5 ms·

You mean that landlords face some level of restriction in simply tossing people onto the street. The people on the other side of the transaction are at risk for

You mean that landlords face some level of restriction in simply tossing people onto the street. The people on the other side of the transaction are at risk for their life while the landlord is at risk for their aspirations to the upper class. I'd also point out that "investments" in a "free market" aren't supposed to be risk-free. If the landlord can't hack it, whelp that's their problem as a speculative investor.

AYBABTME 5y ago
The problem is that the increased risk profile is indeed taken into account by landlords... it makes them retreat higher up market, depleting affordable housing supplies.
- kritiko 5y ago
  I don't think landlords are saying "I can't risk evicting a poor tenant, I'll make my unit unaffordable" - it's a market. If the neighborhood is gentrifying, rent to gentrifiers. If the best you can do is Section 8, take section 8.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    The ones who are doing that are talking from experience. E.g. they had to evict a poor tenant and now they are overreacting for an understandable reason.
  - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
    Its a race to the bottom (section 8 is guaranteed money) or top (high income homes tend to be more stable). No one wants a medium income rental due to that. And I'm thinking about being a landlord - as I'm moving - and evicting a tenant that refuses to pay for 6 months while I still need to maintain the property and pay mortgage is prohibitive. The risk there is scary high for what shouldn't be risky.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Depending where you live, if you attend some landlord association meetings, or read any popular literature about real estate investing, you'll see that this is basically what happens. The common advice is to try to bring your units higher up in the market as much as possible, to minimize risk because folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying. Books go on for hours about how you should keep your unit vacant instead of renting to a risky tenant. I'm not making this up and these are not my rules or opinions. It's just the logical conclusions these people come up with, given the environment they're faced with.
    - kritiko 5y ago
      I don't think that you're making this up. I think that the advice would still be to leave units vacant and bring them up market even in the presence of extremely landlord-friendly eviction policy... this dynamic will always be true: "folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying"
      - AYBABTME 5y ago
        I think government incentive should focus on changing this, as I attempt to describe in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=AYBABTME#29087565 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=AYBABTME#29087565 Basically, this is somewhere I think govt. _constructive/supportive_ intervention is needed, because today's punitive policies creates economics that don't allow a humane end result.
        6510 5y ago
        Government just needs to crank out large volume affordable housing. With modern tools and methods (+R&D), enough scale and a long term plan for maintenance this is entirely doable. The goal shouldn't be to house everyone but to create a surplus. (Lots of empty homes) Popular locations with insufficient space will continue to get more expensive, as it should be.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  This is why I advocate removing the market and doing a substantial fraction of housing as public housing. Other countries like Sweden (iirc) do this.
  - hash872 5y ago
    The total value of all US real estate is $50 trillion. There's not a lot of situations in life where you can say, even the United States government doesn't have enough money to make a dent here- but....
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      That's only if they buy it. In the civil war, we took the slaves and land of the confederacy without making the owners whole. Landlords may not be slaveholders, but they are parasites and exploiters, even Adam Smith said so of the big landlords (in fact he was against the modern incarnation of our economy which is highly concentrated way beyond imagining in his time). Rentiers make money by simple ownership and exclusion, not by their labor. It is not socially beneficial. The word "lord" is part of their name and most Americans, at least the common people in 1776, understood the American project as the destruction of the nobility and aristocratic privileges. While the formal titles are gone, the plots of land that were the source of the nobility's power remain. https://www.quora.com/Was-Adam-Smith-against-landlords?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Was-Adam-Smith-against-landlords?share...
      - hash872 5y ago
        Can I ask how old you are?
        splitstud 5y ago
        Seeing as how he has demonstrated the ability to read, it's obvious he's old enough to know better.
        tehjoker 5y ago
        When I was in my teens, I was a conservative. As I get older, I become more leftist as I read more history books. Entire countries have been formed on the basis of similar ideas. It's childish to think they can be dismissed flippantly.
themgt 5y ago
This one is personal because it happened to me. Abusive tenant refusing to pay rent and stealing from me, in a house I myself was living in and renting as the sole lessee and subletting (which was allowed). So, I was already broke from thousands in unpaid rent, then got notice that she was fighting the eviction and would be represented in court by a pro bono lawfirm. So I had to scrounge my last $ and remember not to fill up my gas tank all the way, to hire the town's cheapest attorney to go in and settle, letting her stay an extra month free of charge to agree to leave. Finally she illegally overstayed that and only left the day before the cops were to show up and forcibly remove her. This is all while she's living on gov't cheese and blowing her money on booze and festivals. In all I was out many thousands of dollars I didn't have and basically couldn't sleep in my own rented room for over a month, and got fought in court by fancy lawyers paid with tax-deducted charity money. I spent a while seriously considering, and my only other option would have been, to end my own lease and leave and let my landlord deal with trying to remove her. So no, I was actually at risk for becoming homeless due to this situation as the "landlord", and I get fairly angry when its described in this blithe way as if the person fighting the eviction is always the poor little guy and the "landlord" is always BlackRock having to eat a 0.001% hit to their profit margins.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  If you're leasing the property, you're not a member of the propertied classes. You are yourself a renter fighting with other renters to scrap together some measure of survival. Your landlord is the one that was threatening you with eviction.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Ekaros 5y ago
If you don't pay your rent for let's say 1 month the landlord should have all the rights to remove you from property with minimal process and claim all those cost with reasonable penalty interest rates. And these should not be dischargeable in bankruptcy. It is only fair way for system to work.

