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"Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slackfan 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- vkou 3y agoUnsurprising, but it did it's job of energizing and outraging the right. Seattle City council was just swept by them, too.
- thrwwy95fab9d1 3y agoThis will absolutely be used as a talking point by landlords to push for laws that make renting even more miserable in this country. It seems that these days the only way to prevent this kind of rage bait is to make it unprofitable to publish a story so misleading. The Seattle times is just another news outlet that has found the most profitable model is printing rage bait, and there seems to be no shortage of people who will fall for it in increasingly dangerous ways.
- Khelavaster 3y agoMy house got taken over by a series of unauthorized residents. Sheriff's officers did nothing..
- thrwwy95fab9d1 3y agoWere you living in the house at the time?
- vkou 3y agoAnd most importantly, were these people squatting on the parent poster's property for 20 years before he tried to evict them?
- bakuninsbart 3y agoMy sister is paying half her salary for a crumbling flat in London, and nobody is eating the rich...
- ceejayoz 3y agoThey are typically correct not to, unless you have an eviction order.
- baggy_trough 3y ago[flagged]
- zzzbra 3y agothank you for reading the article posted and leaving a meaningful comment that speaks to its content. /s
- jeffbee 3y agoThe article is the doubt. How can you say there's no doubt about this?
- baggy_trough 3y agoBecause the article discusses one case.
- chaosharmonic 3y agoI lived in a large, left leaning metro area for 10yrs and they can't even be bothered to ban landlords from passing their business expenses to tenants as a condition for signing a lease. Because that's what brokers are when the only value they're providing is the work a landlord doesn't want to do, like advertising a space or handling lease paperwork. A business expense. You want to talk about what makes rents worse and availability lower? Let's look at charging an entire additional month's rent up front to pay a third party.
- baggy_trough 3y agoWhy should that be banned? It's part of the transaction cost. People don't seem to understand that renting is, or should be, a voluntary transaction between a tenant and a landlord.
- chaosharmonic 3y agoPosting to Craigslist because the landlords are too lazy to do it themselves is a reasonable part of the transaction cost? And the thing is that it's not voluntary any more than grocery shopping is. You can maybe make a point about where (sort of -- where I live, this practice is actually allowed statewide, so it's not strictly a rural/urban divide), but that's a separate axis from whether or not people need places to live. (Theoretically buying is an option, but if renting is inaccessible, it's unlikely that you're really looking at homeownership either.) This is just the same laissez-faire capitalism that gave us Ticketmaster, right down to being an identical business model.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoA reminder that anytime an outlandish or shocking sounding claim is made, to follow up on its veracity. Usually it is much less surprising. For example: that lady that sued McDonald’s for coffee being hot… sued because the coffee was hot enough to melt flesh, which she experienced firsthand. And don’t take my word for it because that, too, is shocking. 0. 0 - https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/ https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/
- fsckboy 3y agohot liquids can burn. people like hot coffee. takeout coffee cools relatively quickly. coffee is made with boiling water. What temperature should a coffeeshop serve their coffee at? Who is responsible for what? I think the case was overblown. Life has risks, assume them or don't leave your house. I understand that others might differ, they want only "safe" coffee to be served, but we're not looking at a "trolley problem." Less than hot coffee is just a different arbitrary line, one that will increase number of people disappointed by cold coffee. "hey, lower speeds save lives, let's put the highway speed limits at 45 and strictly enforce!" It's not something to make a morals case out of, it's a practical tradeoff.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> What temperature should a coffeeshop serve their coffee at? Not 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoTbh if a coffee shop pours me coffee hot enough to melt the skin off my lips when I drink it, that’s too fucking hot.
- bitwize 3y agoAnd, famously, it turned out that the "brown M&Ms" clause in Van Halen's performance contract was a canary to see whether venues carefully read the contract -- not an example of rock star overweening entitlement. I remember an article about a letter Ayn Rand wrote to her teenage niece. It was clear from the article text surrounding the letter that the author intended for the reader to pass judgement against Rand as a horrid, unfeeling aunt. But the actual text of the letter told a different story: Rand had agreed to lend $25 to the niece to buy a new dress, on the condition that she repay it within a year: six months to find a job, and then in six monthly installments after that, under pain of being considered an "embezzler" and being cut off from contact with her aunt altogether. Which is very... Ayn Rand, but a wholly unkind aunt would never have lent the money in the first place, let alone at no interest. And Rand also wished to convey a lesson: a responsible person does not enter into debt without the intent of repaying it in full. Something more teenagers especially today could stand to learn. This letter is probably least on the list of things to judge Ayn Rand for. Because of things like these I tend to check claims in sensationalist journalism much more carefully now.
- rwc 3y agoRelated: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2023-10-12/how-airbnbs-tenant-from-hell-used-l-a-s-tenant-protections-to-her-advantage#:~:text=But%20those%20strong%20protections%20have,in%20relocation%20fees%20to%20leave https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2023-10-1....
- aschla 3y agoTrying not to sound as sensationalist as the original story, but this part specifically had me infuriated: "Hunter has had less luck. Of the news stories, he said: “They’re infuriating but they’re comical if you have the facts… I tried to give the facts to KIRO, I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail, I tried to give the facts to Business Insider. I would send them actual proof of everything, and none of that mattered. They just wanted that [online] engagement.” How do we solve that problem? Educate people to instead read properly informed news sources that still have journalistic integrity? Hold the journalists to a higher standard and call them out when printing sensationalist stories? Even if they are called out, the damage is usually already done. The press is supposed to check society, but who checks the press?
- jmye 3y agoPeople are supposed to. But just like it’s easier (and more lucrative) to post mistruths for clicks, it’s easier (and more rewarding in terms of interaction and positive reinforcement) to play outrage in your social media reactions. “That was a good article” doesn’t get nearly the thumbs ups or engagement as “that was the worst pile of filth I’ve ever read and here’s why the author is literally Hitler”. Both are also easier than simply paying for legitimate journalism (witness the vast number of articles here instantly posted to an archive site). Society is the failure here - and social media is the medium. I say, unironically, on social media.
- ceejayoz 3y ago“I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail” is just a deeply funny statement.