Rent Control

The Need for Rent Control

There is no rent control in the state of Ohio. A landlord can raise the rent any amount as long as tenants are given notice before they sign the lease agreement or any renewal agreement.

The real estate business is running away with the land in Ohio and not paying enough taxes. Who is the main opponent standing in the way? The Democrats. The idea that the Democrats are the lesser-evil and that the Republicans are on the side of big business is a myth that we must bust.

Housing is a human right!

People have a right to a home and to be secure in their tenancy. However the supply of affordable housing is not meeting the need, while in an era of increasing deregulation, many tenants are losing important legal protections. Nowadays, some 30% of renters are paying at least half of their income to rent.

Instead of enacting zoning laws to increase affordable housing, the trend has too often been to increase the proportion of land zoned for commercial property at the expense of residential property. Instead of providing funding to increase affordable housing, amount of funds dedicated to this purpose is decreasing . At the same time, rent control and tenant eviction protections do not exist in most jurisdictions, and where they do, they are often inadequate and under attack. State governments continue to weaken or preempt local rent control laws, while landlords who violate housing code requirements by failing to keep their property in habitable condition, are often tolerated or given lenient penalties. Housing discrimination also remains rampant against people of color, immigrants, disabled, single people, gays and lesbians, and families with children.

Compounding these concerns is the long-term stagnation of workers' real wages, which further exacerbates the housing availability and affordability crisis. At the same time those who are not housed - i.e. the homeless -- are often hounded, threatened, and often cannot obtain badly needed services. While increased affordable housing can help alleviate the problem of homelessness, the homeless have additional needs that go far beyond housing.

We must work to end homelessness and houselessness in Ohio. One way we can achieve that its through the power of eminent domain to transfer vacant homes to the state in order to house the homeless. Rents should be controlled. The Green Party would aim for controls to achieve a ‘Living Rent,' such that median local rents would take up no more than 35% of the local median take-home pay, and in implementing any controls we would strike a balance between affordability and predictability for tenants, and the landlords’ need to invest in their homes and make a reasonable profit.

Although not a belief Green Party at large, I would like to do away with the landlord system. Capitalism's drive for profit, the legacy of racism, as well as continued racist practices and sexism collude to economically suppress African American women. We also must fight to oppose gentrification. Gentrification is the process of displacing poor people from a community and replacing them with more affluent people, all in the interests of profit. It has become a primary local policy of the representatives of the ruling class and is clearly carried out by the state.

A serious socialist program for housing must also completely reject the idea of gentrification. We should start to correlate correctly in the frame that gentrification serves as a violent function to replace poor and working class minority communities with wealth whites who bring their wealth and chains of coffee shops to kick out those minorities. The government in all levels is complicit in these acts. Private police forces also play a huge role throughout the cities in furthering displacement via intimidation and the enforcement of racist rules, such as no standing on the grass, no leaning on fences, and no sitting outside, in order to run up infractions and give eviction notices.

We demand houses for the working people, not luxury houses for the mega rich!