4 ms·

> Landlords don't evict people because they want their properties to be empty. Evicting a tenant and taking in a different one has no effect on the number of p

> Landlords don't evict people because they want their properties to be empty. Evicting a tenant and taking in a different one has no effect on the number of people with housing. I'm not sure where I made the impression that landlords want empty properties. They're evicting so that they can bring in paying tenants, but those tenants are often housed elsewhere anyway, not coming out of unhoused or underhoused groups. So the point stands: people who lost their means of paying are being evicted into the abyss in order to make room for people who never had a housing challenge.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
People getting evicted from a two bedroom apartment aren't going to a homeless shelter, they're going to a studio apartment that costs half as much. People getting evicted from a studio apartment aren't getting replaced by Jeff Bezos, they're getting replaced by someone else who can only afford a studio apartment and might have otherwise been homeless. Increasing the number of units on the market will tend to reduce rents and allow more people to afford housing.
- eganist 5y ago
  > People getting evicted from a two bedroom apartment aren't going to a homeless shelter, they're going to a studio apartment that costs half as much. Why are we certain that a family getting evicted from a 2 bedroom apartment can afford a studio? They're getting evicted, presumably for nonpayment e.g arising from joblessness, which would suggest they're likewise also unable to pay for a studio. > People getting evicted from a studio apartment aren't getting replaced by Jeff Bezos, they're getting replaced by someone else who can only afford a studio apartment and might have otherwise been homeless. And where are the people getting evicted from a studio going? > Increasing the number of units on the market will tend to reduce rents and allow more people to afford housing. City/NIMBY bottlenecks are preventing this from happening, and though I agree with the premise, joblessness won't help when it comes to people looking for housing that needs payment.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > Why are we certain that a family getting evicted from a 2 bedroom apartment can afford a studio? Because we're talking about averages. Two income couple loses one income, can now only afford a smaller place. You can find someone who went from a two bedroom apartment to homeless because they lost all their income, but you can also find someone who went from a studio to a two bedroom because it came onto the market, and then the studio went to someone who had been homeless. > And where are the people getting evicted from a studio going? The same place the people moving into the studio came from. > City/NIMBY bottlenecks are preventing this from happening City/NIMBY bottlenecks stand in the way of building new housing, and should be removed. But the point is that putting the existing units back on the market will tend to reduce rents, so that existing people who need new housing don't have to be in a bidding war over a smaller number of available units. Consider which is more fair: Six low income people, enough housing for five and those five each pay $800 in rent; or four of them have to pay $1000 because the one who would have been homeless is living rent-free where the one who could afford $800 but not $1000 would have been, making that person homeless. The only real solution is still to build housing for the sixth person.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  You might be surprised the limited extent to which this is true. In many places in the US starting residence requires 3x rent (first, last, deposit) and vacancy rates are low. Getting the deposit back from the previous landlord routinely takes months and while legal assistance can usually expedite this it's hard to find (the public law clinic and the law school clinic are running on waitlists), so deposit return doesn't help like you might think. Public assistance in this area is quite limited and may adversely impact the ability to find housing on its own. And the impact of vacancy rates can't be underestimated... in this city it's currently hard to find anything on the low end with a move-in date within weeks, which often requires a very costly bridge stay in a hotel. As a volunteer I work with a lot of people who have lost housing due to non-financial circumstances (typically fire) and are unable to afford to obtain housing at the same rent due to the up-front expenses involved. The Catholic Charities or city housing authority are sometimes able to front them last and deposit, but both have a limited budget so it runs on a lottery with a low % chance and landlords often find out the source of these funds and then refuse housing (discrimination based on source of funds is illegal in some states but not this one). Charities can cover hotel stay for usually 4-5 days but not much past that point which is not sufficient to cover the gap until a vacancy much of the time. Our case workers routinely watch people go from losing housing due to circumstances beyond their control to homelessness over the course of 2-3 months as they exhaust both assistance and their own funds covering a hotel while trying to find anything they can move into. When it comes to move-ins, it's certainly not going to be Jeff Bezos but rent is going up significantly right now and so the landlord almost certainly will replace the tenant with someone who is paying more - often significantly more, I've seen 20% jumps from tenant to tenant. Much like switching jobs in the software industry greatly accelerates your pay raises, switching tenants greatly accelerates the rent raises for landlords in tight markets. Most of the US is a tight market right now.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > I've seen 20% jumps from tenant to tenant. It's the eviction moratorium making this worse. You have someone who was paying $1600 in rent, now they can only afford $800 and stop paying but can't be evicted. So they're still effectively bidding $1600 for that unit and the two people who both want the vacant unit next door have to outbid each other instead of one taking the vacancy and the other taking the eviction. So the price of those units rises to $2000. Now the person who can only afford $800 is effectively bidding $2000 for that unit and still can't be evicted. Prices for everyone go up to subsidize the person who isn't paying at all. Which makes the first+last+security problem worse by making it a larger amount of money.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

