Why do so many people still think that renting is beneficial in any capacity to the tenant.

i think this is a symptom of a series of broader social ills. our economy is obfuscated by the “objectivity” of money, people have batshit insane ideas about how the world works because they’re educated wrong (in particular about history and the inherent importance of economic conditions informing what happens), and they don’t have the capacity for noticing this because we’re all radical individuals. if people are properly understood as members of their social groups, then grinding a ton of young Black people in the u.s. into homelessness and then the prison system is an obvious problem. if everyone is, on the other hand, primarily an individual, then you don’t even have to notice this really. you just don’t even see it if your social group is one of the protected ones, when someone falls out of it their personal failings are to blame. if you aren’t in one of those privileged groups, you still lack the tools for a systemic analysis, so you just watch on in reactionary horror as people you know get sucked into the meat grinder, helplessly hoping that you aren’t next.

In my experience it’s less that you “ask” them to fix it, it’s that you get on your knees and beg them to fix it, while spending $15 a day at the laundromat.