“Mini-Landlords” Numbers Increasing; Affordable Housing Not So Much
Image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
This piece originally posted on Fran Quigley’s blog Housing Is A Human Right
This newsletter has chronicled some very promising developments in the effort to make the human right to housing a lived reality. It has been heartening to learn about the rise of tenant movements, victories in rent control and affordable housing campaigns , and inspiring people and programs devoted to ensuring housing is available to all. I look forward in the coming weeks to sharing another great example in the latter category: a bold and successful story about formerly unhoused people and their supporters creating both housing and community.
Sometimes, though, when it comes to housing, it feels like the U.S. remains stuck in two nations. One nation is populated by landlords and homeowners who enjoy generous tax breaks as they use housing as a tool to build personal wealth. The other nation consists of the millions of homeless and housing- insecure people, forced to scrape together whatever price the landlord class charges for shelter—or else live and die unhoused.
This month has been one of those “two nations” times. There has been a surge of attention directed toward a relatively new player in the commodification of housing: a real estate investing company called Arrived that aims to create millions of “mini-landlords.” From a December 5th Vice article:
Arrived, which first launched in 2021, snatches up single-family homes and turns them into rental properties that anyone can invest in for as little as $100 . . . In a webinar touting the new fund last week, the company explained it is betting on single-family home rentals because fewer people can afford to buy homes and more people are stuck renting.
Among the investors in this company are former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, and Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff.
Sigh.
Eric Tars of the National Homelessness Law Center had it right in his reaction to the news of this new company: “This is the problem with housing being seen as a commodity and profit source rather than a basic human need and human right.”
Just think of the possibilities if that same amount of money (fairly taxed from these billionaires) and energy was put into growing the ranks of well-housed people instead of creating yet more real estate speculators. Instead, even our largest government affordable housing program, the Housing Choice Voucher program, and our largest producer of lower-priced housing, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, further enrich private investors.
It is all part of the financialization of housing, well-described in this Shelterforce article and video and called out as a human rights violation in this Right to Housing paper co-authored by the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Housing. Here is that report’s set-up:
Over a billion people worldwide are living without a home or in grossly inadequate housing, lacking basic services like clean water, sanitation and electricity. In every city around the world, housing is unaffordable for low and middle-income people, with housing costs growing faster than incomes. Eviction is a common experience in the Global South as well as in the Global North. The housing system is increasingly controlled by financial actors whose primary interest is growing and leveraging capital. Homes are treated as financial assets rather than places to live.
The new U.S. investment company aiming to creating millions of mini-landlords pushes us further in this direction, treating housing as a financial asset first and foremost. It is disheartening, especially in light of fresh evidence that evictions and housing insecurity increases renters’ risk of death.
But there are plenty of good people pushing in the other direction. I promise to share more about them in this space soon.
