8 ms·

Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply (why rent out a home or build units if the government can force y

Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply (why rent out a home or build units if the government can force you to let people live in it for free for well over a year) and by raising the bar for tenant selection (someone with poor credit or unconventional life history is a far greater risk if it will take months on end to get them out for not paying). I'm not a homeowner or a landlord, so I'm not exactly talking my book here.

omegaworks 5y ago
> Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply Restrictive zoning and bespoke, political hurdles against development do far more to restrict supply. I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Say we make it easier to evict and change nothing else: one family is evicted so another can take the unit. I don't see how that improves anything if the goal is to get both families housed. All it seems to do is enable landlords to play arbitrage and charge the highest possible price.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  Not OP, but literally the next clause in the sentence you quoted articulates how OP thinks barriers to eviction restrict supply
- filoleg 5y ago
  > I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Well, look at what's happening in Vancouver (and a few other places, but Vancouver is just the most obvious example), and it will easily explain your confusion. When it becomes too costly and problematic to deal with renting out your property to someone else, people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty[0]. It got bad enough, Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. 0. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-empty-homes-in-vancouver-hits-record-high-1.4175999 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-em...
  - omegaworks 5y ago
    >people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty Exactly. We are starting to recognize that, as a society, buying a house as an investment and letting it sit empty is anti-social, violent behavior that should be shunned, discouraged and punished to the fullest extent.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    With out of control immigration quotas and extremely lax policies on immigration and money transfer, it's no surprise Vancouver ended up as it is. [0] Strangely enough, the locals are voting for the same parties that enabled the situation in the first place. > Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. So you end up with a "tenant" that's a family member but not living there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
- analyte123 5y ago
  I'm mostly thinking about construction or the introduction of vacant homes to the rental market. Maybe "new supply" makes more sense here. Obviously if you had a choice between two jurisdictions to build apartments, all other things being equal you would choose the one that will let you start eviction proceedings after six weeks of non-payment instead of six months. I agree it's not the biggest factor, but there is probably also some interaction between zoning restrictions and tenant-friendly laws: tenant-friendly laws might reduce the political power of multi-family developers by lowering their income and leaving them at the mercy of local courts, making them less able to influence zoning and development hurdles in their favor.
  - lukeschlather 5y ago
    That would matter if it were possible to introduce more new homes to the market. In many if not all large American cities the government restricts new housing construction to the point that practically speaking the rental market could crash 10% and still support a doubling of the amount of new construction.
- volta83 5y ago
  > I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Have you been to the US? From the amount of homeless and people living in tents and cars, AFAICT the expectation from this society is that people that can't afford rent for whatever reason should just live on the street. The poor do not deserve a roof. --- Kind of sarcasm, but kind of true.
  - omegaworks 5y ago
    >The poor do not deserve a roof. Is exactly the implication of market-based housing. I was hoping that my explanation would help to illustrate how facilitating eviction won't help with rising homelessness. How it alone can actually foster the growth of homelessness. "Supply" created by evicting tenants is only supply for the people that can afford the new price.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      I think it would be more accurate to say it's the implication of artificial barriers to supply, such as restrictive zoning. The government won't build you a home, at least not the kind you'd want to live in.
      - omegaworks 5y ago
        >The government won't build you a home, at least not the kind you'd want to live in. The government needs to get out of the way of people trying to build homes, and it needs to protect the people that are currently housed. Eviction enforcement is orthogonal to these concerns.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Many poor have the option (depending on location and availability) to live in homeless shleters. Even when given the option many choose to not live there. My understanding is the shelters often require no drugs or alchol and that is a deal breaker for some homeless people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I have family members that ARE landlords, and your description is totally correct: 1. Family members aren't "rich" by conventional standards, they worked for the government in mid-level jobs their whole lives and are retired. 2. They bought a house they planned to retire to, but then moved when they had issues with it. They planned to sell the house but due to timing issues (construction in the neighborhood) they wanted to wait, so temporarily rented it out. 3. They had bad timing: rented in early 2020, the renter paid 1 month of rent, and never after that. And I looked this guy up, he is a total freeloader, part of the blame is on my family for not better vetting him. 4. But the takeaway for small landlords is the government can basically appropriate your property whenever they want. So we're just left with giant landlords who can manage this risk, and which again leads to less available affordable housing and a further concentration of wealth.
