5 ms·

Rental law is not so hard that an intelligent landlord can't learn the basics and be in a good situation. Oppositely, a small grifter doesn't need a lawyer to w

Rental law is not so hard that an intelligent landlord can't learn the basics and be in a good situation. Oppositely, a small grifter doesn't need a lawyer to walk over an dumb landlord. Since the grifter has done their thing for a while, the know the ropes and the law (where assigned council is just public defender who's job about it about ordinary defense and not outrageous claims). I'm not terribly sympathetic to landlord in this situation. As far as I can tell, it's the greedy, lazy landlords that get taken by these people - if you follow the letter of the law, keep your premises in good shape and document everything, it's pretty hard to be taken. Oppositely, a lot of landlords skirt the law on a regular basis.

AYBABTME 5y ago
I think the main issue is not whether "good" landlords are affected, but the impact it has on the market. If renting to regular people is a huge liability, the smart landlords will prefer keeping units vacant or bring them up high in the market - where tenants have more means - to avoid dealing with the risk. This leads to the people in need with very little supply they can qualify for. It essentially backfires.
- gregallan 5y ago
  If housing becomes prohibitively expensive to people in need just because we hold landlords accountable for abusive actions, maybe we should consider a different way to allocate housing resources.
  - hash872 5y ago
    You are not accounting for bad faith actors who lie about the landlord's actions for their direct own financial gain. Living rent free in a property is saving a tremendous amount of money! Like, as a % of income it's probably more than the average person pays in taxes. The financial incentives to abuse the system are enormous
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    I own an apartment. I bought it. How are you going to "allocate" this "resource"? Just try me.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      One simple way that's already practiced in some places is to tax unoccupied residencies - and, ideally, use that tax to subsidize housing. And then you either live in your apartment yourself, or put it up as a rental under the terms required by the law, or you pay up.
      - rsj_hn 5y ago
        > tax unoccupied residencies OK, sounds promising > ..use that tax to subsidize housing record needle scratch sound. Subziding housing drives up the price, because it increases demand for housing. Have we not learned this lesson? After so many years, this basic economic fact is still tripping people up? Please, stop with the housing subsidies. Why do you want to make housing more expensive?
        int_19h 5y ago
        I didn't meant subsidizing rent. I meant subsidizing housing - as in, using that money to build more of it.
        imtringued 5y ago
        Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply. Rent control prevents additional supply. Also, politicians have to be accountable for the subsidies which means that restrictive zoning will burn a pocket into the local budget. They don't give a damn about losses due to rent control. I.e. they privatize political gains and socialize the economic losses.
        rsj_hn 5y ago
        > "Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply". The idea that the price of housing will not increase if a good is subsidized because the supply isn't "prevented from increasing" is so confused and wrong it literally makes me sad. We have the data of house prices rising as a result of subsidies. Housing is half land and half structure, and in constrained areas, 80% land and 20% structure. Land does not increase. Moreover even if housing was all structure and land was free, the subsidies cause houses to become bigger, as people can afford more structure, leading per house prices to rise. Then you continue with a string of cliches, "privatize gains" etc. And a complaint that other people don't care enough. Well, OK, but what of it? We don't shoot ourselves in the foot because other people don't care. Adopting policies that make the world a worse place just because you are morally outraged is a terrible way of doing public policy.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here. The kind of stuff that hopefully solves the problem at hand while limiting the blast radius of what could go wrong. Throwing away how property ownership works in most of the world would likely cause large scale shocks and I think it's disingenuous to suggest these kind of things in a conversation about municipal policies.
    - joe_the_user 5y ago
      Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here. So we're saying that making it so tenants can't defend themselves against illegal evictions is going to increase the housing supply incrementally?
      - AYBABTME 5y ago
        I didn't say this "make it so tenants can't defend themselves". My argument is that punitive policies against landlord are about the only tool being wielded, and the only tool proposed, along with the only alternative being nuclear options. I think there's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and that many landlords are bad actors in many markets, and that may tenants are bad actors in many other markets. I'm not even sure that landlording makes sense, it's rather feudal. I'm pro realistic rent control. I just think that, short of throwing away the entire system and making a revolution (that would kill millions), we should approach the problem from a carrot and stick perspective, not a stick-only perspective. If you want to make eviction hard for the average tenant, fine. But if you leave it at that, where's the incentive for renting to riskier tenants? There's nothing re-balancing the risk exposure, nothing that makes up for the risk-adjusted expected loss of renting to a risky tenant. If we want these risky tenants to be housed _while_ preventing undue evictions, we need to fix up the incentive structure so that landlords still have something to gain from renting to risky tenants. Otherwise, why would they do it?
        joe_the_user 5y ago
hash872 5y ago
You're advising that a non-attorney can represent themselves against a professional attorney and somehow win. What are the odds that an amateur that's never done a job can defeat a professional who does it full time? The other issue is that you can't 'win' in court against someone with no assets. If they owe you thousands, haven't paid rent for months, severely damaged the apartment.... they don't have any assets to seize. And a judge, especially in a blue state, is not to authorize anything harsh. They can essentially not pay rent or badly damage your place with zero consequences
- HWR_14 5y ago
  His point was that the professional worked in a different specialty and also doesn't care about the work being performed. Take the average web programmer and tell him to program something in Roblox vs. an enthusiastic teen and see who produces what.

