9 ms·

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

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.
        AYBABTME 5y ago
        I like the idea but I think the concept of using technology to build big, low cost volume housing is mistaken. The act of concentrating affordable housing is not desirable and easily forgotten about. It creates ghettos. Watching interviews about homelessness, a lot of homeless folks will talk about how dangerous it is to hang out in places like Skid Row. That it's dangerous to be surrounded by other people with problems. Read about the struggle faced by youngsters in poor neighborhoods, about how their surrounding were a huge strain on their ability to develop and escape. The environment in which you are located, when you're facing economic struggle, really dictates your odds of recovering. I grew up poor in a single-mom family, and lived in lower income neighbourhood and know first hand how their influence is bad for kids. My mom did all she could to pull us out of there, so we wouldn't be influenced too much by the neighbourhood. Still, had plenty of time to see sad things and be originally influenced in suboptimal ways. I think we should build more single unit affordable housing! And shove it all over the place, in affluent neighbourhoods! Help people leave their problems behind. This thread is getting deep for HN and it's hard to respond, but I had shoved my random thoughts on this in https://twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/1454896147001077761 https://twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/145489614700107776...
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.

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.
      - AYBABTME 5y ago
        I like the idea but I think the concept of using technology to build big, low cost volume housing is mistaken. The act of concentrating affordable housing is not desirable and easily forgotten about. It creates ghettos. Watching interviews about homelessness, a lot of homeless folks will talk about how dangerous it is to hang out in places like Skid Row. That it's dangerous to be surrounded by other people with problems. Read about the struggle faced by youngsters in poor neighborhoods, about how their surrounding were a huge strain on their ability to develop and escape. The environment in which you are located, when you're facing economic struggle, really dictates your odds of recovering. I grew up poor in a single-mom family, and lived in lower income neighbourhood and know first hand how their influence is bad for kids. My mom did all she could to pull us out of there, so we wouldn't be influenced too much by the neighbourhood. Still, had plenty of time to see sad things and be originally influenced in suboptimal ways. I think we should build more single unit affordable housing! And shove it all over the place, in affluent neighbourhoods! Help people leave their problems behind. This thread is getting deep for HN and it's hard to respond, but I had shoved my random thoughts on this in https://twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/1454896147001077761 https://twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/145489614700107776...

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.