- lettergram 5y ago
  They aren’t supposed to be able to appropriate your property. We literally have an amendment against that 3rd, 4th and 9th amendments The Supreme Court refused to weigh in because “it was soon to expire”
  - mrfusion 5y ago
    10th amendment too?
  - vmception 5y ago
    5th amendment bars expropriation except without compensation I never considered the 3rd amendment to be a protection against that but I can see how soldiers randomly living in your home could be seen as government appropriation
  - aksss 5y ago
    "[Recent 6th circuit decision against moratorium] deepens the circuit split with the badly flawed DC Circuit decision in favor of the moratorium, and thereby increases the likelihood that the issue will eventually reach the Supreme Court, if the moratorium is extended beyond its current July 31 expiration date. He is also right that the Supreme Court recently signaled that at least five of nine justices believe the moratorium is illegal, even as a narrow 5-4 majority also—for now—refused to block enforcement of the moratorium." https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/23/thoughts-on-the-sixth-circuit-ruling-against-the-cdc-eviction-moratorium/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/23/thoughts-on-the-sixth-c...
johncessna 5y ago
Making it harder to evict drives up incidents of bias. The equation is simple. If they pay, they stay. If they don't and I can get them out in 2 weeks and flip the unit, then whatever. Their security covers the month and it's in with the next tenant. When it's harder to evict people start making judgement calls based on their perceptions. Some of those will be will be good judgment calls, but most won't be based on real data and good tenants will get passed up for bad reasons.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
Yeah, that’s the economics 101 answer. The same textbook will mention, in a footnote, that solving their system of equations will show that, at equilibrium, no company makes a profit. To be slightly more specific in my criticism, there are plenty of economies with far more protections for tenants, even non-paying ones, and they tend to have similar or lower rates of homelessness. The effect on tenant selection would also not manifest in the current situation, where it’s a measure used once for a rather rare situation. And even if landlords were to try to avoid such risks, it isn’t clear how that would differ from the status quo? Presumably, they have always chosen the more financially secure tenant when given a choice.
Izikiel43 5y ago
This literally happened in Argentina with the new renting law. # of properties for sale went way up, # of properties for rent is way down, and to get approved for a rent you more or less have to agree to give out your first born son.
anonAndOn 5y ago
Oddly, AirBnb may be a winner in this. In many jurisdictions, short-term rentals (<30 days) do not afford the same tenant protections as long-term. I know a few small landlords who are switching their rentals to short-term so that they don't get screwed over again. Long-term rentals in desirable markets are likely to get even more expensive as supply is further reduced.
foota 5y ago
This is true, but the priority in this case was keeping people housed during an unprecedented national health crisis.
- cudgy 5y ago
  Then find them or build them housing, or distribute compensation to landlords temporarily. The government tried to distribute money but the poor implementation of that effort killed it before it started. Laying the burden on landlords for more than a few weeks is unconscionable and inequitable. I wonder how many small landlords sold or lost previously profitable properties due to their cash flow being decimated. The long term rental market is damaged; landlords will now be hesitant to rent long term without significant protection like larger deposit requirements or even rent for less time to avoid being susceptible to some of these government actions.
  - foota 5y ago
    Will they? I've hardly noticed any changes in my rental market, now that things are normalizing. I agree, government transferring the wealth indirectly would be better, but it's politically infeasible. Barring that, I'd rather help renters and hurt landlords than the other way around, since the latter are generally more stable. Also, I don't think the effort to distribute money was really a failure, I think some states squandered it because they didn't want to give handouts, but it was likely one of the largest disburtions of direct aid in the history of the United States and coupled with other programs avoided an economic disaster that would have dwarfed 2008.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    > Then find them They did. The houses they were in. > or build them housing, This takes time and wouldn’t be done in time for the pandemic > or distribute compensation to landlords temporarily. Millions of people lost income during the pandemic. Including the tenants were talking about who are at risk of eviction. Why should landlord income be any more sacred than any other income?

