I’ve been trying to warn anybody who would listen to me about REITs for something like eight years now. ‘REIT’ is an acronym for Real Estate Investment Trust. It’s basically rich people pooling their money and buying up all the single-family housing. I need to be clear, here. REITs used to serve a valuable purpose. They bought and maintained apartments and strip malls around the country. There’s a place for that. It provided housing, not eliminated it. Buying up the single-family homes is a fairly new phenomenon. They didn’t even really START until about 2014. Before that, investors weren’t sure it was a good plan. They’re all on-board, now, though. The thing is, NOBODY in or around the industry is going to make any effort to stop the problem. EVERYONE thinks they’re making money and, well, what could be wrong with that? The seller gets (usually) more than their house is worth and in some case, an offer in seven minutes. The agent gets a FAT commission. The REITs get the property. Sure, society gets torn apart, one house at a time, but, profits, right?

One company, Invitations Homes, Inc., owns enough single family homes in the United States to house every person living in Iceland. They own 82,758 single family homes. Figuring an average of 4.5 people per home, they could easily house the entire population of Iceland, currently around 344,979 people. Most of the homes they’ve taken off the market are in the west and in the sunbelt states where, as the article reads: “the barriers to homeownership are highest and rent demand is strong.”

“…barriers to homeownership are highest” in those areas because the REITs keep buying up the housing at whatever they need to pay to get the property. Joe Six-pack can’t compete with all-cash, no inspection, short escrow, sale in minutes REITs. “…rent demand is strong” because fewer and fewer people can afford to BUY the houses. The rents compete with a house payment, these days, because once the REIT owns all the available housing in a given area, they can charge whatever they want to charge. People will pay it or they won’t. If they don’t, there’s a nice bridge they can move in under – at least until the police drive you away.

Sadly, our society has been conditioned by the corporate media to just knee-jerk a reaction. “Oh, the homeless? Must be addicted to drugs. Must be an alcoholic. Maybe they’re insane.” Stay with me, here. Maybe…just maybe…many people CAN NOT pay $3,000 for a one bedroom place and don’t have the resources to leave. No money, no place to go, no options in our brutal, so-called “free market?” Tough! You bought that latte, that one time, you remember? YOUR fault!

Since the industry WILL NOT police itself, it’s up to politicians to step in. They could pass a law forbidding REITs from buying single family homes AND require them to divest in a fairly short time. This would return inventory to the market and bring the values back to where they should be. Of course, EVERY single person associated with real estate transactions would WAIL like someone just cut something off their body without anesthetic. The REITs themselves? Rich people, remember. Our politicians work for the rich people. Quick review, left or right, which politician might YOU expect to stand up and do the right thing for the average American? Okay, likely Bernie but he wouldn’t be able to do it alone, so…instead we get politician talk and stupid, useless ideas. “Hey, let’s just build more inventory.” Quick question, how does building more inventory help if the rich people keep buying up everything as it comes on the market? Someone builds 1,000 houses, the rich buy up the 1,000 houses. Still no inventory.

I mention it because I’m currently trying to find MY way through being victimized by the process. I’ve lived in a small but well-maintained little house for several years now and because the owner wasn’t greedy, I’ve been fortunate to be paying far below market rates. The landlord COULD have chased the money but he chose not to. Then, he died. His children inherited the property and pretty quickly decided to sell. A fat wad of cash instead of a steady, dependable income is often too enticing for people to pass up. But it’s put my whole life into upheaval. Will I be able to stay in the city I grew up in? Maybe, maybe not. CAN I pay usury rent? If I stay, I’ll have to.

To be clear, I’m not protesting REITs because they’ve landed on me. I protest them because sociologists have long understood that home ownership is one of the best predictors of a stable society and REITs are undermining that with amazing, frightening speed. I suspect that, sooner or later, this horrifying land grab will be one of the main drivers of the revolution…

Stay tuned…

I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter, recently, from the conservative bubble about how they’ve lost their “freedom of speech.” As usual, it’s bunk. What IS being challenged is the freedom to lie. The people who have been banned from various sites are usually warned that their lies are going to lead to bans. THEN, they GET banned because they insisted on continuing the lies. Then they pretend the real issue is someone has infringed on their “freedumb of speech.” I’m a big fan of the First Amendment. That’s the one that contains the freedom of speech clause. But I ALSO know the danger to allowing unfettered disinformation out into the body politic because a democracy (or, in this case, a Republic) depends heavily on a knowledgeable electorate.

The obvious problem is “errors” (intentional or otherwise) in judgment regarding what is truth and what is not. Remember Hunter Biden’s laptop? The right was all over that from early on. The left didn’t pay much attention because there didn’t seem to be any “there” there. Turns out there was. I wonder how many people got in trouble with social media police for pushing a story that turned out to be true. But just because someone dropped the ball on the Hunter laptop doesn’t mean the 2020 “election” was stolen. There really ARE pure lies out there, undermining our society second by second.

When people with ill-intent began to turn the First Amendment against Americans, I found myself in a quandary. As an example, did you know that the Cato Institute was founded by the Koch brothers for the specific purpose of spreading disinformation about climate change? Yes, by all means, the First Amendment. But when one’s freedom of speech gets perverted and twisted into freedom to lie, freedom to undermine society, freedom to disseminate disinformation and misinformation, and even freedom to endanger all of humanity? Well, I’m all for flags on social media posts and when the corrupt pattern is continually repeated by the same characters, I’m okay with banning them.

Elon Musk has had several run-ins with Twitter over the years on the topic and has become, apparently, tired of the fight. So he says he’s going to buy Twitter and open it up as a true free speech zone. Let’s assume for the moment that he actually follows through with the purchase and pursues his dream of a site fully free of oversight on what people post. You know what he’ll get? First, a site so rife with falsehoods and misinformation it won’t be worth any thinking person’s time. but shortly thereafter on his open space? Porn. Someone, somewhere will test the waters by posting a lovely photo of a woman’s bare chest. If that goes unanswered, it will take off from there and before too long, porn will be the mainstay of Twitter.

It’s not theoretical. There is a site called ‘Tumblr.’ It was designed for photo blogging, that sort of thing. It had a hands-off policy. Before long, Tumblr was known primarily for all the adult fare that could be found there. Over time, that pushes out others who want to use the site for something else and then it hurts ad revenue as fewer and fewer advertisers are willing to associate themselves with a porn site. Tumblr finally decided to police people’s “free speech” and do away with most of the adult stuff. Tumblr is still there but the presence isn’t the same. They’re not the only site, either. There’s one called ‘OnlyFans.’ It was designed as a video site where people could show off their talents. Like, say, juggling. Viewers pay a subscription fee to watch you juggle and presumably, learn a few new tricks and techniques. OnlyFans, too, had a laissez-faire attitude. So, ladies who work in the sex trade started using the site to showcase their…um…”talents.” Now, from my understanding, it’s pretty much adult titillation and private sex shows. At one point, the company publicly considered shutting the adult stuff down but decided against. Now it’s their main identity.

So I hope Elon DOES open up Twitter. We’ll all get to watch the self-described “business genius” turn $44 BILLION dollars into dust…