Every single person (or company CEO) within 100 miles that has raised rent after the wildfires started should be fined their entire previous years income (not their profit, every single dollar that was paid to them), and put in prison for a at least one year. That fine should go to a relief fund to help the people that need it.
They (and their immediate family) should also be barred from owning more than one property and ever renting our property again. Their business should liquidated and all assets sold off and the funds from that added to said relief fund.
Unless they can 100% prove that the raise in rent was either automatic and scheduled before a certain period and below a certain threshold.
Listened to a whole podcast about this with the Paradise Fire. Great reporting, a documentary approach.
Fittingly, this episode of 99% invisible is amid a 6-episode stretch on climate.
One man’s horrendous tragedy is another man’s profit
How much you want to bet experts have connections with landlords?
Connections with themselves? Likely.
Anyone with a brain could have told you they’d be price gouging the moment this happened…
No connections needed
Maybe they just pay attention? I saw this headline and thought “of course they will, never let a tragedy go to waste”
Capitalism always finds a way.
Price gouging is good business. Bribing officials is good business. Collusion, vertical integration, and monopolies are excellent business.
Just because something generates a profit doesn’t mean it should be allowed. With the social contract completely broken, there are no guardrails on what companies will do or what their employees have been taught they should do at all costs.
Capitalism is a disease
Oh good. Just what LA needs. HIGHER rent…
Pretty sure at this point it’s more expensive to be homeless in California, than to have a mansion in Ohio.
I kid, I kid…but only because we both know Ohio doesn’t have mansions.