omegaworks 5y ago

> Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply Restrictive zoning and bespoke, political hurdles against development do far more to restrict supply. I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Say we make it easier to evict and change nothing else: one family is evicted so another can take the unit. I don't see how that improves anything if the goal is to get both families housed. All it seems to do is enable landlords to play arbitrage and charge the highest possible price.

kristjansson 5y ago
Not OP, but literally the next clause in the sentence you quoted articulates how OP thinks barriers to eviction restrict supply
filoleg 5y ago
> I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Well, look at what's happening in Vancouver (and a few other places, but Vancouver is just the most obvious example), and it will easily explain your confusion. When it becomes too costly and problematic to deal with renting out your property to someone else, people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty[0]. It got bad enough, Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. 0. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-empty-homes-in-vancouver-hits-record-high-1.4175999 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-em...
- omegaworks 5y ago
  >people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty Exactly. We are starting to recognize that, as a society, buying a house as an investment and letting it sit empty is anti-social, violent behavior that should be shunned, discouraged and punished to the fullest extent.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  With out of control immigration quotas and extremely lax policies on immigration and money transfer, it's no surprise Vancouver ended up as it is. [0] Strangely enough, the locals are voting for the same parties that enabled the situation in the first place. > Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. So you end up with a "tenant" that's a family member but not living there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
analyte123 5y ago
I'm mostly thinking about construction or the introduction of vacant homes to the rental market. Maybe "new supply" makes more sense here. Obviously if you had a choice between two jurisdictions to build apartments, all other things being equal you would choose the one that will let you start eviction proceedings after six weeks of non-payment instead of six months. I agree it's not the biggest factor, but there is probably also some interaction between zoning restrictions and tenant-friendly laws: tenant-friendly laws might reduce the political power of multi-family developers by lowering their income and leaving them at the mercy of local courts, making them less able to influence zoning and development hurdles in their favor.
- lukeschlather 5y ago
  That would matter if it were possible to introduce more new homes to the market. In many if not all large American cities the government restricts new housing construction to the point that practically speaking the rental market could crash 10% and still support a doubling of the amount of new construction.
volta83 5y ago
> I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Have you been to the US? From the amount of homeless and people living in tents and cars, AFAICT the expectation from this society is that people that can't afford rent for whatever reason should just live on the street. The poor do not deserve a roof. --- Kind of sarcasm, but kind of true.
- omegaworks 5y ago
  >The poor do not deserve a roof. Is exactly the implication of market-based housing. I was hoping that my explanation would help to illustrate how facilitating eviction won't help with rising homelessness. How it alone can actually foster the growth of homelessness. "Supply" created by evicting tenants is only supply for the people that can afford the new price.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    I think it would be more accurate to say it's the implication of artificial barriers to supply, such as restrictive zoning. The government won't build you a home, at least not the kind you'd want to live in.
    - omegaworks 5y ago
      >The government won't build you a home, at least not the kind you'd want to live in. The government needs to get out of the way of people trying to build homes, and it needs to protect the people that are currently housed. Eviction enforcement is orthogonal to these concerns.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Many poor have the option (depending on location and availability) to live in homeless shleters. Even when given the option many choose to not live there. My understanding is the shelters often require no drugs or alchol and that is a deal breaker for some homeless people.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

I have family members that ARE landlords, and your description is totally correct: 1. Family members aren't "rich" by conventional standards, they worked for the government in mid-level jobs their whole lives and are retired. 2. They bought a house they planned to retire to, but then moved when they had issues with it. They planned to sell the house but due to timing issues (construction in the neighborhood) they wanted to wait, so temporarily rented it out. 3. They had bad timing: rented in early 2020, the renter paid 1 month of rent, and never after that. And I looked this guy up, he is a total freeloader, part of the blame is on my family for not better vetting him. 4. But the takeaway for small landlords is the government can basically appropriate your property whenever they want. So we're just left with giant landlords who can manage this risk, and which again leads to less available affordable housing and a further concentration of wealth.

