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You should go sit through a day in housing court when it opens up again. The first time I went to housing court was literally life changing. The injustice was e

You should go sit through a day in housing court when it opens up again. The first time I went to housing court was literally life changing. The injustice was eye opening. It’s probably the single event that switched me from Republican to Democrat because I spent my whole life thinking “the system” was fair and reasonable until I saw the system in action.

chrisco255 6y ago
Have you ever tried being a landlord?
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Yes, it was a massive pain in the ass and for me, personally, I wasn’t compensated enough to make the transaction/relationship worth my time. So I stopped renting. Landlords can opt out of the rental market if they aren’t earning enough. Tenants have no such luxury.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    They can't just opt out. Landlords have mortgages to pay, employees to pay, maintenance, insurance, utilities, etc that they're responsible for, capital expenditures on the property itself.
    - mikeyouse 6y ago
      Right.. you can sell your property and stop being a landlord and just live in the property you own rather than being a rentier.. that's what they mean by "opt out".
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Right, you could of course file bankruptcy if your business becomes unprofitable on account of rentiers not paying their rent...but that's not a solution to the housing problem at all and strongly disincentivizes investment in housing.
        intopieces 6y ago
        > disincentivizes investment in housing. Great! Housing shouldn't be an investment anyway. There's no reason it has to be; there are plenty of places -- like Japan -- where houses are depreciating assets that expected to be torn down when the owners leave.
        asguy 6y ago
        I thought they did that due to construction quality and social stigma relative to reusing housing? Contrast that with Europe. Do you have any additional info?
        jfim 6y ago
        > There's no reason it has to be; there are plenty of places -- like Japan -- where houses are depreciating assets that expected to be torn down when the owners leave. Japan has a declining population, which means that rural housing actually can have zero buyers for it, where the population is lower than the number of houses. One in seven buildings in Japan is actually vacant [0]. If their population was increasing faster than housing construction, then housing would actually increase in cost. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/japan-s-shrinking-population-leaves-record-8-million-homes-empty https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/japan-s-s...
        fiblye 6y ago
        Rent is cheap even in Tokyo compared to virtually any American city. I'm living in a city of 800,000 and early 30s families have no trouble buying a new house if they want to. It was this way even before the population started to decline. People tell me all the time that rent is so expensive in Tokyo, because it's... about $100 more a month. Prices are fairly uniform here. The reason prices aren't high is that nobody wants to live in an old house. "Old" being 15 years old or more. Even with renting apartments, if it's older than 7-8 years old, agents will almost warn you that the property isn't exactly fresh and sparkling, but it's still not bad. If it's a pre-90s house, it's considered basically unwanted and they'll all but try to give it away. Meanwhile, 90s homes in the US are still marketed as pretty new, and demand seems to be higher for older homes than newer ones. America also has loads of empty houses. It also has loads of property owners who refuse to lower prices because their ego is worth more than their property. Apparently about 1/8 American homes are currently vacant, and the population isn't declining. Price and desirability are the problems.
    - mchaver 6y ago
      Honest question. Why should society allow banks to give out mortgages for the purchase of residential property for use as a non-primary residence? It seems like this will lead to increasing the cost of rent because the renter pays the mortgage for the landlord plus profit.
      - ihattendorf 6y ago
        Why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's just a secured loan. Why should banks give out personal loans where someone can do whatever they want with the money? Why do credit cards exist? Why are brokers allowed to provide margin accounts?
        mchaver 6y ago
        > Why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's just a secured loan. From the perspective of a bank it's a great deal. Either they get the premiums and interest on a loan or if the landlord defaults, they get the asset. But think of it in terms of the community. This helps concentrate wealth for the wealthy. People with lots of assets are more likely to qualify for a loan and they can afford higher house prices than those with less. This can cause cost of housing in residential areas to increase and lead to locking out new residents from becoming home owners in the area they live. > Why should banks give out personal loans where someone can do whatever they want with the money? Personal loans have higher premiums, higher interest rates and lower limits because they are not backed by high value assets. > Why do credit cards exist? Why are brokers allowed to provide margin accounts? The simple answer is that they are profitable to the providers. I don't think high eviction rates are signs of a healthy society.
  - throwaway98797 6y ago
    A good portion of rent covers eviction risk. Increase cost of evictions results in an increase in rent. If lower affordability is your goal we should make it harder to evict.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      People don't want to hear it but it's true. The landlord has to pay the mortgage on the building. If they end up with 30% non-paying tenants who they can't evict, everybody's got to pay 30% more rent.
      - tartoran 6y ago
