and closed campuses make the news while the leading cause goes unnamed. But why? Too many landlords constitute a parasitic pseudo-upper class with considerable political sway. They have infiltrated our politics, driven multibillion dollar corporations out of business, and darkened city districts like lesions on the brain. Our economy would have you believe market trends are independent phenomena. But each dip and increase is the result of a conscious effort to stay in business. When I asked how he justifies holding out on empty units, one young San Francisco landlord told me, “Someone’ll pay.”
