No Stupid Questions

Yeah. It's up to you to decide if you care about being a hypocrite though.

Depends on how greedy you are.

Yes. That is, if you're actively hurting the availability of affordable housing, that would be hypocrisy. Your economic interests are at odds with your stated ethical stance, which means your ethical stance is unstable.

Owning the property is not the problem: Rent-seeking is. Running it as a managed coöp would be the ethical path forward in that situation.

It's not hypocritical if you are providing affordable housing for someone.

Despite the kneejerk hate towards landlords lately, which is largely justified due to the extreme levels of rent-seeking behavior evident in today's completely unaffordable rental market, affordable rental housing is actually a legitimate market and there needs to be availability to meet that demand. Renting on its own is not a crime. Some people even prefer it. It can provide significantly more flexibility and less responsibility, stress and hassle, at a lower monthly cost than home ownership IF (and ONLY IF) you have a good landlord, either because they choose to be or because the laws require them to be, which is not so much the case with most of the laws.

So for me those are the dividing lines. If you are not:

• A slumlord providing "affordable" rental housing by leaving your tenants in unsafe, unsanitary, and unmaintained properties.
• Demanding luxury-priced rents for an extremely modest property with no features that can be considered a luxury and no intention of maintaining anything to luxurious standards.

Then maybe it's not hypocritical. And I don't mean just taking the highest price you can find on rentfaster and posting your property for that price because "that's what the market price is" I mean actually thinking about whether that price you're asking is actually affordable for real human beings living in your area.

Basically, if you treat your tenants like actual human beings with the understanding they may be struggling to get by, trying to raise a family, working as much as they can even when work is not reliable, and dealing with all life throws at them, and you don't treat these things as immediately evictable offenses like a battleaxe over their head just waiting to drop, then yes, you absolutely can argue for a cause like affordable housing for everyone -- because you are helping provide it.

If, after contributing to legitimate maintenance expenses and reserves, you are making a tiny profit, barely breaking even or even losing money renting, good. If you are treating it as a cash cow that funds your entire life, fuck you.

Hm I'd say not necessarily. That depends on your situation I guess. The question comes down to "would you give up your property for other people to live in?" If you own 1-2 small properties, that's not being a greedy landlord. And it would make it possible for you to give people housing they could afford (while still profitable for you, if you needed it to be).

If you charge insane rents, then you're not only a hypocrite but maybe also schizophrenic. That just sounds like a disconnect.

But it's very possible to "change the system from within", even if that's not my political opinion. If you can buy property, maybe you should. And then rent it to people for an affordable price.

I'm sometimes thinking people should get together and buy mansions to convert into shelters

It depends on how you are looking at it. Since you called it "Investment properties" I have to assume you plan to maximize profits on it so I would have to say yes it is. However if you are renting the property out for a minimum value and only charging enough to be able to cover costs and the mortgage and maybe a minor income on the side, I don't think it is. Obviously you need to cover expenses for the property or else someone else who won't do the same is going to obtain it.

BUT, if you are trying to maximize return and charging as much as you can, then yes it is super hypocritical to be defending the cause while contributing to the other side of the cause. I still think defending is better than just ignoring it but, yea it isn't helping your case if anyone ever finds out you do.

For many people owning their own housing is the wrong decision. That means somebody else needs to own their housing and that person may as well be you (depending of course on your situation - it isn't for everyone)

Are you renting them for unaffordable amounts? Maybe. But I think you can both live in the world that exists, and argue for a better one.

And I guess if your investment property is affordable housing then you are also walking the walk, right? So no I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical. Likely so, but not necessarily so.

We've rented for much less than it costs to buy a house here, in fact all of the places we rented were like that. Old houses that were paid off, that we did not want to buy, just paid to live in them month to month. Sure we can wish for a better system but sometimes renting is affordable.

If your profit is modest no. Even less so if you live on the property like renting out a room or having a multiflat or coachhouse.

It isn't hypocritical, but I'd question why I would invest in something that I would want to lose value from a moral standpoint.

