In our Greek Philosophy and Hellenistic Studies class we were presented with four options for ethical case studies. Below is the situation of which I respond to. Keep in mind that this project was to be approached in context to some of the themes that we addressed in our class this year.
Short Term Rentals
Alice is a recent graduate from UBC. She lived in Totem Park for her first two years of her B.A., but then moved into a small bachelor apartment near Jericho Beach. Alice loves to travel, and spent four months in Peru on an exchange program while she was in university, but she’s not rich, and so she sublets her room while she’s out of town. She uses a popular web-based service that allows her to rent out her room while she’s travelling. Her brother helps her out by cleaning the place between guests, in exchange for a small cut of the proceeds. Alice never made a lot of money from these guests, because her room wasn’t constantly being rented, but the income covered her monthly rent and utilities, and helped her to pay for a few nights in other peoples’ homes while she was out of the country.
It was hard for Alice to find work after graduation, but she parlayed her intercultural experience and her strong written and verbal communication skills into a role as a property manager. She moves out of her bachelor and into a nice, if compact, one-bedroom in the low-rise building she’ll now manage. It’s near a popular beach. The building has about two dozen studio apartments, each of which isn’t much bigger than her old Totem dorm room. She learns quickly about how to manage the contractors who come in to do repairs, how to collect rent, and how to negotiate conflicts between residents. She even manages to get a unit in the building for her brother, who is happy to downsize in exchange for a shorter commute to his job.
After a couple of years in this role, though, a new company buys the building. This company evicts the tenants (including Alice’s brother) in order to make substantial renovations to the units, as they’re legally allowed to do. Alice’s brother struggles to find a place he can afford in the city, and ends up renting near Metrotown, far from his friends, but at least on the SkyTrain line to his work.
Alice manages the logistics of the evictions and the renos. She asks about posting one of the recently-completed rooms on Craigslist and Kijiji. Her boss tells her that they haven’t had good experiences with those sites in their other properties, and so they are instead going to rent the units on a short-term basis on the same property rental website that Alice and her brother know from her time as a student. Instead of renting the studios to long-term residents for $915 per month, they’ll rent them for $60/night to tourists, which—when fully occupied—will come close to doubling their monthly income from the units. Alice is informed that her responsibilities will change, and instead of collecting rent cheques, she’ll be supervising the cleaning crews that will come in to take care of the property between renters.
Alice is angry to learn that her new employers’ business model displaces people like her brother. She knows its getting harder and harder to find good, clean, affordable places to rent in the city, and doesn’t think it’s fair that this business is willing to exchange good, stable tenants for extra cash. She decides that she can’t support a business that doesn’t support her community. In protest, she quits her job—but not before telling the local media and the City of Vancouver about her employers’ business model. She doesn’t reveal the details about her brother’s eviction, though, or about her own experience renting her apartment out through this short-term property website.
Do you think that Alice’s actions are morally justified?
In your answer, try to consider the following guiding questions.
- Articulate the primary valuesthat motivate Alice.
- Does her decision really follow from her values? Why, or why not?
- Are there key values that Alice should have considered? What are they? Can you reconcile her decision with those values and suggest a (morally) fairer outcome?
Response:
Are Alice’s actions morally justified? Well, it depends on what sort of morality we are operating on. First though, we must lay some groundwork. Note that throughout this response similarities will be drawn between Ancient Greece ideals and Alice’s actions.
In this story Alice’s primary motivating values are to care for her friends, family, and community. She cannot stand the idea that her new employer’s business model causes strife in the life of the people she cares for, especially her brother. Alice’s values here mirror that of the 8th century CE Greek heroic ideal, as seen in Homer’s ‘The Iliad’. The three main values for a hero (or good person) in this time were to: 1) stand by friends and family, but be brave against enemies; 2) respect the gods by helping strangers and resisting hubris (arrogance/pride); and 3) strive for honor in life and death by achieving excellence in words and action. (Griffin AT 1)
Alice’s decision to quit her job and to report the business philosophy of her new employer to the local media and the City of Vancouver once again fall in line with her values. Her anger and outrage reflect her desire to support her family, friends, and community. Now, one might argue that she is outraged only because it is impacting her brother, and that she is in the wrong because she too used the short-term property website when she was a student and had no remorse. While this is seeming relatable, it is in fact not a comparable situation.
