i got rent increase notices immediately after every 'covid check' was announced.

Man, I went years without a cost of living increase... I told my landlord this, and that same year he raised my rent over 10% with only 60 days notice. That's illegal in my state on two different levels. I met with an attorney, and the was basically nothing I could do that wouldn't result in me needing to move out.

At the time, the rent was really bad in the city. I could find a comparable place to live, but the moving cost and hassle was too high.

This is how landlords do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.

I'm sorry you're having to go through that. I've had a nightmare landlord before and it really fucks with your mental wellbeing. Best of luck to you!

I just bought a house from a guy who had been renting it out for thirty years and I'm now in the process of fixing all the shit he neglected during that time. I can't believe that anyone was willing to rent this place for any amount of money, let alone the $1300/mo he had been getting for it. The kitchen ceiling was sagging down a foot in two places and held up literally only by the paint and caulk, thanks to mice - I got showered with mouse poop and urine-soaked ceiling tile material when I demo'ed it. The electrical outlets were all partially blocked by the baseboard radiators, which was probably a good thing because they were all ungrounded 1940s-era receptacles with the hot and neutral wires hooked up in reverse. One light switch caused the circuit breaker to trip as soon as I flipped it. Not a single door in the house could actually be closed (not even the front door) so I had to reset the hinges; one door looked like he had tried to fix the problem using a beaver with dental problems.

He sold the house as "rental ready" and I'm five months into the renovation now. I like to think the house appreciates my being here.

Yeah, but they really deserve that tip. They work really hard, you see. Just the other year my landlord was hard at work promising to paint over a wall he ruined with repairs.

I bet he's going to get it done any day now!

Gosh, maybe it's because my last tip was too low... It's probably my fault.

Give your landlord a negative tip.

Or u know, live in California where the boomer who owns the house is paying 1200 in property tax.

Taxes are astronomical because prices are inflated because of buy-to-rent.

Taxes on single-family residential properties should be like 50% of land value annually for third-homes and up or homes owned by non-human entities. Make it so fucking expensive to own extra houses that they get unloaded cheap to people who will actually live in them, and at the same time reduce the taxable value of the land because it's selling cheap.

I have seen the amount paid in property taxes in USA via Zillow and… It is HUGE

A snake eating its own tail. Lenders keep cranking out cheap loans, inflating the money supply. Buyers keep bidding up prices, inflating the cost of housing. Municipal governments need the extra cash to fight the endless "crime wave" that mysteriously crests every election cycle, so they're always ratcheting up their spending for larger and more comically overequipped police departments. And then we've got another big economic downturn, so its time to lower interest rates and send out a new wave of cheap loans.

Nobody can afford to have housing prices go down. Just look at what that did to the economy in 2008.

Cause enterprieses and billionaires don’t pay taxes and cause they put their huge capitals also in real estate, raising the prices.

The threat of capital flight (which would leave you with a large number of unpaid and extremely irate police officers) means you can't risk upsetting the ultra-wealthy.

And besides, their job isn't to pay taxes, its to create jobs. They employ people in your town and then the employees pay the taxes. The employees get to see their housing prices rise, so they grumble but don't complain too much. And then you have more money to hire more cops to protect against the latest Crime Wave that just so happens to be paired with a wave of housing foreclosures from lay-offs. So its time to clear the streets, re-list the houses at a higher price, and issue new mortgages with another wave of subprime loans.

If you really want to spice things up, maybe we denominate all our accounts in bitcoin, so we can really start speculating.

Many states have tax cuts for living in the property you own. The high tax rate is the state saying “if you make money, we want to make money”.