Methinks it is only not hypocritical under a few circumstances:

• I am renting a place myself and simultaneously leasing out my otherwise primary residence
• The property is my primary residence and is not oversized (so no buying a duplex and renting out one), but I rent out parts of it for roommates/traditional BnBs
• Unique property ownership situations that shouldn't last longer than 6 months (maybe I'm downsizing, maybe house swapping... Not sure)

Any other condition is in principle hypocritical... Although there is probably still a massive moral difference between someone with a severe disability who owns a few rentals to pay for bills vs a professional investor who systematically prices out locals to improve profit margins

If you’re arguing for a particular public policy, then it’s not necessarily hypocritical (which isn’t to say it’s good).
If you’re arguing for social change based on personal behavior, then you should lead by example.

If you argue that others should not own investment property for whatever reason but you are a valid exception it's one thing.

If you say that "look at how much money I'm making, tax me harder daddy" it's another.

I think it depends a lot on the specifics of the situation.

Did you buy a single family home / house that you're living in, and renting out part of to help pay your mortgage? Then it depends on the rent you charge.

If you charge market rates and you can afford to charge less than market rates, or if you hire contractors and maintenance people for the unit that are cheaper / worse than the ones you use for your own unit, then yes, you are being exploitative and hypocritical.

If, however, you treat the unit like your own and charge below market rates then no, you're not.

If you build an addition on your house, or build a laneway house or something, then it's more reasonable to charge market rates for rent because you've actually added new housing to the area, an act that in itself should help to slightly drop rents. Same thing if you buy vacant property and build rental units on it. However, if you continue charging the most you possibly can long after you've made your money back then you're back into the territory of being an exploitative hypocrite.

And if you're just in a hot market and buying up houses / condos, and renting them back to people as is, or just doing the cheapest and shittiest job you can turning them into apartments, then yes you are being a hypocrite. At that point you're just using your capital to buy up a limited quantity item and sell it back to people at exploitative rates. It would be like being stranded in the desert and buying up the remaining water and then selling it back to people for a profit. You're providing no value to society, just using past success to force people into a corner where they have to pay you for a necessity that's in limited supply.

Only two avenues I could see nothing being hypocritical, signing it over/forming a co-op or doing rent-to-own with rent control and everything being transferable to "next of kin" upon some kind of accidental death.

No, not at all.

A parallel analogy I see here all the time: driving cars is bad for the planet. It contributes to climate change. So should you give up your car for the sake of the climate? No - because if you live in an auto-dependent area (which is a lot of affordable areas), then you need a car to effectively live your life. To have a job, go to the grocery store, spend time with friends, etc. The problem is the structures and incentives which don't appropriately dissuade people from driving and provide alternatives. You as an individual giving up your ability to transport yourself will have an entirely negligible impact on the climate while severely hampering your life. It makes total sense to continue driving a car while advocating for better climate policy.

Similarly, owning a handful of rental properties has no impact on the housing market, but choosing to eschew this potential source of revenue could severely hamper your future finances. If you don't buy these properties as rentals, odds are, someone else will. Your noble intentions will lead to exactly the same result, except you are worse off. On the other hand, if you do take action and buy these rental properties and rent them out at a fair market rate, you can be a good landlord - someone who is communicative about issues and prompt about fixing things when they break. And you are stopping a corporate buyer from owning the property and being a shitty landlord. While you do this, you can also advocate for better housing policy, which is the lever to pull to actually solve the problem.

No, it's just having basic empathy for other humans.

Yes

I would make the argument that it could actually be a means to align with affordable housing (although that would likely be very difficult in this current housing market). Managing a property is a service, you have to manage vacancies, repairs, rent collection, etc.

If you don't offload this to a management company and do it all yourself it is technically feasible to make a profit from the labor of managing the property even when charging below market rate for the property (difficult to do right now, but after owning the property for a period of time definitely possible).

If you were to do this you would be directly combatting the affordable housing problem by introducing competition at a lower price (it would be a drop in the ocean, but it would be fighting for affordable housing).

Don't hate the player, hate the game