8 ms·

It sounds like one of those situations where workers' rights backfire by making it so onerous to hire and fire them that it's safer not too, just in case you en

It sounds like one of those situations where workers' rights backfire by making it so onerous to hire and fire them that it's safer not too, just in case you end up with a dud, or a role evaporates. It's a tricky balance and I don't claim to know where the sweet spot is in terms of worker's vs. employer's rights, but we may have overshot. Similarly, I see a problem wrt tenants' rights where it becomes so difficult to evict a tenant that no landlord will take a risk on someone who appears to be even slightly risky. It ends up with hordes of unhoused people at the bottom of the "desirable tenant" spectrum getting bumped onto the street in affluent cities, because no landlord will take a chance on the middle, let alone the bottom. Again, obviously tenants need rights, but it seems like many jurisdictions have overshot the sweet spot. These things are so complex and have so many facets. I'm not confident that excessive tenants' rights are truly a problem, but I it's possible.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> Again, obviously tenants need rights, but it seems like many jurisdictions have overshot the sweet spot Tenants need rights and landlords need tenants. In some cities (SF) the demand outstrips supply sufficiently that you won’t easily find housing but in other cities (NYC) there’s such a diversity in housing options that you’ll always be able to find a closet to rent somewhere. I think it’s hard to say that tenants have too much rights. There’s no reason to enter the business of land letting unless you are comfortable with the regulations. Laws and their purpose come before profits.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I think you missed OP's point... There are plenty of landlords right now happy to rent an apartment to a couple each with 6 figure salaries and no debt. But if they can't find such a couple, they'd rather leave their apartment empty. There are lots of landlords like that, and the end result is there are lots of empty apartments and lots of other people who can't find housing.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > There are lots of landlords like that, and the end result is there are lots of empty apartments and lots of other people who can't find housing. The solution for that are serious vacancy taxes. If people are unwilling to assume the risk of hitting a "dud", they can always sell their property to some large-scale landlord.
  - pydry 4y ago
    That's why those landlords need to be taxed more : so they lose a great deal of money if they don't rent. (if they sell up because they can't stomach the taxes, reducing home prices that is also a positive outcome)
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      Landlords taxed too much for vacant properties would just knock the property down and keep the land. Then later, when they want to recoup their investment, they rebuild. Most properties it isn't the building that is valuable, but the inner city land where one can build a building.
      - pydry 4y ago
        >Landlords taxed too much for vacant properties would just knock the property down and keep the land. Unless that was what was taxed. >Most properties it isn't the building that is valuable, but the inner city land Precisely my point. If you slap taxes on land you increase the available supply.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - ericd 4y ago
    The vacancy rate in the US is not high, at least according to statistics. I don’t know where this “lots of vacant apartments” narrative is coming from.
- refurb 4y ago
  It most definitely backfires in SF. When i gave up my rent controlled apartment my landlady said she was leaving it empty. Why? Because she was retiring soon and in a 4-unit building the value of it goes up by $100,000 - $250,000 for each unit that is empty. Why? Because rent control locks in rent and this future income. Evictions can takes up to a year or more and mandatory payouts are often in the tens of thousands if you do evict without cause (say owner wants to move into a unit). If the unit is empty someone can move in right away or rent for market rent. The units were renting for ~$3,000 per month, so as long as she sold it within 9 years she wad ahead of renting the unit out. I agree that landlords need to go in eyes wide open, but the challenge is rules can change after you get tenants. And the big lesson here is landlords respond to incentives too. If regulations make it cheaper to do something negative, they’ll do it. Most people would.
imtringued 4y ago
That has nothing to do with workers' rights. Firing with notice is how the problem is solved in Germany. When your boss fires you, you don't get chased out of the building, no, your employment contract transforms from indefinite to definite and you just wait until the contract runs out. Gross misbehaviour like theft allows immediate firing. Also new hires have a probatory period (several months) during which firing works exactly the same way it does in the USA e.g. you can fire immediately for any reason. Americans will tell me how onerous this is and yet they somehow managed to screw it up anyway because I constantly read on the internet about "unfireable" employees which is a ridiculous concept. Even hiring quotas for large corporation's and government funded institutions (universities for example) don't matter when making firing decisions, the point is to let people with other backgrounds into the door, not keep them locked in.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Yeah, no.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        You just pretend you did and invent fake arguments in support of it too
      - smcl 4y ago
        There's really no need to shoehorn Nordstream explosions into a discussion about transport infrastructure
- junofan 4y ago
penguinvondoom 4y ago
Quite the opposite. In many ways employers are like tenants - they rent out the position to you and in return cash in a certain part of the value you produce. Just like with landlords in a properly just society you do not need that middleman ... The hordes of unhoused people are there not because of desirable or undesirable tenants, but because of landlords gatekeeping the access to homes.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  I have a rental house next to me. They got raided by SWAT a few years ago for using it as a selling house for fent. I'm ok with some gatekeeping. There are some undesirable tenants.