While her new employer intends to displace 24 apartments worth of people in favour of personal profit, Alice was merely subletting her place for four months as a student. Because she would have been living in the same place regardless of whether or not she sublet it out, she was not taking the space away from anyone else. Alice’s new employer’s plan to renovate the apartment for the purpose of short-term rentals will not only displace those living there, it will also inflate the rental prices for nearby apartments. Alice act of subletting her room while on exchange did not impact anyone. For these reasons, Alice is on acceptable moral standing relating to her previous use of the short-term rental website.
Alice’s decision to quit and report the incident to the media and City of Vancouver continue to mirror a Homeric heroic ideal. Historians Morris and Powell explain, “The Homeric hero, deprived of any significant quantity of timē (excellence), reacts violently, aware as he is of the bottom of the scale… the primary function of the hero (or good person) is to defend his timē with all the resources at his command.” (Adkins 1996) Alice’s quitting mimics Achilles anger, he is quoted, “Yet still the heart in me swells up in anger, when I remember the disgrace that he wrought upon me […] as if I were some wanderer without honour.” (Iliad 9.646-48) Alice similarly swells up in anger towards the new employer which has disgraced her family, and thus her. She uses the resources at her command, the media and the City of Vancouver, to defend those that she cares about, thus, living out the Homeric heroic ideal.
So far this has all been from Alice’s point of view. She may have benefitted from trying to understand the viewpoint of her new employer. Evidently the new employer’s goal is to make more money than they would with long-term rentals, but there is a possibility that they had other values pushing them to achieve their goals. The employer could have very well been supporting their own family, friends, and community elsewhere. Alice should have attempted to meet with the new employer before quitting and reporting to the media because otherwise she would have had insufficient information to act upon.
Now, are Alice’s actions morally justified? Well, yes and no. They certainly aren’t morally wrong based solely upon her previous use of the short-term property website as mentioned earlier. Operating on a subjective morality, one that implies everyone should weigh their own values and act according to what they personally think is right, then yes, Alice’s actions are justified. Operating on an objective morality, in which case Alice believes that her values of caring for family, friends and community are objectively morally correct, she would be putting herself in a difficult position for justifying her ensuing actions. In this case, that caring for those close to you is morally correct for everyone, then one must decide whether or not this leads to competing desires. Which one wins out, Alice’s care for her friends, family, and community, or her new employer’s care for their friends, family, and community? Either Alice should have respected the employer’s desires to care for the community (if that was the case, either way, she didn’t do due diligence in this area), or, one can concede to a Sophist understanding of justice and morality that ‘might makes right’. The sophist would state, “justice is really the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, and harmful to the one who obeys and serves.” (Plato, Republic I, 343A-D). For Alice to be morally right in an objective morality situation, it would require her to concede that the new employer’s value of friends, family, and community is just as important as hers, and ultimately, she is trying to bring the new employer down in order to ensure her desires are met. In this case, it would be morally permissible for her to be upset, quit, and report her new employer to the media.
In the end, are Alice’s action on moral ground? Under subjective morality, yes; under objective morality, sometimes. It would be difficult to discern until a primary ethical viewpoint was established. We can assert, however, that were Alice to be morally wrong, it would not be due to her earlier use of the short-term rental site.
Works Cited
A.W.H. Adkins, “Homeric Ethics,” in I. Morris & B.Powell (Eds.), A New Companion to Homer (Brill 1996), 704-705
Griffin, Michael. “Athenian Thought: A Reader 1. Homer, Hesiod & Pindar.” 2014.
Homerus, and Irene J. F. de. Jong. Iliad. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Plato, and Allan Bloom. The Republic. New York: Basic, 1968. Print.