        But if the profit is 30% nobody’s getting it but the landlord.
        gbronner 6y ago
        People who are getting evicted are stressed. They often trash the property or behave in such ways that others don't want to live near them. For the ll, it is money; for their neighbors it is their life.
        tartoran 6y ago
        What does that have to do with sharing the loss but not the profit?
        ensignavenger 6y ago
        There aren't too many landlords earning 30% profits over the long run. If they are, they are doing an exceptional job managing those properties.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > But if the profit is 30% nobody’s getting it but the landlord. What profit? The landlord has a $10,000/month mortgage payment and 10 tenants who pay $1000/month rent. If three of the tenants stop paying their rent and you can't evict them and replace them with paying tenants, you still have a $10,000/month mortgage, so now you have to raise the rent on the others by >$400/month each just in order to make the payment. It's systemic, so all the other landlords are in the same situation and have to do the same thing, which means you can raise the rent by that much without losing tenants to the competition. The people getting the extra money that the other tenants are paying aren't the landlords, they're the tenants who are living there without paying rent because they can't be evicted. And you can imagine what happens when the other tenants can't afford the higher rent and stop paying too.
throwaway98797 6y ago
Should contracts be enforceable? Should we live in a world where people can take other people’s property with no recourse?
- Klinky 6y ago
  There are laws and risks associated with renting, and you will often find that the landlord is the one breaking the law or contract.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago
  >Should contracts be enforceable? Sometimes yes, other times no they should be void or unenforceable. Quick example: an employee non-compete clause in California (which are illegal in California but employers include them regularly) >Should we live in a world where people can take other people’s property with no recourse? Like the colonist (and later Americans) took the property and land of native Americans? Or like squatting where one party acquires legal title to property from the own after x years? This is generally legal. Or like eminent domain where rich people get the local government to take private property on their behalf? One of the great ironies the great capitalist Trump has quite the history of supporting The taking of lands /property to be given to developers, and the scary socialist Bernie sanders has fought against these acts to uphold Private property rights.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    In too many small communities, the only people interested in day to day governing are the ones bending it to their financial interest. Usually property developers, sometimes people who own a local industry or visible store front (auto dealers). American's seem to be waking up.
    - throwaway_jobs 6y ago
      I like your optimism and I hope true change happens For the better, I’m more than a little jaded and in my experience things only get worse. Take “Poletown” where GM got the government to seize 1,500 homes, 144 businesses and 16 churches and bulldoze them to the ground to build a GM plant. Ultimately GM provided half the number of promised jobs and ultimately closed the plant. I fear what we are seeing now is 20-40M Americans lost their jobs, nearly that many will become homeless in the near future, and ultimately they will be swept under the rug (just removed from employment numbers And every other program like they don’t even exist). Watch unemployment Numbers go back to 5% or so and the politicians go back to bragging about the economy. Once you have 40M+ homeless there is no possibility for them to organize and have a voice...they won’t even have the literal energy to survive let alone effect change, they will be steamrolled just like poletown was and no one will ever even know not unlike poletown.
dspoka 6y ago
Is sitting in a housing court just allowed? How does one go around doing this?
- ars 6y ago
  Just go. Almost all courts, with the exception of family court, are open and you can just walk in and sit. If you yourself are going to be involved in a case it's a good idea to sit in a few trials so you get an idea of how things go.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Usually, yes! I’m not sure how it works with remote hearings during Covid-19 but I imagine some courts are broadcasting live streams of the proceedings while others are invitation-only. In normal circumstances where courts are open you can just show up and sit in the gallery to observe. Most housing courts have an “eviction day” once a week. If you call the courthouse ahead of time the clerk can tell you what day of the week is eviction day.
ensignavenger 6y ago
I once sued my former landlord. As a result, I had to sit through many housing cases (neither of us was represented by a lawyer, so we were put at the end of the docket... that was unjust, but it was equally unjust to both of us). In the end I won (though it was a long and drawn out process- something that impacts landlords and tenants equally), I felt like the rulings, whichever way they ended up going, were pretty fair based on the facts presented. If anything, the judge was more favorable to tenants. I follow various landlord forums because I feel like one day I may want to start a business related to it. Landlords worry most of all about tenants destroying a building, and having no legal recourse. With eviction courts shutdown, many have had tenants just stop paying rent- often times when the tenants still have their income, some times more income than they had before. The tenants in many cases won't communicate with the landlords about the situation. Obviously, you mileage may vary depending on where you are, and I have had my share of problems with lying, slumlords (like the one I sued)- but that isn't the majority of them. Most are just trying to run a business.

