Obviously this is for both, men and women, you know, the song “if I was a rich man” and i saw the meme with…
sigh just answer the question
Obligatory.
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
You wouldn’t have to work hard. You could build a great big house with rooms by the dozen, right in the middle of the town. …if you were a wealthy man.
I’d have one long staircase just going up and one even longer going down.
And one more leading nowhere just for show.
Came here to say this
I would buy up as many apartments as possible and lower the rent below market value, this driving other landlords to compete. Since they could not maintain a “sustainable” business model with their profit driven mindset, they would sell and I would buy. I would still seek a modest profit, which would be rolled into further acquisitions to further infect the market with sanity. It would be a McDonald’s or Walmart approach to housing, positive effect by volume and low margins, but actually provide an undeniably good product.
I would also work with local businesses to offer discounts to residents of the apartments and employees of other businesses that also wish to partner, with the end goal of creating incentive to shop local and increase foot traffic, and therefore profits for those small businesses.
I would find residents who would be interested in starting a business, startup costs covered by my organization, and outcompetes with businesses who do not wish to be our partner. I would endeavor to provide free childcare and animal daycare/boarding. Ideally a pseudo private and free school system could be established to further promote the ideals of the community. Ideally provide free therapy. Ideally offer scholarships to traditional higher education or trade schools. Ideally create a system to help homeless people get back on their feet.
Overall the end goal would be to keep as much money within the local economy and maintain businesses that embody the values which create a healthy local economy, lower the costs of living, and restore the community to a healthy social state.
Or maybe I’ll just start a sex cult in the woods.
I think the housing market plan doesn’t seem likely to work. The real issue is not that current landlords are exceptionally greedy (the rules of capitalism assume and encourage everyone to be as greedy as possible), it’s that there isn’t enough housing stock to give everyone who wants one a unit. In economics, housing is more or less a commodity like everything else and thus follows the usual rule of supply and demand, i.e. insufficient supply drives up price until demand tapers down to meet it. If you buy up the city’s housing supply and then price them below the equilibrium price, the result will just be that far more people want a place than you will ever have supply for, since you are not actually creating any new housing supply, just buying existing supply from other people.
I would think you’d have more success getting into the property development and construction business, buying up vacant or derelict lots in the city, building them into blocks of flats, and then letting them out on the cheap. You’d also have to hire lobbyists to prod the council to change zoning laws to allow for this development and obtain planning permission. It takes a lot of political maneuvering to make a housing project successful, not only because of legal restrictions, but also because you’ll need amenities for your new development. Parking is a big one in the US unless you build a dense mixed-use development which is bureaucratically difficult to get planning permission for, but there’s also considerations like whether the nearby bus line can handle the influx of passengers, whether the neighbourhood school can handle a hundred more pupils, whether there’s a grocery store nearby, whether the area “feels safe”, and so on.
Kind of the reason why State-run public housing schemes are so successful is because they are a government agency that has the power to brute-force the solutions to these problems. Zoning codes? Overruled. Public transit? Ordered. Schools? Built. Private developers don’t have the power to do these things and have to beg the council for them instead.
it’s that there isn’t enough housing stock to give everyone who wants one a unit
There are >27 empty homes in the US for every homeless person.
It’s not just the homeless in need of homes. You also have the ⅓ of people aged 18 to 34 still living with their parents, and the people who have to crowd into a 4-bedroom flat with five other people. Granted, this also includes people in school or those who just like living with their parents despite being able to afford their own place, but it still represents tens of millions of Americans.
Trust me, almost nobody purposefully keeps a house empty that they’d be able to let out. If a house is vacant, it’s probably because it’s subject to a legal dispute, derelict and uninhabitable, slated for demolition, for sale, or being used for short-term rentals (which should also be banned but that’s only tangentially related).
but it still represents tens of millions of Americans.
From the linked article:
According to the U.S. Census, there are approximately 17 million vacant houses across the nation.
If a house is vacant, it’s probably because it’s subject to a legal dispute, derelict and uninhabitable, slated for demolition, for sale, or being used for short-term rentals (which should also be banned but that’s only tangentially related).
What’re you basing that on? Because the US census bureau disagrees:
But the largest category of vacant housing in the United States is classified as “seasonal, recreational or occasional use,” commonly referred to as seasonal units. These vacant structures cover a wide range of housing units, from part-time residences and hunting cabins to beach houses and timeshares.
Point is, there’s plenty of housing, but greed - either people who own multiple houses and do not rent them out, or people who have them up for rent or sale but have priced out a large part of the nation, is creating an artificial scarcity.
