ROLL BACK THE RENTS!

The landlords and their paid pimps will do all they can to keep their unearned income rolling in. We need to do more than just roll back rents. WE NEED TO TAKE AND HOLD THE BUILDINGS THAT WE HAVE COLLECTIVELY PAID FOR. If we're going to rebe, then let's rebel against the system of parasite ownership if property. WE THE TENANTS, pay all costs for the property. WE THE TENANTS, pay all property taxes that are passed on to us by the landlords. WE THE TENANTS pay all costs associated with the properties including maintainence, and all repairs. WE THE TENANTS pay all the capital improvements that are passed on to us by landlords. WE THE TENANTS pay above and beyond these costs, providing the landlords with huge profits that are totally unearned by them. In a word, WE THE TENANTS pay it all. Therefore, in order to establish a just society and provide housing for all, we hereby declare the properties to be owned collectively by the tenants. We REFUSE to any longer provide for the landlords and insist that the landlord class provide for themselves, just as all working people are compelled to do.

THIS IS A CALL NOT ONLY FOR A MASS RENT STRIKE, BUT AN END TO THE RENT SYSTEM ALTOGETHER!

Asking for lower rents is asking for the continuation of a system that fleeces tenants and provides continuous unearne dprofits for parasitical landlords. We will no longer be told that landlords are "providing housing" for the people. On the contrary, its WE THE TENANTS who provide for the landlords. We insiste that landlords from here on provide for themselves as go to work for their income and take their place among the rest of us as productive members of society.

STOP PAYING RENT! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! THE BUILDINGS ARE OURS TO KEEP AND RUN COLLECTIVELY AS WE SEE FIR, POOLING ALL RESOURCES TOWARD THE COMMON GOOD AND COMMON BENEFIT OF THE RESIDENTS OF EACH PROPERTY. WE WILL SET UP COMMITTEES AND COUNCILS TO BE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED BY THE RESIDENTS WHO ARE NOW TO BE DESIGNATED AS THE NEW OWNERS-IN-COMMON. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER PAYMENTS TO FORMER LANDLORDS. ALL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS OR BUILDING COMMITTEES CAN BE RECALLED ANY TIME A SIMPLE MAJORITY OF THE TENANTS CONCUR BY SECRET BALLOT. OTHERWISE, ALL COMMITTEE MEMBERS SHALL SERVE CONTINUOUSLY FOR ONE, ELIGIBLE FOR ONE MORE TERM UNLESS A SIMPLE MAJORITY DECIDE OTHERWISE. PAYMENTS BY EACH TENANT WILL GO INTO A COMMON TRUST THAT WILL BE MANAGED BY AN ELECTED TREASURY COMMITTEE, ALSO SUBJECT TO RECALL AT ANY TIME. THE AMOUNT OF THESE FUNDS WILL BE DECIDED DEMOCRATICALLY ACCORDING TO THE NEEDS AND DESIRES OF THE RESIDENTS. ALL FUNDS WILL BE EARMARKED TOWARD IMPROVEMENT OF THE PROPERTY IN THE COMMON INTEREST OF ALL, REPAIRS, AND MAINTAINENCE.

That system is already in place -- it's called a condo.

Works for Me does not read. Or is selective in what he reads. I said that current tenants must TAKE BACK what they have paid for. I'm not talking about condos, nitwit. WE HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR THE PROPERTIES as tenants, giving LL's a total free ride. Only an organized mass movement can accomplish this. If everyone stopped paying rent, they cannot evict and/or arrest everyone. The properties are OURS. Why? Because WE have paid for them. Get what you pay for!

"The SF Bay Area has some of the highest rents in the country"

Yes. Thank you rent control. You have limited a wide market for housing to the rich and super-rich. Luckily, I can sit back and enjoy collecting remt from my Cow Hollow Castle.

Round 'em up. Herd 'em off a cliff.

>Who steals the interest rates from security deposits and last months rent payed in advance?

This is a case where the misbehavior of some have created a necessity on the part of the landlords. Tenants would leave in the middle of the month and/or would trash the place as they were leaving. That wasn't right. An easy way to prevent that is to hold some of the tenants money. Less likely to leave i the middle of the night or to misbehave if you got something to lose. If rent is $1000/mo, what are you losing in interest? Banks are paying 3% for savings accounts, so what's that, $30.00/yr? That's 8 cents a day. Whoop-de-shit!

>Why should renters pay into a corrupt industry of so-called Credit Checks........

This is a new one. What part of the credit reporting industry is corrupt? Be specific.

>WE NEED TO TAKE AND HOLD THE BUILDINGS THAT WE HAVE COLLECTIVELY PAID FOR.

It's called commerce. You pay rent, the rent goes for upkeep of the building, property taxes, staff, etc...

