The way tenants are framed in the media and culture here is as if they’re the losers of society. In my own country The Netherlands it’s a similar situation, but less extreme. It’s pretty irresponsible also to tell people that the only way they’d be financially sorted is to buy a house and sit on it for 30+ years. Although, that explains the state of many houses on sale, they are so poorly maintained and none of the furnishings have been changed since 1975.
I’m halfway through this at the moment and it’s brilliant – eye-opening and infuriating. She does a really good job of showing the roots of the current problems, and suggesting solutions which in many cases are really simple. But it all comes down to profit in the end, just like everything else, so I doubt much will ever change.
As a digression, atm there’s a company wanting to build a marina with flats etc in my hometown. There’s already a marina plus some flats some of which still haven’t sold after 15-odd years. The proposal would mean cutting off a lot of the beach where locals walk, fish, play, swim, scuba, sail etc. The company say the beach isn’t used – what they mean is it’s not generating them any revenue. And so we’re back to profit as the sole motive for anything. It won’t improve the area and the flats will be way beyond the reach of locals. But hey, someone isn’t profiting when they could be! Something needs to be done about that!! /s
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The way tenants are framed in the media and culture here is as if they’re the losers of society. In my own country The Netherlands it’s a similar situation, but less extreme. It’s pretty irresponsible also to tell people that the only way they’d be financially sorted is to buy a house and sit on it for 30+ years. Although, that explains the state of many houses on sale, they are so poorly maintained and none of the furnishings have been changed since 1975.
I’m halfway through this at the moment and it’s brilliant – eye-opening and infuriating. She does a really good job of showing the roots of the current problems, and suggesting solutions which in many cases are really simple. But it all comes down to profit in the end, just like everything else, so I doubt much will ever change.
As a digression, atm there’s a company wanting to build a marina with flats etc in my hometown. There’s already a marina plus some flats some of which still haven’t sold after 15-odd years. The proposal would mean cutting off a lot of the beach where locals walk, fish, play, swim, scuba, sail etc. The company say the beach isn’t used – what they mean is it’s not generating them any revenue. And so we’re back to profit as the sole motive for anything. It won’t improve the area and the flats will be way beyond the reach of locals. But hey, someone isn’t profiting when they could be! Something needs to be done about that!! /s
Commenting just to push this up the feed