Padsplit: super cheap housing that can immediately evict by remotely changing the key codes

[Demovictory9]

https://newrepublic.com/article/162513/affordable-housing-cheap-rent-padsplit

Kathleen SayVon had spent weeks hunting for a new place to live in 2018, sleeping in her car and showering at the gym, when she finally caught a break. As she scrolled her phone in her car one evening, an ad for affordable rooms in the Atlanta area appeared on her Facebook feed. The price—$130 a week, with utilities included—was a rare find she could afford on the wages from two temp jobs she was working while attempting to finish her bachelor’s degree.

SayVon thought she’d hit the jackpot. “You’re like, ecstatic, you know?” she said.

A phone call and a $35 application fee later, SayVon, 59, had a new place to live—along with five roommates in their thirties who she had never met before, plus a pitbull. Some of the troubles SayVon soon ran into were standard roommate stuff: noise from other rooms that often kept her awake, disputes over cleaning the bathroom. Other parts of her new living situation were new to her, and more unsettling: No one seemed to know exactly who owned the house they lived in, only what happened if you missed a weekly rent payment: “They just locked them out of the house,” SayVon said, an eviction that could happen in an instant with the keycodes tenants had been given to access the property being changed remotely.


SayVon, in her search for cheap rent, had stumbled across PadSplit, a buzzy startup that aims to “disrupt” the affordable housing industry with a cross between boarding houses and Airbnb.


============

People need affordable places to stay, and PadSplit claims it has the solution. But SayVon and three other current and former PadSplit members told The New Republic that while they rented rooms from the company at moments when they had few other options, their stays were marked by negligent property owners, punishing fees, and capricious policies surrounding eviction and relocation—all with little formal recourse. Start-ups’ sudden enthusiasm for housing justice also raises larger flags: While they may share the goal of eliminating the stranglehold of single-family homes on our cities, there’s a big difference between creating new opportunities to profit from housing of last resort and providing dignified homes for all—a vision that housing movements are pushing in a demand for millions of new units of green social housing.


“We’ve had calls of either, ‘We’re going to put you out after Friday’ or, ‘We’re moving you to another location, and you have no choice in the matter,’” Kinnear said.


https://newrepublic.com/article/162513/affordable-housing-cheap-rent-padsplit

[PSPS]

1. "a new place to live ... with five roommates in their thirties who (sic) she had never met before"

Gee, that sounds familiar. Geesh.

[jmbar2]

2. A brand new concept for making housing harder to find and less affordable

The government needs to start putting homes into trusts to prevent them from becoming investment vehicles.

When everything is an AirBnB, PadSplit, or Hedge fund-owned investment vehicle, we have entered neofeudalism. This is a terrifying trend.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

3. Capitalism needs to die

Or it will kill us.

[Happy Hoosier]

4. And replace it with what?

I‘m all ears, and anxious for a practical plan.

[ck4829]

5. Something that won't "kill us", as the poster you replied to mentioned