A Boring Dystopia

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Landlords are price gouging wildfire victims (archive.ph)

submitted 4 days ago by Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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An excerpt from the article:

Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.

The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot. Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.

“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”

And now, totally unrelated to this, the definition of "parasitism":

Association between two different organisms wherein one benefits at the expense of the other.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Federal prosecutors allege that the landlords have used RealPage pricing software to collude and artificially raise rents. The legal action is the latest development stemming from a 2022 ProPublica investigation.

RealPage’s popular software was collecting nonpublic pricing information from multiple property managers and feeding it through a common algorithm, which then recommended an optimal rent level to those who used it — in violation of rules that prohibit such coordination, federal prosecutors alleged. They also accused the landlords of improperly communicating directly about their pricing through calls, emails and participation in “user group” forums hosted by RealPage.

The company pushes landlords to use an “auto-accept” feature on its software, authorities said, and makes it onerous for property managers to reject its suggestions.

Wonder how many of these units are managed by The Algorithm.