lettergram 5y ago
They aren’t supposed to be able to appropriate your property. We literally have an amendment against that 3rd, 4th and 9th amendments The Supreme Court refused to weigh in because “it was soon to expire”
- mrfusion 5y ago
  10th amendment too?
- vmception 5y ago
  5th amendment bars expropriation except without compensation I never considered the 3rd amendment to be a protection against that but I can see how soldiers randomly living in your home could be seen as government appropriation
- aksss 5y ago
  "[Recent 6th circuit decision against moratorium] deepens the circuit split with the badly flawed DC Circuit decision in favor of the moratorium, and thereby increases the likelihood that the issue will eventually reach the Supreme Court, if the moratorium is extended beyond its current July 31 expiration date. He is also right that the Supreme Court recently signaled that at least five of nine justices believe the moratorium is illegal, even as a narrow 5-4 majority also—for now—refused to block enforcement of the moratorium." https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/23/thoughts-on-the-sixth-circuit-ruling-against-the-cdc-eviction-moratorium/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/23/thoughts-on-the-sixth-c...

johncessna 5y ago

Making it harder to evict drives up incidents of bias. The equation is simple. If they pay, they stay. If they don't and I can get them out in 2 weeks and flip the unit, then whatever. Their security covers the month and it's in with the next tenant. When it's harder to evict people start making judgement calls based on their perceptions. Some of those will be will be good judgment calls, but most won't be based on real data and good tenants will get passed up for bad reasons.

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

Yeah, that’s the economics 101 answer. The same textbook will mention, in a footnote, that solving their system of equations will show that, at equilibrium, no company makes a profit. To be slightly more specific in my criticism, there are plenty of economies with far more protections for tenants, even non-paying ones, and they tend to have similar or lower rates of homelessness. The effect on tenant selection would also not manifest in the current situation, where it’s a measure used once for a rather rare situation. And even if landlords were to try to avoid such risks, it isn’t clear how that would differ from the status quo? Presumably, they have always chosen the more financially secure tenant when given a choice.

Izikiel43 5y ago

This literally happened in Argentina with the new renting law. # of properties for sale went way up, # of properties for rent is way down, and to get approved for a rent you more or less have to agree to give out your first born son.

anonAndOn 5y ago

Oddly, AirBnb may be a winner in this. In many jurisdictions, short-term rentals (<30 days) do not afford the same tenant protections as long-term. I know a few small landlords who are switching their rentals to short-term so that they don't get screwed over again. Long-term rentals in desirable markets are likely to get even more expensive as supply is further reduced.

foota 5y ago

This is true, but the priority in this case was keeping people housed during an unprecedented national health crisis.

cudgy 5y ago
Then find them or build them housing, or distribute compensation to landlords temporarily. The government tried to distribute money but the poor implementation of that effort killed it before it started. Laying the burden on landlords for more than a few weeks is unconscionable and inequitable. I wonder how many small landlords sold or lost previously profitable properties due to their cash flow being decimated. The long term rental market is damaged; landlords will now be hesitant to rent long term without significant protection like larger deposit requirements or even rent for less time to avoid being susceptible to some of these government actions.
- foota 5y ago
  Will they? I've hardly noticed any changes in my rental market, now that things are normalizing. I agree, government transferring the wealth indirectly would be better, but it's politically infeasible. Barring that, I'd rather help renters and hurt landlords than the other way around, since the latter are generally more stable. Also, I don't think the effort to distribute money was really a failure, I think some states squandered it because they didn't want to give handouts, but it was likely one of the largest disburtions of direct aid in the history of the United States and coupled with other programs avoided an economic disaster that would have dwarfed 2008.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  > Then find them They did. The houses they were in. > or build them housing, This takes time and wouldn’t be done in time for the pandemic > or distribute compensation to landlords temporarily. Millions of people lost income during the pandemic. Including the tenants were talking about who are at risk of eviction. Why should landlord income be any more sacred than any other income?