>providing the landlords with huge profits that are totally unearned by them

Running rental property ain't all fun and games, you know. People who do it right put a great deal of time and effort into their job. Most of them are pretty nice people if you want to take the time to actually sit down and talk to them. Keep in mind, they're having to work with a great range of different people. Some tenants go with the flow, others are a genuine pain in the butt and you couldn't please them to save the world.

Of course, there are bad landlords, just like their are bad grocery stores and bad farmers, and bad any other field of work you can name. Given the chance, I believe the market will work. If word gets around that a particular landlord sux, they'll lose business, and they'll either need to straighten up and fly right, or they will continue to lose business. Another alternative is to collectively file a complaint with the landlord and pay your rent into an attorney's escrow account. You're meeting your legal obligation, yet the landlord is not receiving the income, nor will he until the issues of which you are complaining about are addressed. Now, if you can't get the tenants to collectively agree to do even that much, to try and get them to collectively "reclaim" the building is going to be really interesting.

Brigg: Where do you live? On the moon?

Your contention that landlord's fear losing business if they mistreat tenants has a familiar ring. If I'm not mistaken it sounds like another example of that sad affliction misnamed "libertarianism". I don't know if you're an up-and-coming Randite or not, but your wide-eyed faith in the mystical powers of the market inclines me to think you possibly are. (Libertarianism is basically a religion -- a religion sans morality.)

For just a moment, I beseech you, put your market catechism aside and look at reality.

You claim that landlord's spend lots of time maintaining their property. This may be true for high-income upper-tier rental dwellings, but for the majority of tenants your sanguine view doesn't ring true. In the past fifteen years I've had probably a dozen landlords and most put in a minimal effort. Some, including my present landlord, violate the minimal regulations on the books. A couple of past landlords did so blatantly, knowing that the penalties were so meagre and the grievance process so slow and onerous that violating the law pays.

Right now, my partner and I pay $1,300 a month for a small apartment in the East Bay. This is pretty standard. The landlord bought the building for a bit over $300,000 in the late 80s. The apartment has eight units. There is a washer and dryer and one load costs $4. If there is a maintenance problem he acts like we're causing him grief for the fun of it. Almost as a rule it takes a couple of calls and a week or more before anything gets fixed. If we decided to move he'd have a sufficient number of people expressing interest and would easily get $1,300, if not more. In all likelihood, he'd tell every prospective tenant that there are lots of people calling him about the place.

Suffice to say, I'm all for a generalized rent-strike.

I live in the SF Bay area, so sometimes it feels like I'm living on the moon. (HA!) And I'm not a libertarian, I'm a conservative.

Once again, I did point out that there are inattentive landlords, and it sounds like you've run into a string of them and I hate that for you. The fact that this guy has units in an area that he could easily rent out to others should you leave doesn't make it any better. My viewpoint is from my own personal experience naturally. I don't know if you and your roommate were able to talk to the other tenants before signing a rental agreement. I made it a practice to do so and questioned the integrity of any landlord who would discourage me doing so or tried to push me into signing.

The suggestion I gave was something I actually participated in. And it should be a lot easier with only 8 units than what happened in my case. I was renting in Atlanta at a place that had approx. 600 units. These untis were in the city and I was paying around $300/mo, probably like paying $800/mo here in SF. One bedroom, one bath deal. About a month after I rented, it changed ownership and things began to slip. They claimed it was just the changeover and they'd get things strightened out over time. OK, I could buy into that. But then 2 and 3 months went by and it only got worse. It was obvious. A bunch of the people who had lived there a long time got together and formed what was basically a Renters Assoc. and started going around talking to other tenants and garnering support. They signed a petition and presented it, but it didn't seem to get them anywhere. Aaron, you're name is kinda new here, so I don't think thatyou're aware that I, among other things, fly private charter jets for businesses and/or individuals. It was around this time that an attorney in Atlanta whom I had flown with needed a co-pilot for a trip he was making, and at 40,000 feet and nothing to do, I started telling him about what was going on. It was then he told me about paying rent into escrow, and he said he was required to do so much pro bono work every year and he would count it as that, so no bill to boot. I told the Renters Assoc., they loved the idea, it was presented to the tenants, the vast majority of which were willing to participate. The attorney wrote a brief letter to the owners telling them what was taking place, and it wasn't long until they changed their tune. You gotta hit 'em where it hurts: the wallet. (And I realize that's the purpose of the renter-strike.) With the 600 unit apartments, we were also able to get some negative newspaper coverage on the owners, so that helped. There's no reason you couldn't do the same thing.

