There’s some company, blackstone, blackwater, something like that, buying up houses that go on sale for 30k above asking price. Immediately outbidding anyone who tries to buy. Corporations are also buying property all across america.
Fuck…
Nobody comes to my tumblr for this, but Americans need to understand that THIS is why my generation can’t afford to own a house outside of Smallest-Town USA. THIS is also why people my age in bigger cities struggle to find decent apartments that don’t consume half of our monthly income.
Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That’s value they can borrow against, that’s a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that’s a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It’s probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can’t afford to take you to court.
I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who’ve lived there for generations because they can’t keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the “affordable” housing for an entire neighborhood. It’s gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that’s left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you’ve instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future “improvements” that further contribute to the commodification of communities.
Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.
These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can’t it’s because we’re lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.
I hate these fuckers so fucking much.
They’re trying to put legislation or were at some point to stop basically very rich people not from the UK swanning up to London and buying out fancy new flats before they were even built so no one can buy them and they can rent them at vast amounts
There’s something truly magical about late 19th century history paintings.
It’s the last gasp of the French Academic style, but instead of lots of drapery and allegory, they are taking cues from the rising tide of archaeological research and forward-looking school of narrative illustration, which adds up to the first real attempts to depict the past as best they it could be imagined. These paintings have more in common with the old-(ish) National Geographic illustrations of life in ancient Knossos than they do with their contemporaries in the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
From top to bottom-
“Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle,” by Henri-Paul Motte (1881)- depicts the siege by the forces of Louis XIII of France, lead by Cardinal Richelieu, against the Huguenots in the port of La Rochelle, 1627-1628
“Bringing Home the Body of King Karl XII of Sweden,” by Gustaf Cederstrom (1884)- depicts the route of the Swedish army following a failed invasion of Norway that ended with the death of King Karl XII, 1718
“Zenobia’s Last Look on Palmyra,” by Herbert Schmalz (1888)- depicts the Palmyrene Queen Septimia Zenobia in the moments before fleeing her besieged capitol and being captured by the forces of the Roman emperor Aureliuan, 272 AD
“Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed,” by Ilya Repin (1880s)- depicts the supposedly historical story of the Cossacks sending an insulting reply to an ultimatum from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed IV, 1676
“The Execution of Lady Jane Grey,” by Paul Delaroche (1833)- depicts the execution of the teenaged Lady Jane Grey, who had been elevated to the throne of England and Ireland for (approx) nine days in July of 1553. Her execution was at the Tower of London in February, 1554
“The Cadaver Synod” by Jean-Paul Laurens (1870)- depicts the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus by his eventual successor Pope Stephen VI ten months after Formosus’ death, 897
“Chlodobert’s Last Moments” by Albert Maignan (1880)- depicts the death of the Merovingian Prince Chlodebert, son of Chilperic I, before the tomb of Saint Medard, where the prince had been brought in the hope of a miracle, 580
Was walking my dog downtown and he stopped to drink from a dog bowl in front of a bar and I was like “Oh, are you a thirsty little boy?” And a grown-ass man sitting there said “i guess I am,” as he took a sip of his beer and then he realized I was not talking to him and looked completely horrified
a massive cloud of paper airplanes descending upon a 747 and when they disperse all that’s left is a massive airliner skeleton picked perfectly clean of all flesh
Right now, and for a “limited time,” anyone in the United States between the age of 13 and 21 can apply for a free Brooklyn Public Library eCard, which gives access to 350,000 eBooks, 200,000 audiobooks, and online databases. (Normally, Brooklyn Public Library eCards are only free for people who live and/or work in New York state.)
