From the Star Tribune emotional “Affordable housing becomes top priority” (January 10th)… While local variations contribute to the problems, they boil down to one pervasive trend: As the economy expands, rents rise faster than tenants’ incomes.”
But I don’t see a connection between how landlords who have done nothing to expand the economy, get the freedom to price-gouge renters because of it. Someone explain how landlords should be able to go on a feeding frenzy even though they did nothing besides owning rental property.
Here’s the reality: Renters drive the expanding economy more than any other group, and this is used against them to drive their rents. Makes little sense, the system protects landlords and their freedom to bleed renters, even though the system needs the labor of workers who rent, more than it needs landlords.
The majority of households in Minneapolis are renter households, more than half of the city’s population — over 150,000 city residents — rent. Without the work that renters do, the city would grind to a halt. Why would a system allow landlords the freedom to reap the benefits of an expanding economy by charging higher and higher rents, when it is renters who are more responsible for the healthy economy than landlords?
Landlords own property, so they get the rewards; renters drive the engine of the economy and all they get is stagnant wages and higher rents.