AYBABTME 5y ago

I think the main issue is not whether "good" landlords are affected, but the impact it has on the market. If renting to regular people is a huge liability, the smart landlords will prefer keeping units vacant or bring them up high in the market - where tenants have more means - to avoid dealing with the risk. This leads to the people in need with very little supply they can qualify for. It essentially backfires.

gregallan 5y ago
If housing becomes prohibitively expensive to people in need just because we hold landlords accountable for abusive actions, maybe we should consider a different way to allocate housing resources.
- hash872 5y ago
  You are not accounting for bad faith actors who lie about the landlord's actions for their direct own financial gain. Living rent free in a property is saving a tremendous amount of money! Like, as a % of income it's probably more than the average person pays in taxes. The financial incentives to abuse the system are enormous
- thriftwy 5y ago
  I own an apartment. I bought it. How are you going to "allocate" this "resource"? Just try me.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    One simple way that's already practiced in some places is to tax unoccupied residencies - and, ideally, use that tax to subsidize housing. And then you either live in your apartment yourself, or put it up as a rental under the terms required by the law, or you pay up.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      > tax unoccupied residencies OK, sounds promising > ..use that tax to subsidize housing record needle scratch sound. Subziding housing drives up the price, because it increases demand for housing. Have we not learned this lesson? After so many years, this basic economic fact is still tripping people up? Please, stop with the housing subsidies. Why do you want to make housing more expensive?
      - int_19h 5y ago
        I didn't meant subsidizing rent. I meant subsidizing housing - as in, using that money to build more of it.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply. Rent control prevents additional supply. Also, politicians have to be accountable for the subsidies which means that restrictive zoning will burn a pocket into the local budget. They don't give a damn about losses due to rent control. I.e. they privatize political gains and socialize the economic losses.
        rsj_hn 5y ago
        > "Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply". The idea that the price of housing will not increase if a good is subsidized because the supply isn't "prevented from increasing" is so confused and wrong it literally makes me sad. We have the data of house prices rising as a result of subsidies. Housing is half land and half structure, and in constrained areas, 80% land and 20% structure. Land does not increase. Moreover even if housing was all structure and land was free, the subsidies cause houses to become bigger, as people can afford more structure, leading per house prices to rise. Then you continue with a string of cliches, "privatize gains" etc. And a complaint that other people don't care enough. Well, OK, but what of it? We don't shoot ourselves in the foot because other people don't care. Adopting policies that make the world a worse place just because you are morally outraged is a terrible way of doing public policy.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here. The kind of stuff that hopefully solves the problem at hand while limiting the blast radius of what could go wrong. Throwing away how property ownership works in most of the world would likely cause large scale shocks and I think it's disingenuous to suggest these kind of things in a conversation about municipal policies.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here. So we're saying that making it so tenants can't defend themselves against illegal evictions is going to increase the housing supply incrementally?
    - AYBABTME 5y ago
      I didn't say this "make it so tenants can't defend themselves". My argument is that punitive policies against landlord are about the only tool being wielded, and the only tool proposed, along with the only alternative being nuclear options. I think there's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and that many landlords are bad actors in many markets, and that may tenants are bad actors in many other markets. I'm not even sure that landlording makes sense, it's rather feudal. I'm pro realistic rent control. I just think that, short of throwing away the entire system and making a revolution (that would kill millions), we should approach the problem from a carrot and stick perspective, not a stick-only perspective. If you want to make eviction hard for the average tenant, fine. But if you leave it at that, where's the incentive for renting to riskier tenants? There's nothing re-balancing the risk exposure, nothing that makes up for the risk-adjusted expected loss of renting to a risky tenant. If we want these risky tenants to be housed _while_ preventing undue evictions, we need to fix up the incentive structure so that landlords still have something to gain from renting to risky tenants. Otherwise, why would they do it?
      - joe_the_user 5y ago

hash872 5y ago

You're advising that a non-attorney can represent themselves against a professional attorney and somehow win. What are the odds that an amateur that's never done a job can defeat a professional who does it full time? The other issue is that you can't 'win' in court against someone with no assets. If they owe you thousands, haven't paid rent for months, severely damaged the apartment.... they don't have any assets to seize. And a judge, especially in a blue state, is not to authorize anything harsh. They can essentially not pay rent or badly damage your place with zero consequences

HWR_14 5y ago
His point was that the professional worked in a different specialty and also doesn't care about the work being performed. Take the average web programmer and tell him to program something in Roblox vs. an enthusiastic teen and see who produces what.