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meeby | on: Canadian mega landlord using AI 'pricing scheme' as it hikes rents
It’s a shift in collective power. At the core of the issue is landlords communicating together to all set fixed high rents has been illegal for decades. This is collective rent fixing with an extra step. The “AI” here is just a buzzword, it’s masking a black box where many landlords pump in lots of data and a black box algorithm spits out higher rents. The issue occurs when a critical mass of landlords use the same service. The market readjusts from free market competition to the maximum the market can bear without collapsing, exactly what the anti-collusion laws were design to prevent. The economic drivers are reversed.

Like generative AI for art, it doesn’t cleanly fit into any existing governance. I would assume new, and irritating complex, laws will be attempted to be written to control this development as it has more immediate real works impact than other forms of “AI”.

beefnugs | parent | next
The only way to turn it into a real market, is some kind of collaboration software tools for renters or non-intimate partnerships to gang up.

We need tools that arent making choices based on profit increase but humanitarian necessity (which is probably impossible)

Tools such as :

- finding people to share mortgages with, negotiating problems encountered with roomates, ways to re-shuffle roomates around to find better compatibility, incentives for being less of a dick and contributing to happier roomatism

- collective action in an area such as purchasing cheap out of town space with lots of living area and "roughing it" for a while to put downward pressure on rent prices, maybe even negotiating particular prices to trigger a large number of renter signups ( no way this is legal, but it will get bad enough we are going to have to break some rules)

- shared mortgage investment that is based upon agreed lower reasonable profit, or even money parking, instead of maximizing real estate profit (there has to be some philanthropes who would put there money into this?)

- I hate to have to mention negative landlord tracking, but the worst of the worst gets away with so much shit, we need to come up as close to vigilantism we can get while not breaking laws. I foresee the need for tools where we can track exact letter of law harassment limits etc for the worst offenders who are getting away with too much uncaught illegal and immoral landlording

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another2another | root | parent
Another way to turn it into a more competitive market is to introduce large competition in the form of not for profit housing co-ops where the coop buys to rent houses, renters have to buy into the coop, and all profits are put into either buying or building new houses.

The coops keep their rents below that of the competition to attract new members, and can even reduce the rents after the initial outlay has been payed off.

This would then create a number of large semi-altruistic competitors that would throw sand into the capitalistic machine and inhibit price gouging.

bradlys | root | parent
Or just have public housing like many other countries do - which provides ample supply without any incentive structure to keep prices going up. Rent can be stabilized and prices can be low from the start to only cover costs. No need to pay for a half dozen middle men.
pokerface_86 | root | parent
many cities have public housing. it’s filled with drug addicts, rapists, and people who will rob you for a mint.
bradlys | root | parent
43 percent of people in Vienna are addicts, rapists, and thieves?

https://archive.is/20240131194845/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

pokerface_86 | root | parent
in the united states
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