chrisco255 6y ago

Have you ever tried being a landlord?

elliekelly 6y ago
Yes, it was a massive pain in the ass and for me, personally, I wasn’t compensated enough to make the transaction/relationship worth my time. So I stopped renting. Landlords can opt out of the rental market if they aren’t earning enough. Tenants have no such luxury.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  They can't just opt out. Landlords have mortgages to pay, employees to pay, maintenance, insurance, utilities, etc that they're responsible for, capital expenditures on the property itself.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Right.. you can sell your property and stop being a landlord and just live in the property you own rather than being a rentier.. that's what they mean by "opt out".
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Right, you could of course file bankruptcy if your business becomes unprofitable on account of rentiers not paying their rent...but that's not a solution to the housing problem at all and strongly disincentivizes investment in housing.
      - intopieces 6y ago
        > disincentivizes investment in housing. Great! Housing shouldn't be an investment anyway. There's no reason it has to be; there are plenty of places -- like Japan -- where houses are depreciating assets that expected to be torn down when the owners leave.
        asguy 6y ago
        I thought they did that due to construction quality and social stigma relative to reusing housing? Contrast that with Europe. Do you have any additional info?
        jfim 6y ago
        > There's no reason it has to be; there are plenty of places -- like Japan -- where houses are depreciating assets that expected to be torn down when the owners leave. Japan has a declining population, which means that rural housing actually can have zero buyers for it, where the population is lower than the number of houses. One in seven buildings in Japan is actually vacant [0]. If their population was increasing faster than housing construction, then housing would actually increase in cost. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/japan-s-shrinking-population-leaves-record-8-million-homes-empty https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/japan-s-s...
        fiblye 6y ago
        Rent is cheap even in Tokyo compared to virtually any American city. I'm living in a city of 800,000 and early 30s families have no trouble buying a new house if they want to. It was this way even before the population started to decline. People tell me all the time that rent is so expensive in Tokyo, because it's... about $100 more a month. Prices are fairly uniform here. The reason prices aren't high is that nobody wants to live in an old house. "Old" being 15 years old or more. Even with renting apartments, if it's older than 7-8 years old, agents will almost warn you that the property isn't exactly fresh and sparkling, but it's still not bad. If it's a pre-90s house, it's considered basically unwanted and they'll all but try to give it away. Meanwhile, 90s homes in the US are still marketed as pretty new, and demand seems to be higher for older homes than newer ones. America also has loads of empty houses. It also has loads of property owners who refuse to lower prices because their ego is worth more than their property. Apparently about 1/8 American homes are currently vacant, and the population isn't declining. Price and desirability are the problems.
  - mchaver 6y ago
    Honest question. Why should society allow banks to give out mortgages for the purchase of residential property for use as a non-primary residence? It seems like this will lead to increasing the cost of rent because the renter pays the mortgage for the landlord plus profit.
    - ihattendorf 6y ago
      Why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's just a secured loan. Why should banks give out personal loans where someone can do whatever they want with the money? Why do credit cards exist? Why are brokers allowed to provide margin accounts?
      - mchaver 6y ago
        > Why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's just a secured loan. From the perspective of a bank it's a great deal. Either they get the premiums and interest on a loan or if the landlord defaults, they get the asset. But think of it in terms of the community. This helps concentrate wealth for the wealthy. People with lots of assets are more likely to qualify for a loan and they can afford higher house prices than those with less. This can cause cost of housing in residential areas to increase and lead to locking out new residents from becoming home owners in the area they live. > Why should banks give out personal loans where someone can do whatever they want with the money? Personal loans have higher premiums, higher interest rates and lower limits because they are not backed by high value assets. > Why do credit cards exist? Why are brokers allowed to provide margin accounts? The simple answer is that they are profitable to the providers. I don't think high eviction rates are signs of a healthy society.
- throwaway98797 6y ago
  A good portion of rent covers eviction risk. Increase cost of evictions results in an increase in rent. If lower affordability is your goal we should make it harder to evict.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    People don't want to hear it but it's true. The landlord has to pay the mortgage on the building. If they end up with 30% non-paying tenants who they can't evict, everybody's got to pay 30% more rent.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      But if the profit is 30% nobody’s getting it but the landlord.
      - gbronner 6y ago
        People who are getting evicted are stressed. They often trash the property or behave in such ways that others don't want to live near them. For the ll, it is money; for their neighbors it is their life.
        tartoran 6y ago
        What does that have to do with sharing the loss but not the profit?
      - ensignavenger 6y ago
        There aren't too many landlords earning 30% profits over the long run. If they are, they are doing an exceptional job managing those properties.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > But if the profit is 30% nobody’s getting it but the landlord. What profit? The landlord has a $10,000/month mortgage payment and 10 tenants who pay $1000/month rent. If three of the tenants stop paying their rent and you can't evict them and replace them with paying tenants, you still have a $10,000/month mortgage, so now you have to raise the rent on the others by >$400/month each just in order to make the payment. It's systemic, so all the other landlords are in the same situation and have to do the same thing, which means you can raise the rent by that much without losing tenants to the competition. The people getting the extra money that the other tenants are paying aren't the landlords, they're the tenants who are living there without paying rent because they can't be evicted. And you can imagine what happens when the other tenants can't afford the higher rent and stop paying too.

