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Journal by takyon
(NSFW) http://www.vice.com/read/theres-now-a-porn-genre-about-how-broke-millennials-are-456
Vice, keeping a hand on the chest to feel the millennial pulse.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children.
-- Paul Ehrlich
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday June 08 2016, @11:33AM
Seriously, what kind of shady tenement lord requires first month, last month, AND a security deposit?
I've lived in some of the most trendy, expensive places in downtown (for whatever it's worth) St. Louis, as well as out in the middle of rural nowhere, as well as in buildings that allow for Section 8 (I was poor, but living there as a paying resident). I've never seen that.
Also, I realize this is fiction, but to link it to millennials is a little lazy. There's a reason "quid pro quo" has an immediate, if often unspoken, sexual connotation to it.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @11:52AM
I don't think its uncommon. It lowers the cost of having to deal with a renter that bounces out of there due to inability to pay. Any barrier to entry lowers the amount of "undesirables" (the poor) that the landlord has to deal with, while having less of an effect on how long it takes to fill the room than raising the rent would. Getting the guaranteed second month of rent, possibly a cancellation fee, and having a renter less likely to leave suddenly means less time/money spent filling an empty room.
If a renter can afford the upfront costs, it's not necessarily a problem for them at all. They were going to pay for that last month eventually, and they will get some or all of the security deposit back.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday June 08 2016, @12:47PM
Oh sure, I absolutely get the reasoning behind it. I'm just agog to hear it happening as I've never before heard of such a thing.
It does track that the millennials would have trouble making significant down payments for things like an established 30+ year old human in a career would. No one just out of the house has ever really been able to just walk out and get into their dream place, not that they necessarily should. The problem is, with increasing wealth disparity, that barrier to entry is only growing.
I've spoken about my brother previously here at Runaway Central, the 20 year old that has no ambition. He has such a defeatist attitude that he really doesn't think he could make it on his own in the current world even if he was gung-ho about trying to make it, so why even try? I've been trying to divine some way of being able to help him, but my resources myself are stretched so thin even with a job that pays roughly double median local wage helping to pay off my sister's student loans (which is another significant sign of the times) that I'm not entirely sure how to instill that level of confidence in him. I'd offered to pay for classes a while back, but it hasn't amounted to much. It probably doesn't help that my mother is batshit insane and mental illness runs on that side of the family. Sometimes I wonder about him with relation to that.
Personally, I can't bring myself to hate the millennials. I just pity them. Pretty much all the evils ascribed to them aren't magically their faults. Remember, if you're 40+, it's basically your generation that had the responsibility to raise them. If they're fucked up, you fucked them up. Rather than alienating and villainizing people, a more productive thing would be to stop and evaluate the situation and say, "Well, yeah, sure, they're all fucked. How do we fix that?" No one seems to be doing that though.
As an aside, I'd consider $1200 (I think that's what the article said) upfront to be fairly reasonable plus or minus a couple hundred bucks, but I suppose the Chicago area is naturally going to have a much higher cost of living than St. Louis would.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @04:13AM
Why bother having ambition when businesses are failing everywhere, corporations are hoarding money, and government is refusing to raise taxes or employ the unemployed. Millennials need a New Deal, and they're not getting it from Obama. The Great Depression wasn't solved by Hoover declaring it didn't exist, and the Great Recession won't be solved by Obama refusing to reboot the Works Progress Administration. But Obama won't last forever, he's finished in six months, so why bother doing anything now until after Obama leaves office and takes his failure with him.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Wednesday June 08 2016, @01:48PM
While I can't speak to what goes on in the US...
A friend of mine here in the UK found that not only do you need a security deposit and two months rent.... Private landlords may require a full credit check and two years worth of income proof of about $36,000 (USD) per year. This is apparently becoming the standard, and that's just for renting a bedroom in a shared house. Shared kitchen and bathroom. This is London though, where a leasehold on a parking space could be worth $1m (USD) if it's in the right zipcode.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday June 10 2016, @07:41AM
The formula I've seen in most places in the US is that you have to make at least three to four times whatever your rent payment is. There's only been one place that I've not been able to cover it that myself entirely, but I had a roommate (and his girlfriend) at the time, which put the total income up to about 200-225k (probably double that limit), and the place was big enough we could go a day without seeing each other if we wanted to. Shared kitchen, but you could have housed four people with their own rooms in that place if you wanted to. Loved that place.
Credit checks are standard here too, but according to the leasing offices I've talked to, they're mostly looking for signs of bad renter's history. Don't really care about much else. I have decent credit myself, but it's far from perfect due to issues from when I was younger. Never stopped me from getting into any place I've ever felt like I could afford.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @08:43PM
The five different places in Massachusetts that I've lived in required: first, last, and security. The security deposit is the same amount as the rent, so it has been ~$2000-$3000 upfront every time I've moved.