AYBABTME 5y ago

The problem is that the increased risk profile is indeed taken into account by landlords... it makes them retreat higher up market, depleting affordable housing supplies.

kritiko 5y ago
I don't think landlords are saying "I can't risk evicting a poor tenant, I'll make my unit unaffordable" - it's a market. If the neighborhood is gentrifying, rent to gentrifiers. If the best you can do is Section 8, take section 8.
- imtringued 5y ago
  The ones who are doing that are talking from experience. E.g. they had to evict a poor tenant and now they are overreacting for an understandable reason.
- ThunderSizzle 5y ago
  Its a race to the bottom (section 8 is guaranteed money) or top (high income homes tend to be more stable). No one wants a medium income rental due to that. And I'm thinking about being a landlord - as I'm moving - and evicting a tenant that refuses to pay for 6 months while I still need to maintain the property and pay mortgage is prohibitive. The risk there is scary high for what shouldn't be risky.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  Depending where you live, if you attend some landlord association meetings, or read any popular literature about real estate investing, you'll see that this is basically what happens. The common advice is to try to bring your units higher up in the market as much as possible, to minimize risk because folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying. Books go on for hours about how you should keep your unit vacant instead of renting to a risky tenant. I'm not making this up and these are not my rules or opinions. It's just the logical conclusions these people come up with, given the environment they're faced with.
  - kritiko 5y ago
    I don't think that you're making this up. I think that the advice would still be to leave units vacant and bring them up market even in the presence of extremely landlord-friendly eviction policy... this dynamic will always be true: "folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying"
    - AYBABTME 5y ago
      I think government incentive should focus on changing this, as I attempt to describe in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=AYBABTME#29087565 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=AYBABTME#29087565 Basically, this is somewhere I think govt. _constructive/supportive_ intervention is needed, because today's punitive policies creates economics that don't allow a humane end result.
      - 6510 5y ago
        Government just needs to crank out large volume affordable housing. With modern tools and methods (+R&D), enough scale and a long term plan for maintenance this is entirely doable. The goal shouldn't be to house everyone but to create a surplus. (Lots of empty homes) Popular locations with insufficient space will continue to get more expensive, as it should be.
tehjoker 5y ago
This is why I advocate removing the market and doing a substantial fraction of housing as public housing. Other countries like Sweden (iirc) do this.
- hash872 5y ago
  The total value of all US real estate is $50 trillion. There's not a lot of situations in life where you can say, even the United States government doesn't have enough money to make a dent here- but....
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    That's only if they buy it. In the civil war, we took the slaves and land of the confederacy without making the owners whole. Landlords may not be slaveholders, but they are parasites and exploiters, even Adam Smith said so of the big landlords (in fact he was against the modern incarnation of our economy which is highly concentrated way beyond imagining in his time). Rentiers make money by simple ownership and exclusion, not by their labor. It is not socially beneficial. The word "lord" is part of their name and most Americans, at least the common people in 1776, understood the American project as the destruction of the nobility and aristocratic privileges. While the formal titles are gone, the plots of land that were the source of the nobility's power remain. https://www.quora.com/Was-Adam-Smith-against-landlords?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Was-Adam-Smith-against-landlords?share...
    - hash872 5y ago
      Can I ask how old you are?
      - splitstud 5y ago
        Seeing as how he has demonstrated the ability to read, it's obvious he's old enough to know better.
      - tehjoker 5y ago
        When I was in my teens, I was a conservative. As I get older, I become more leftist as I read more history books. Entire countries have been formed on the basis of similar ideas. It's childish to think they can be dismissed flippantly.

themgt 5y ago

This one is personal because it happened to me. Abusive tenant refusing to pay rent and stealing from me, in a house I myself was living in and renting as the sole lessee and subletting (which was allowed). So, I was already broke from thousands in unpaid rent, then got notice that she was fighting the eviction and would be represented in court by a pro bono lawfirm. So I had to scrounge my last $ and remember not to fill up my gas tank all the way, to hire the town's cheapest attorney to go in and settle, letting her stay an extra month free of charge to agree to leave. Finally she illegally overstayed that and only left the day before the cops were to show up and forcibly remove her. This is all while she's living on gov't cheese and blowing her money on booze and festivals. In all I was out many thousands of dollars I didn't have and basically couldn't sleep in my own rented room for over a month, and got fought in court by fancy lawyers paid with tax-deducted charity money. I spent a while seriously considering, and my only other option would have been, to end my own lease and leave and let my landlord deal with trying to remove her. So no, I was actually at risk for becoming homeless due to this situation as the "landlord", and I get fairly angry when its described in this blithe way as if the person fighting the eviction is always the poor little guy and the "landlord" is always BlackRock having to eat a 0.001% hit to their profit margins.

tehjoker 5y ago
If you're leasing the property, you're not a member of the propertied classes. You are yourself a renter fighting with other renters to scrap together some measure of survival. Your landlord is the one that was threatening you with eviction.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Ekaros 5y ago

If you don't pay your rent for let's say 1 month the landlord should have all the rights to remove you from property with minimal process and claim all those cost with reasonable penalty interest rates. And these should not be dischargeable in bankruptcy. It is only fair way for system to work.