throwaway98797 6y ago

Should contracts be enforceable? Should we live in a world where people can take other people’s property with no recourse?

Klinky 6y ago
There are laws and risks associated with renting, and you will often find that the landlord is the one breaking the law or contract.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway_jobs 6y ago
>Should contracts be enforceable? Sometimes yes, other times no they should be void or unenforceable. Quick example: an employee non-compete clause in California (which are illegal in California but employers include them regularly) >Should we live in a world where people can take other people’s property with no recourse? Like the colonist (and later Americans) took the property and land of native Americans? Or like squatting where one party acquires legal title to property from the own after x years? This is generally legal. Or like eminent domain where rich people get the local government to take private property on their behalf? One of the great ironies the great capitalist Trump has quite the history of supporting The taking of lands /property to be given to developers, and the scary socialist Bernie sanders has fought against these acts to uphold Private property rights.
- pnutjam 6y ago
  In too many small communities, the only people interested in day to day governing are the ones bending it to their financial interest. Usually property developers, sometimes people who own a local industry or visible store front (auto dealers). American's seem to be waking up.
  - throwaway_jobs 6y ago
    I like your optimism and I hope true change happens For the better, I’m more than a little jaded and in my experience things only get worse. Take “Poletown” where GM got the government to seize 1,500 homes, 144 businesses and 16 churches and bulldoze them to the ground to build a GM plant. Ultimately GM provided half the number of promised jobs and ultimately closed the plant. I fear what we are seeing now is 20-40M Americans lost their jobs, nearly that many will become homeless in the near future, and ultimately they will be swept under the rug (just removed from employment numbers And every other program like they don’t even exist). Watch unemployment Numbers go back to 5% or so and the politicians go back to bragging about the economy. Once you have 40M+ homeless there is no possibility for them to organize and have a voice...they won’t even have the literal energy to survive let alone effect change, they will be steamrolled just like poletown was and no one will ever even know not unlike poletown.

dspoka 6y ago

Is sitting in a housing court just allowed? How does one go around doing this?

ars 6y ago
Just go. Almost all courts, with the exception of family court, are open and you can just walk in and sit. If you yourself are going to be involved in a case it's a good idea to sit in a few trials so you get an idea of how things go.
elliekelly 6y ago
Usually, yes! I’m not sure how it works with remote hearings during Covid-19 but I imagine some courts are broadcasting live streams of the proceedings while others are invitation-only. In normal circumstances where courts are open you can just show up and sit in the gallery to observe. Most housing courts have an “eviction day” once a week. If you call the courthouse ahead of time the clerk can tell you what day of the week is eviction day.

ensignavenger 6y ago

I once sued my former landlord. As a result, I had to sit through many housing cases (neither of us was represented by a lawyer, so we were put at the end of the docket... that was unjust, but it was equally unjust to both of us). In the end I won (though it was a long and drawn out process- something that impacts landlords and tenants equally), I felt like the rulings, whichever way they ended up going, were pretty fair based on the facts presented. If anything, the judge was more favorable to tenants. I follow various landlord forums because I feel like one day I may want to start a business related to it. Landlords worry most of all about tenants destroying a building, and having no legal recourse. With eviction courts shutdown, many have had tenants just stop paying rent- often times when the tenants still have their income, some times more income than they had before. The tenants in many cases won't communicate with the landlords about the situation. Obviously, you mileage may vary depending on where you are, and I have had my share of problems with lying, slumlords (like the one I sued)- but that isn't the majority of them. Most are just trying to run a business.