vineyardmike 4y ago

> Again, obviously tenants need rights, but it seems like many jurisdictions have overshot the sweet spot Tenants need rights and landlords need tenants. In some cities (SF) the demand outstrips supply sufficiently that you won’t easily find housing but in other cities (NYC) there’s such a diversity in housing options that you’ll always be able to find a closet to rent somewhere. I think it’s hard to say that tenants have too much rights. There’s no reason to enter the business of land letting unless you are comfortable with the regulations. Laws and their purpose come before profits.

londons_explore 4y ago
I think you missed OP's point... There are plenty of landlords right now happy to rent an apartment to a couple each with 6 figure salaries and no debt. But if they can't find such a couple, they'd rather leave their apartment empty. There are lots of landlords like that, and the end result is there are lots of empty apartments and lots of other people who can't find housing.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > There are lots of landlords like that, and the end result is there are lots of empty apartments and lots of other people who can't find housing. The solution for that are serious vacancy taxes. If people are unwilling to assume the risk of hitting a "dud", they can always sell their property to some large-scale landlord.
- pydry 4y ago
  That's why those landlords need to be taxed more : so they lose a great deal of money if they don't rent. (if they sell up because they can't stomach the taxes, reducing home prices that is also a positive outcome)
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Landlords taxed too much for vacant properties would just knock the property down and keep the land. Then later, when they want to recoup their investment, they rebuild. Most properties it isn't the building that is valuable, but the inner city land where one can build a building.
    - pydry 4y ago
      >Landlords taxed too much for vacant properties would just knock the property down and keep the land. Unless that was what was taxed. >Most properties it isn't the building that is valuable, but the inner city land Precisely my point. If you slap taxes on land you increase the available supply.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- ericd 4y ago
  The vacancy rate in the US is not high, at least according to statistics. I don’t know where this “lots of vacant apartments” narrative is coming from.
refurb 4y ago
It most definitely backfires in SF. When i gave up my rent controlled apartment my landlady said she was leaving it empty. Why? Because she was retiring soon and in a 4-unit building the value of it goes up by $100,000 - $250,000 for each unit that is empty. Why? Because rent control locks in rent and this future income. Evictions can takes up to a year or more and mandatory payouts are often in the tens of thousands if you do evict without cause (say owner wants to move into a unit). If the unit is empty someone can move in right away or rent for market rent. The units were renting for ~$3,000 per month, so as long as she sold it within 9 years she wad ahead of renting the unit out. I agree that landlords need to go in eyes wide open, but the challenge is rules can change after you get tenants. And the big lesson here is landlords respond to incentives too. If regulations make it cheaper to do something negative, they’ll do it. Most people would.

imtringued 4y ago

That has nothing to do with workers' rights. Firing with notice is how the problem is solved in Germany. When your boss fires you, you don't get chased out of the building, no, your employment contract transforms from indefinite to definite and you just wait until the contract runs out. Gross misbehaviour like theft allows immediate firing. Also new hires have a probatory period (several months) during which firing works exactly the same way it does in the USA e.g. you can fire immediately for any reason. Americans will tell me how onerous this is and yet they somehow managed to screw it up anyway because I constantly read on the internet about "unfireable" employees which is a ridiculous concept. Even hiring quotas for large corporation's and government funded institutions (universities for example) don't matter when making firing decisions, the point is to let people with other backgrounds into the door, not keep them locked in.

chitowneats 4y ago
[flagged]
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Yeah, no.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      You just pretend you did and invent fake arguments in support of it too
    - smcl 4y ago
      There's really no need to shoehorn Nordstream explosions into a discussion about transport infrastructure
junofan 4y ago

penguinvondoom 4y ago

Quite the opposite. In many ways employers are like tenants - they rent out the position to you and in return cash in a certain part of the value you produce. Just like with landlords in a properly just society you do not need that middleman ... The hordes of unhoused people are there not because of desirable or undesirable tenants, but because of landlords gatekeeping the access to homes.

vorpalhex 4y ago
I have a rental house next to me. They got raided by SWAT a few years ago for using it as a selling house for fent. I'm ok with some gatekeeping. There are some undesirable tenants.