- Hey Julia, did you just post a pic of you and your friend Kayla on Insta?

- Oh yeah.

- Do you really think that's a good idea?

- Why not?

- People might see it?

- Well, yeah, that's kind of the point.

- But, well, Kayla's a... You know, she's a... - A what?

- A landlord.

(upbeat music) Landlords aren't very popular people.

Just a quick search on X or Reddit will dig up a lot of horror stories and a lot of hate.

While some go as far as to suggest execution, less extreme voices merely propose that landlording should be illegal.

That is a ban on owning residential real estate that you rent to someone else.

- [Julia] The moral argument is that housing is a basic human right which no one should make a profit off of.

Furthermore, the power dynamic between landlords and tenants is so one-sided that it will inevitably lead to exploitation.

- But what would it actually mean to abolish landlords?

Is this just another pie in the sky pipe dream of the terminally online, or could it actually be done?

What would America look like without landlords?

- Let's start by saying that this is probably not going to happen.

Absent some kind of socialist revolution, rental properties are here to stay for the foreseeable future, partly because they're so ingrained in our economy.

If landlording became illegal overnight, it would be a cataclysmic shock to the system.

45 million renting households would suddenly have to leave their homes as their former landlords debated what to do with a now vacant property.

Since more than half of rental units have mortgages, owners would be forced to sell them.

And as millions of listings flooded the market, property values would likely plummet, at least temporarily, leading to mass foreclosures.

Presumably, some of those former renters might be able to buy the units they once occupied, but many would not be able to come up with a down payment or wouldn't wanna make the financial commitment or be too busy dealing with homelessness to even think about it.

- [Andrew] Markets would tumble, crime would spike, cats and dogs living together, total anarchy.

- Okay, this is a bit of a worst case scenario and why governments usually don't enact policies that try to remake the economy overnight, but there might be more gradual ways to achieve the same objective.

- Like changes to the tax code.

Landlords get to claim a lot of deductions like mortgage interest payments, depreciation, and maintenance and operating costs.

By scaling these back or eliminating them, the government could disincentivize people from converting real estate into rental units.

An economic ideology known as Georgism goes so far as to propose taxing land ownership to such an extent that it would be basically impossible to generate passive profit from it.

In other words, you can make money by running a business on a piece of land, but not from just owning the land itself.

- Let's say for the sake of argument that we could eliminate landlording in a gradual, non-market meltdown kind of way.

Would that solve America's housing crisis?

- Probably not.

At least not without some other major initiatives.

That's because the core root of the problem is a housing shortage.

There simply aren't enough places for people to live, and converting rental units into homes for sale doesn't by itself increase the total number.

We'd still have to have some way to decide who gets a home and who's out on the street.

- In fact, most economists agree that it would make the problem worse.

It's estimated that the US needs to build around four to seven million new homes to get back to pre-Great Recession inventory levels, a goal we're so far not making great progress on.

Eliminating the ability to make money on rent could discourage developers from building new properties at a time when we desperately need them.

- While no one is seriously debating the abolition of landlords in America, a version of this argument is currently playing out over rent controls and rent freezes, especially in big expensive cities like New York and San Francisco.

Policies that dictate how much landlords can increase rent on certain properties have been shown to limit displacement of low-income renters.

However, many economists counter that it is only a short-term solution and may actually impede investment in housing construction in the long run.

- Although the vast majority of renters want to buy a house someday, there are also some who genuinely prefer the flexibility and ease of renting.

Maybe you don't plan to be in a certain city for a long time, maybe you don't want the hassle of upkeep and repairs, or maybe you'd rather keep your savings in the stock market, which historically shows better returns than real estate.

Economists also point to the societal benefits of labor mobility.

If qualified workers can't easily relocate to better jobs because they're attached to a house with a mortgage, that can be a drag on the economy.

- In a world without landlords, the only entity that could provide temporary housing to those who need it and finance the construction of the millions of homes we need to solve the shortage would be the government, and that means public housing.

Public housing has perhaps a worse reputation in America than landlords, synonymous with poverty, decay, crime, and segregation.

From Cabrini-Green in Chicago to the concrete apartment blocks of the Soviet Union, conservatives have often cited public housing as evidence of the government's inability to provide necessities to its citizens.

- However, others point to deliberate policy decisions that hamstrung public housing in America.

Taxpayers didn't wanna finance someone else's home and private real estate developers, aka landlords, didn't wanna compete with the government.

One of the most damaging policies was income limits for qualified residents.

In other words, making public housing for poor people only.

Other countries that developed mixed income public housing have seen much more success.

In Singapore, for example, about half the population lives in high-quality, high-rise apartments constructed by the government, some of which sell for over a million dollars.

Besides, proponents argue, amidst all the negative press it's easy to forget that there are about two million Americans currently living in public housing who might otherwise be out on the street.

- Today, the idea of the federal government bankrolling the constructions of millions of new homes seems only slightly less fantastical than abolishing landlords, especially when we're already tens of trillions in debt.

And while some of you may be lucky enough to have a decent, compassionate landlord, it's illogical to expect them not to pursue their own financial goals.

Capitalists gonna capitalize.

- [Julia] What we can expect from our government, however, are regulations that minimize exploitation, like ensuring safety and security, making timely repairs, and restricting discrimination, harassment, and wrongful eviction.

- We can't tell you not to hate the player, but the only way to really make things better is to change the rules of the game.

- [Both] And that's our two cents.