Not sure if this is just ingrained "American Dream" mentality but I want to get away from landlords and buy my own house. Partly this is so I can have my own space to work on my own projects, be messy, grow weed, walk around naked, etc. Lately this is looking like a real possibility since I've paid off my college debt and started saving money for a down payment. I'm also expecting house prices to fall in the next year as the economy implodes.
Despite all that, housing is still really expensive where I live and I probably wouldn't be able to afford a house without a partner or a roommate paying part of the mortgage. My romantic prospects aren't looking too good and I really don't want to be a landlord. And I don't know how I would feel buying a foreclosure. Not to mention I'd be locked into a 30 year mortgage that won't be paid off until after climate change has forced us all to migrate to Nunavut.
Tell me chapos, what's the moral thing to do here? Should I keep renting? Buy a house and try to be an "ethical" landlord? Move in with the next woman I meet after the 2nd date? Go join a commune/cult?
There is literally zero moral difference between you renting and buying a house, first of all. Do what makes financial sense for you. Practically speaking, it's the same sort of arrangement just with different responsibilities and different social connotations. When you "buy" a house, it's essentially just agreeing to have the bank as your new landlord, with a few differences: You have more autonomy on what you do with the house, you have to fix your own stuff, you can't leave without finding someone to take your place, and if you stay there long enough, you may eventually actually own the house. All of those are just practical differences, so you should make the decision based off practical concerns and your own preferences, not based on morality.
Taking on a tenant is also perfectly fine. I love how so many people on here seem to be convinced that renting out a spare room makes you a monster. Like, I rent a house with three other people, and only one of my roommates' names is on the lease, so technically you could say that he's the one renting out rooms to the other three of us, making him an evil bastard landlord, even though we're on the same footing, which is dumb as shit. Suppose he went and "bought" the house (or in other words, rented it from the bank) and we split up the mortgage payment, with us paying the same amount and otherwise continuing as we were. Does he become an evil bastard landlord then? Not in my view.
The main issue with housing is not the landlords/middle managers who make a down payment to the bank, then pay mortgage out of rent while trying to squeeze out a little extra from their tenants for themselves - although these people can often be the most visible and annoying. But there are landlords out there where if you added up their equity in all their properties, it still wouldn't be enough to even buy a single house for them to live in. The bigger issues are the whales who own shit tons of properties and can just buy another house in cash on a whim. These are the people who the money eventually trickles up to, regardless of whether you rent or buy. There is no ethical solution to the issue because they stole the land that you need to survive so you're going to have to pay them one way or another and that's all there is to it. And if you decide to rent out a room to a tenant to help pay your mortgage, then all that's happening is that they're paying the billionaires through you instead of through someone else. Just don't be an asshole and it's fine.
"All landlords are bastards" is a slogan, and you shouldn't treat slogans as sound logical premises. It's like if you treat ACAB as a sound premise and build off that to say that any socialist project that has cops is bad. Slogans are designed to be pithy and express a sentiment, not to be strictly accurate and nuanced.