I’m talking about vacant homes in the city. Where the housing supply is most desperately needed. There are no such things as habitable off-market ready-to-move-in vacant homes in the city.
Holiday homes at the beach or hunting cabins in the woods aren’t useful to consider and the way your article presents it as a solution to homelessness is irresponsible clickbait. All of the jobs and economic opportunity is in the city. A house in the forest or in a beach side community of 5,000 people does nothing to alleviate the housing crisis. You would do better requisitioning hotel rooms than trying to use these buildings for housing.
There are no such things as habitable off-market ready-to-move-in vacant homes in the city.
Just look at the link, man. Everything under ‘Seasonal’ is habitable and off-market.
Just looking at the numbers for Los Angeles, at the top of my list, shows that I’m substantially right.
16,889 units out of a total housing stock of 3,591,981 units amounts to less than half of one per cent. That’s quite literally a rounding error. That number also utterly decimated by the homeless population in Los Angeles County, which is 75,518.
So a commune?
That was worth reading to the end.
Well played friend. Well played.
I’ve been thinking if I could ever afford it, maybe work with section 8 to actually buy the property for the “renter”. Sort of a lease to own, except section 8 pays. Once I’ve gotten my money back plus a small profit the home belongs to the tenant, and I build more housing, rinse and repeat. Would probably need to hire someone to help people manage that though. Some people don’t know how to maintain a home because they’ve always rented or because mental illness or whatever.
Uber Landlord
deleted by creator
All day long?
If I were “influence the government” rich I’d probably start an organization designed to facilitate and encourage the spread of cooperatively owned businesses by providing loans to unions to purchase stock in their employers and by loaning money to start cooperatively owned businesses.
I’d also probably lobby the government for more protections of individual rights and environmental protections and more human focused urban development prioritizing shared mass transit and bicycles over cars.
Lifestyle, I’d stick to a middle class life. I don’t need things to be particularly nice to be happy, just more time with the people I love and the ability to partake in community
What this person said^
We have this really cool cafe in my city where you can buy buttons when you eat there, like 20 bucks worth, and people who can’t afford to buy food can come take six buttons and use them to get a hot meal. I would subsidize the fuck out of it and hopefully open other locations so we could help as many as possible.
It depends, how rich? Millions? Billions?
I would fix the gym/auditorium at my old high school (the drama club has to share it with all of the sports teams and PE, and all of drama’s stuff gets broken or stolen) so that drama has their own space.
Two chicks at the same time.
I like you
You don’t have to be rich to do that. I’ve done two chicks at the same time a bunch, and I’m far from rich. You just have to follow rules 1 and 2
Yes, I’m aware the line is referring to his cousin doing nothing.
One chick at two different times.
disappear from radar
do random acts of charity
buy senators and media to support climate change and education
make a competing big cheapo pharma
redirect fame/blame to paid actors
- Get a house with a garden (backyard)
- Start my own laptop/desktop line
- Obtain and maintain a naturally aspirated manual V12 Aston Martin
Hunt other rich men for sport, and have my very expensive team of lawyers keep me out of prison.
Just become president, problem solved
Is hunting billionaires an official presidential act? It will be when the Supreme Court gets the checks!
Not go to work and sleep for about a year before I figure out what I really want to do.
Edit: move to Finland first.
move to Finland first
It’s dark, wet and cold in here.
Don’t threaten me with a good time. :-)
Seriously though, we have friends there and have visited. We fell in love with all of it, from the culture to the landscape.
Build a sweet ass house with a wizard’s tower.
Im building the Planet Express building from Futurama.
YES! And then we ponder!
You must be one of those goody two-shoes wizards… I’m going to be scheming - about orbs.
I always wanted to buy up a bunch of section 8 housing and make the really nice. Like, free wifi, gym, day, care, maybe some simple shops on the bottom floor. It would hold events, regular stuff like bingo or what have you, but also job fair/workshops, health talks, etc. I would partner with local business (hell, even big ones), so people living in my property get discounts for food, clothes, etc by showing their apart key or whatever. I wanted to make a really nice living space for people with lower income because they always get the shittest stuff. I wanted people to have a place of pride to come home to, a place safe for them and their families.
My follow up was to buy luxerh condos/apartments for the stupid rich, up the rent, and use the difference to continue funding my stuff, or, if I didn’t need it, make a months raffle or something.
Pay the debts of myself and all my close friends.
House with a yard is already a check for me but I have a neighbour on both sides. I want a standing house.
Then I’d invest a lot in art, my own and others. Work less, play more. See the sights. Meet people.
