Rent. Joe Collins

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3906-2 (pb)

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941064

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Dedication

For Kellie West

Acknowledgements

      This short book was hard to write. So hard that it needed to be written twice. I am indebted to the many people who helped to transform a loose set of reflections on rent into what is hopefully a useful resource for demystifying capitalism with its rentier inflection.

      Many thanks to George Owers and two anonymous readers for sharp and thorough comments on a chaotic first draft. Reader 2, who typically gets a bad rap, gets special mention for a fair and tough appraisal that continues to offer much food for thought. Thanks, also, to Julia Davies for patiently guiding a novice author through the publication process of his first book. Gail Ferguson’s expert copyediting is much appreciated. So, too, is the professionalism of Evie Deavall, Sue Duncan, Neil de Cort and the rest of the Polity crew responsible for producing this book.

      Sounding boards that helped shape thinking about rent over years are too many to name but chats with Beck Pearse, Humphrey McQueen, Claire Parfitt, Bruce McFarlane, Emma To, Peter Curtis, Liz Humphrys, Troy Henderson, Adam Morton, Frank Stilwell, Ben Moody, Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Bill Dunn, Chris Fletcher, Mike Beggs, Ryan Jory, Bill Kolios and Gareth Bryant directly informed the chapters below. Thank you, comrades. To the students and colleagues in the political economy movement at Sydney, your influence on the ideas in context explored in this book is immense and treasured.

The invisible work of many hands making and remaking our daily lives is so important and seldom acknowledged. To this end, I am grateful most of all to my family, Kellie, Matilda and Chips, for their unwavering support and encouragement without which this book could not have been written. Kellie, this book is dedicated to you because you more than anyone has helped me grapple with contradiction, class, land and value – the very essence of rent. I love you all and thank you for your patience and understanding during the struggle to finish this thing. Thanks, too, Bill, Amy, Julie, Dave, Kim, Mike, Taylor, Jamie, Jason, Jenny and Jimmy for all the help along the way.

It goes without saying that anything of use in what follows is owed to the collaborative efforts of those listed above while any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone.

1 What is Rent?

      The word ‘rent’ first appeared in English around the twelfth century. In this original usage, rent meant income received by landlords and paid by tenants for the use of land. The word probably came from the French rente, meaning income, derived from the Latin, rendere, meaning to give back or give up.¹ The word ‘land’ was used synonymously in this context with the things that could be done with land, like housing and farming. Rent was therefore taken to mean the periodical payment by tenants to landlords for the use of land and for what could be done on and with the land. One interesting connection is to the word ‘farm’, which meant ‘payment as rent’ in thirteenth-century English. Its Latin root is firmare, meaning ‘to fix.’² There appear to be instances where the word ‘rent’ was used to mean tax in reference to various forms of property, but these were rare compared to the usage of the term to refer to the income derived from ownership of land. These discrepancies may well come down to the fact that in order for something to be given back, rendere, it first needed to be rent, torn apart, from its possessor. Rent as payment for the use of land remained its dominant meaning until the late nineteenth century.

It is around the 1880s that the word ‘rent’ begins to be used to refer to things besides land and its associated uses. Economists at this time begin to describe elements of the incomes of businesspeople as the ‘rent of rare natural abilities’, for example.³ This shift in how rent is conceived, within the context of broader debates in economic theory, opens the door for expanding the list of things to which the word ‘rent’ can apply. Rent comes to bear on a raft of different types of ‘property’ from this time, making the meaning of rent more ambiguous.

      More recent examples of rent conceived in this generalized form could include the periodical payment for housing or the fee paid for the temporary use of a car or some other piece of expensive machinery. People holidaying in Bali or Mykonos might well rent a motorized scooter rather than buying one because they require its use for the duration of their stay only. Purchasing a scooter might be prohibitively expensive, given it would be used solely for the purpose of commuting from their bungalow to the beach for a few weeks. The same might apply for the purchase of a gym membership in the months leading up to embarking on a beachside getaway. Monthly instalments are paid to use weights and treadmills rather than purchasing loads of expensive gym equipment that may well be neglected upon returning home from warmer climes.

      Paying rent for housing is also a familiar experience for many today. The latest OECD data suggest that homeownership rates are high in most member countries, with 68% of people across the OECD owning homes either outright or with a mortgage, compared to 28% renting either privately or in subsidized housing.⁴ There are two countries only, Switzerland (55%) and Germany (47%), where renting through the market is more common than homeownership.⁵ The population of the OECD is around 1.3 billion people, according to latest figures, which is roughly 17% of the global population of around 7.6 billion people.⁶ This means that about 364 million people living in OECD countries live in rented housing, almost one in every three people.

Recent increases in the renting population are also worth noting. The United Kingdom, for example, led the world between 2010 and 2015 in numbers of people becoming renters, with a 22% increase according to OECD figures.⁷ The United States in comparison had 6.2 million people join the ranks of renters, with a 9.3% increase over the same period.⁸ So while homeownership remains the dominant form of gaining access to housing on average in high-income countries, the rise in the renting population is significant and there are certainly enough of the population who do rent housing to make this form of rent a familiar arrangement for most people.

      Just as with rents for scooters in Kuta, the rental payment for housing appears to be a relatively straightforward matter. A homeowner, or landlord, charges periodical fees, a rent, to those who require housing but do not own, or choose not to live in, a home of their own. The choice not to live in a home of one’s own might seem strange but it does occur in places like the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and Japan, where laws allowing investors to recoup losses on rental properties through income tax deductions make this choice profitable in some cases.⁹ The conditions of the rental arrangement are usually set out in a tenancy contract whereby things like the amount of money to be paid for rent, how frequently this payment occurs, the length of the lease, the types of use permitted for the property and the rights of the tenants and landlord are spelled out in detail. This is why lawyers refer to ‘contract rent’. Responsibilities of each party are set out in these contracts according to general principles that are fairly intuitive. Landlords, as owners of the property, are generally