Hours after losing her house to the Palisades fire in Los Angeles, Charlotta La Via was looking out of her hotel window and half-wishing she’d booked the hotel across the street when she spotted a “for lease” sign on a building nearby.
It was advertising a luxury apartment complex in downtown Santa Monica, more like a five-star hotel than conventional living, with prices to match. But she and her husband didn’t hesitate. They signed a lease on a three-bedroom apartment almost as soon as they’d finished touring it.
“Aren’t you being impulsive?” their 18-year-old daughter asked. At the time, three-bedroom apartments in the complex – which includes a pool, a gym, a doorman, and a rooftop deck with idyllic ocean views – were being listed at more than $20,000 a month.
Shit. Spending half my annual income on a month’s worth of rent. Why are rich people always morons?
How the actual fuck is this not price gouging?
I mean, price gouging is kinda built into the economic model we’re all forced to perpetuate. What’s the difference between price gouging and the “law” of supply and demand?
The only real reason people with capital acknowledge the idea of price gouging is because eventual conclusion of the law of supply and demand during a crisis is the guillotine.
Because that’s just normal capitalism, and you know how much love 'Merica has for capitalism. They love it so much they caused millions of deaths around the world and in their own country.
Cheaper to move away and fly in for the day.
Cheaper to tool up and expropriate the landlord’s manor house. Papa Mao bless
Whaaa? This home was empty when I got here. I swear.
$20,000 / month? These are the apartments that should have burned down. Fucking disgusting
