Eviction is a Threat of Violence

Eviction is a 'Threat of Violence' against any tenant and the court seldom takes all the relevant circumstances into account as required by law.

Leslie Stoter died from homelessness

There should be an insurance against eviction simply because the day that you enter into that lease agreement you are binding yourself to a contract that could backfire on you should your life not go as you have planned.

Oh hang on ... there is rent insurance available for the landlord. So my question is ... where is the extreme prejudice against all these landlords that they are claiming to be under and using as an urgency to throw you out? Are they perhaps too cheap to buy insurance?

To begin with, you the tenants, are paying for someone else to own a property. They seem to feel that it is you who are using this property and therefore you should pay for it. Sure there is that theory ...  it has now developed into the misguided present day decision that you should pay the total cost of the bond.

Our whole life we will have to pay rent for a secure environment to bring up our children in, unless we actually buy a house. Some of us will never qualify to buy our own home.

The ridiculousness of this is that we do not qualify to buy a house yet we have no choice to pay rent anyway. So for the next 25 years or so, we will rent a property here or there and have nothing to show for it.

All the while we are enriching the landlords worldwide.

If the landlord wants to make an investment, which I do not begrudge them but surely then they should invest in the venture. If you buy something you wish to own then you have to pay for it, right? In other words they must be able to afford their investment in its  entirety. After all the  profit will be based on the increase in the value of the property. That is what they are investing in, is it not?

The question is, is it a good investment to leave a property vacant? The answer is in this case, is Yes and No.

If the answer is yes then the landlord pays for his investment and the upkeep thereof as it should be. 

If the answer is no and the landlord wants to alleviate some of the financial burden of the the costs by renting out a vacant house then they should charge a fee that would cover the upkeep. This should basically cover the upkeep of the investment. You are not buying the property and should at least make sure the investment stays in a good condition if you are going to use it. This would be fair, don't you  agree?

Let's think about this for a minute. If the property stood empty, the upkeep would remain the landlords responsibility and he would still have to pay the bond on the investment. If you are using a property that would otherwise be empty then you should at least pay for the upkeep and the landlord should still pay for their investment.

In the days of Kings, the peasants were required to pay a percentage of their profits for the right to use the land. During the middle ages around the fourteenth century, the average tax paying peasant would have had to pay the equivalent of 32 grams of silver to the royal treasury. This would represent about 2% of the value of the farm or property they were using. After the Engelbrekt rebellion of 1434-1436, which would depose King Eric of Pomerania and ushered a new era of much lower taxes. Retsö and Söderberg calculate that between 1446 and 1551, the average peasant paid 17 grams of silver in tax, the equivalent of about 17 kilograms of butter.

So if a property is purchased for R 1.5 Million then 1% -  2% tax/rent per annum would be R 15 000.00 - R 30 000.00 and that would equate to R 1 250.00 - R 2 500.00 per month. This I find is morally reasonable and quite within public policy. 

Now I know the question is what if the value has increased over the years. Well then that is the profit on the landlords investment. He is entitled to that. That is what investing in property is all about, a gradual secure increase over time.The property is going nowhere and is classified as immovable for a reason.

However, the initial value of the property is what must be calculated with a percentage based on the increase of the upkeep not the value of the property.

When the landlord expects you to pay the total bond of between R 10 000.00 and R 15 000.00 per month then you are actually paying for the property. If you are paying for something then you are buying it, are you not?

If you are paying for the property then you should therefore have the right to own it because you are in possession of the property and you are paying for it. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Going back to the medieval days taxes went out of control. The historians call this era “a decentralized plunder economy” with extremely high taxes (as well as just outright theft of peasant property) being needed to support huge military expenses. Records from the years 1365 and 1366 show that the average peasant had to pay 168 and 227 grams of silver. 168 and 227 grams of silver in taxes is 10.5% and 14.19% respectively of the value of the land used.

The 14% tax by the new King being the government is a tax that we as citizens pay collectively for the entire land that we use collectively and now they expect you to pay rent as well as that.

The Constitution states that no person may be deprived of citizenship

This brings me to a discussion I am having with a group of concerned citizens. Rent to Buy. This I will approach in my next post.