I do. I provide housing units at the cost of maintenance. I believe profiting from rent is deeply unethical. My renters have paid basically for their share of heating, electricity, water, sewer, and wear and tear on the building itself.
But I cannot house the thousands of unhoused people in my city alone. I can provide housing for 2-5 of them at any given time.
That said, do you know what offering housing for a couple hundred bucks a month does for a struggling family? It fundamentally changes their ability to establish themselves. Build savings, escape poverty.
Edit: I'm not trying to signal or whatever by posting this. I have ethical beliefs about supporting one's local community and try not to be hypocritical about it. When people challenge me, suggesting I might be hypocritical ("why don't you spend your own money on it!") I try to respond with, "I do. And I see the changes it makes in real human lives."
But always as a response to someone trying to call me out, never unprompted.
No, pay for all of it, not what it costs you to maintain while your properties balloon in value far more than any rent you could have collected on them. You are no more ethical than any other landlord so please stop pretending to be. You and real estate investors like you are contributors to the homelessness problem.
I put the land I buy into a trust that removes my ability to profit from it. The trust cannot take actions that would cause them to profit from selling the land.
Any equity the trust holds is from me or others putting in funds that are held solely for the purposes of providing housing for the community at cost.
My personal mortgage I do pay for, and I will be ceding whatever land I hold to that trust upon my death so that it can provide housing in perpetuity.
The only reason the land is not currently in the trust's hands is because I need the ability to move freely. I could arrange to sell the house to the trust, and lease it from the trust, but because there's a bank involved with my mortgage that gets more complex.
The thing I discovered is that it's highly variable depending on location. Step one is talk to a lawyer who knows real estate and landlord tenant laws in your specific area.
Alternatively, search for a "community land trust" in your area and discuss with them how you can manage your property upon your death.
Thanks. So many people are like, "sure, I'd love to live in a world like X, but there's nothing I can do about it". Well, you can model it, make the change. Maybe someone will be inspired by you.
I read about someone who paid all his tenant's rent back to them after he became an anarchist or whatever. I crunched the numbers, and found out that for like 15k I could pay back every penny I had collected over maintenance, plus the appreciation of the principal. I sent out checks with amounts between $1500 and $4500, along with a note saying I didn't believe in rent any more.
I saw someone else do it, so I did it. Maybe someone on Hacker News will see my posts and do it too. Odds are small, but non zero.
I can tell you it made a material positive change in the lives of those people. That's a much better legacy than, "I died $15k richer" or "I went on vacation at a resort an extra time".