Aaron, if you continue to disagree with me, that's fine. I do wish you Good Luck with this. If something else occurs to me that you could try, I'll certainly let you know. A rent-strike might wake up some, but eventually, if their pockets are deep enough, they're going to start evictions. I would think the probability of participation in a rent-strike would be low, so it might not work. The probability of a rent-strike vs. paying into escrow does provide 2 different avenues. From a legal standpoint, I believe you'd have better footing with the escrow deal.

BTW, I'm still interest in what part of the credit reporting industry is corrupt. If someone could fill me in I would be appreciative.

I have no problem whatsoever with your escrow idea. Particularly in those cases where the law is on the tenants side -- it often isn't, and that's precisely the problem -- it sounds like a sound tactic for improving conditions. Thanks for the idea.

The first step in getting anything off the ground, of course, is convening a meeting of some sort. I've found in my political activities (organizing strikes, community gardens etc etc) that there are two broad reasons this is difficult:

-- people are incredibly busy working in order to afford a place to live, food to eat, child and medical care, car insurance etc etc
-- people are cynical.

For these reasons it's important to be able to demonstrate that whatever effort is expected has a high likelihood of some degree of success. Conservatives often make the mistake of interpreting inactivity as a sign of contentment, but it's really, in my view, a sign that people don't believe that change is possible. So they keep their nose to the grind-stone, swear off politics, and try to have a good time where and when possible. It is for this reason that victories, even small ones, are incredibly important. Once people have seen that improvement is possible they're far more likely to engage on a deeper level, forge deeper community, and win bigger victories.

Rent strikes a la the one proposed by the above poster are something of a different order qualitatively than your escrow idea. It is an attack on rent as such and not simply about making rent more palatable or fair. It's about first principles.

However, even for reformist goals a wide-scale rent-strike could be highly effective. If tens of thousands refused to pay rent (not about to happen, I concede) the state would be in a fix. It would heighten the contradictions. Rents would go down, there's no question. (In the event of such an action I'd be for pooling money saved by withdrawl of rent to assist small landlords, particularly those who haven't amassed large amounts of wealth parasitically.)

As far as your "inattentive landlords" comment: My experience is that landlords are very attentive -- to making as much money with as little effort as possible!
The rent relation is a feudal relation. Why market-lovers are so uncritical of it is somewhat surprising to me.

Anyway, why is it that pilots are so frequently conservative? Because you make so much scrilla? Or because you were all in the Air Force and now cater to the rich? Would libertarian socialists be welcome?

>Conservatives often make the mistake of interpreting inactivity as a sign of contentment, but it's really, in my view, a sign that people don't believe that change is possible.

You could be right. I don't know if it's as much being conservative as simply just a personality trait on an individuals behalf. Let's face it, there are simply some people out there who want change, they just don't want to put out the effort to make it happen. That leaves the task up to people like you and me to motivate them. Some people can't be motivated to do much at all. But, in general, I get your point.

And while I agree that it's hard to get people to participate because they have other concerns, I've generally found that if someone really wants to do something badly enough, they'll find a way. Is that an absolute? No. But it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

>As far as your "inattentive landlords" comment: My experience is that landlords are very attentive -- to making as much money with as little effort as possible!

Allow me to expound: They aren't attentive to doing the things that a landlord who was conscientious of earning an honest dollar for doing an honest days work should be attentive to doing. That's wrong.

There's some nasty one's. There's some real good one's, too. Just like every occupation.

>Anyway, why is it that pilots are so frequently conservative? Because you make so much scrilla? Or because you were all in the Air Force and now cater to the rich? Would libertarian socialists be welcome?

Wow, I find there to be a pretty big mix myself. But I'm in a position to know a lot of pilots so I have a larger sampling from which to choose. I never served in the military, though many who fly for the airlines did. I don't know about "cater(ing) to the rich", we fly because we love to fly. And it's always a challenge to move up to the next rating, so we keep pushing ourselves to learn more and more. A pilot that's decided to quit learning is a pilot who is going to get themselves killed along with everyone on board with them. Naturally, when you "move up to the next level" of learning to fly, you advance to more complex aircraft, until you're flying jets. I get paid what the market says I should get paid. I never think about it, I just love to fly. I've found if you're doing what you love to do, and you do your best at it, the money follows.

I flew in a plane when I was 4, absolutely loved looking at the earth from a bird's eye view, and never got over it. I starting saving my money when I was in my teen years from doing odd jobs around the house, mowing the neighborhoods yards, bagging food at the grocery store, and working at a small airport near my home. I used it to take flying lessons. I followed my dream. I see no reason why a libertarian socialist couldn't follow their dream to fly should they so desire. In fact, if it's a dream of yours, I encourage you to follow it.

Once again, aaron, best of luck to you.

Move to another country. Mother fucker picket my country for a free ride ? Wimp ass pussy want to live larger than he can make on his own. Move away. Canada I understand will support fools like you.