People getting evicted from a two bedroom apartment aren't going to a homeless shelter, they're going to a studio apartment that costs half as much. People getting evicted from a studio apartment aren't getting replaced by Jeff Bezos, they're getting replaced by someone else who can only afford a studio apartment and might have otherwise been homeless. Increasing the number of units on the market will tend to reduce rents and allow more people to afford housing.

eganist 5y ago
> People getting evicted from a two bedroom apartment aren't going to a homeless shelter, they're going to a studio apartment that costs half as much. Why are we certain that a family getting evicted from a 2 bedroom apartment can afford a studio? They're getting evicted, presumably for nonpayment e.g arising from joblessness, which would suggest they're likewise also unable to pay for a studio. > People getting evicted from a studio apartment aren't getting replaced by Jeff Bezos, they're getting replaced by someone else who can only afford a studio apartment and might have otherwise been homeless. And where are the people getting evicted from a studio going? > Increasing the number of units on the market will tend to reduce rents and allow more people to afford housing. City/NIMBY bottlenecks are preventing this from happening, and though I agree with the premise, joblessness won't help when it comes to people looking for housing that needs payment.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Why are we certain that a family getting evicted from a 2 bedroom apartment can afford a studio? Because we're talking about averages. Two income couple loses one income, can now only afford a smaller place. You can find someone who went from a two bedroom apartment to homeless because they lost all their income, but you can also find someone who went from a studio to a two bedroom because it came onto the market, and then the studio went to someone who had been homeless. > And where are the people getting evicted from a studio going? The same place the people moving into the studio came from. > City/NIMBY bottlenecks are preventing this from happening City/NIMBY bottlenecks stand in the way of building new housing, and should be removed. But the point is that putting the existing units back on the market will tend to reduce rents, so that existing people who need new housing don't have to be in a bidding war over a smaller number of available units. Consider which is more fair: Six low income people, enough housing for five and those five each pay $800 in rent; or four of them have to pay $1000 because the one who would have been homeless is living rent-free where the one who could afford $800 but not $1000 would have been, making that person homeless. The only real solution is still to build housing for the sixth person.
jcrawfordor 5y ago
You might be surprised the limited extent to which this is true. In many places in the US starting residence requires 3x rent (first, last, deposit) and vacancy rates are low. Getting the deposit back from the previous landlord routinely takes months and while legal assistance can usually expedite this it's hard to find (the public law clinic and the law school clinic are running on waitlists), so deposit return doesn't help like you might think. Public assistance in this area is quite limited and may adversely impact the ability to find housing on its own. And the impact of vacancy rates can't be underestimated... in this city it's currently hard to find anything on the low end with a move-in date within weeks, which often requires a very costly bridge stay in a hotel. As a volunteer I work with a lot of people who have lost housing due to non-financial circumstances (typically fire) and are unable to afford to obtain housing at the same rent due to the up-front expenses involved. The Catholic Charities or city housing authority are sometimes able to front them last and deposit, but both have a limited budget so it runs on a lottery with a low % chance and landlords often find out the source of these funds and then refuse housing (discrimination based on source of funds is illegal in some states but not this one). Charities can cover hotel stay for usually 4-5 days but not much past that point which is not sufficient to cover the gap until a vacancy much of the time. Our case workers routinely watch people go from losing housing due to circumstances beyond their control to homelessness over the course of 2-3 months as they exhaust both assistance and their own funds covering a hotel while trying to find anything they can move into. When it comes to move-ins, it's certainly not going to be Jeff Bezos but rent is going up significantly right now and so the landlord almost certainly will replace the tenant with someone who is paying more - often significantly more, I've seen 20% jumps from tenant to tenant. Much like switching jobs in the software industry greatly accelerates your pay raises, switching tenants greatly accelerates the rent raises for landlords in tight markets. Most of the US is a tight market right now.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > I've seen 20% jumps from tenant to tenant. It's the eviction moratorium making this worse. You have someone who was paying $1600 in rent, now they can only afford $800 and stop paying but can't be evicted. So they're still effectively bidding $1600 for that unit and the two people who both want the vacant unit next door have to outbid each other instead of one taking the vacancy and the other taking the eviction. So the price of those units rises to $2000. Now the person who can only afford $800 is effectively bidding $2000 for that unit and still can't be evicted. Prices for everyone go up to subsidize the person who isn't paying at all. Which makes the first+last+security problem worse by making it a larger amount of money.