I don't really see the point of this article, it's well known bankruptcies stay on your credit report for 10 years.
With the recent rent moratoriums, I expect landlords to get even harsher. A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and then stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months depending on the state .
If this person went and filed for a second bankruptcy, they could then delay the eviction by years.
The bigger issue of course is we haven't built up enough new housing over the last 40 years, you want there to be so much available housing landlords can't be selective. They have to take the risk of losing a bit of money, because they're going to lose an absolute ton if they let their units remain vacant.
The article isn't just about bankruptcies. It's about a tenant scoring system that has as much power over your life as the credit scoring system, albeit with far less regulation and consumer protections:
> Tenant screening companies compile information beyond what’s in renters’ credit reports, including criminal and eviction filings. They say this data helps give landlords a better idea of who will pay on time and who will be a good tenant. The firms typically assign applicants scores or provide landlords a yes-or-no recommendation.
> A ProPublica review found that such ratings have come to serve as shadow credit scores for renters. But compared to credit reporting, tenant screening is less regulated and offers fewer consumer protections — which can have dire consequences for applicants trying to secure housing.
Selecting tenants is a legal minefield. As a result, many landlords find it safer to offload that decision to a third party. It sounds like these third-party rating services, including their "rent, don't rent" decisions, are filling a need but are ahead of legislation to curb some of their excesses.
If eviction for nonpayment, property destruction, and major lease violations could be filed and processed in days rather than months, the landlords wouldn't have to delve so thoroughly into tenants' backgrounds to screen them. Heck, if that were the case, I'd be renting out my place now, but the legislative hoops make landlording above my risk tolerance so I'll let my condo go for sale and it will probably end up in some big corporate entity that has a much higher appetite for that sort of risk. More than happy to let them deal with that.
From a strictly utilitarian point of view (the favorite view of this website), since there's more tenants than landlords out there, shouldn't we err on the side of protecting tenants from abuse rather than the other way around? You can't have it both ways, so you have to do something.
Because it's high risk to rent out units, many who don't need to, don't do so. I know of several who don't do this but could. They have extra rooms in their first floors of their houses that could function as a more affordable in law suite for example. They have jobs, careers or have stress tolerance issues and thus have much better things to do than to deal with nightmare tenants.
These tenant protections come up because governments want their cake and eat it too. If you live in a functional housing market the need for tenant protections also decrease, because more people can afford to rent places!
There are 1.5 million housing units under construction, which is an all-time record. It'll be interesting to see how quickly that get absorbed in a market with rising interest rates and questionable valuations. There appears to be lots of demand but what I'm seeing in my corner of the world is most of the demand is at the lower end of the market, which I'm guessing isn't what is primarily being developed. People moving up does free up properties at lower ends of the market, so in effect, a trickledown effect, but that takes a while to happen. Maybe we're going to see more and more house sharing and renting of individual rooms (legal or not).
Around these parts, these new housing units are insanely expensive. They are building a lot of them, but there's no altruism involved. Not even one tiny bit. They are building these gigantic highrises, that are destined to be packed with yuppies. There are cranes everywhere in NYC.
Brooklyn and Queens; formerly "affordable" places to live in New York, are now getting $4,000 (or more)/mo for 1-bedroom cribs. I've seen it with my own eyes, in Manhattan. Areas like Alphabet City, that used to be considered "dangerous," are now primo real estate, and well-dressed young couples walk their toy poodles around these neighborhoods.
It's only a matter of time, before NYC becomes an East Coast San Francisco. Manhattan is pretty much there.
I am not personally familiar with the way France is structured, but I have been told that the cities are where the wealthy live, and the suburbs are where the not-wealthy live.
From what I have seen, Seattle is becoming that way. I was pretty surprised, when I visited some friends, down in the suburbs south of Seattle, and saw that it was actually a rather scruffy area. I had gotten used to Bellevue and Redmond.
> They are building these gigantic highrises, that are destined to be packed with yuppies.
Unless there have been major changes in the last few years, many of those buildings will not, in fact, be filled with yuppies. They'll sit vacant, parking the money of the world's ultrarich in a low-tax investment.
Think of apartments the way you think about cars. New ones cost more, and many lower income people think of a new car as a luxury that they can't reasonably afford. But you need people to buy new cars in order for them to become used cars later. And like we saw during the pandemic, when the car factories shut down many of the people who wanted a new car jumped into the used car market instead, and prices for used cars went through the roof.
If you don't build new housing, then the people who can afford it will just end up driving up the price of older homes. Alphabet City is expensive now because they didn't build enough apartments in the East Village to meet the demand from people who want to live in that area.
>Around these parts, these new housing units are insanely expensive.
So long as the total number of units increases, it really doesn't matter how much they cost, so long as they get filled. Increased supply will bring down rents at the less expensive end of the market.
I lived in exactly that in Liberty Village in Toronto for a period. "Lulu's and Shitzu's" it was often called. How right they were.
New rental-only builds were even going up in the area, not just condos. But they were more expensive to rent than the bloody condos, and about 3/4 the size.
Areas like Alphabet City, that used to be considered "dangerous," are now primo real estate, and well-dressed young couples walk their toy poodles around these neighborhoods.
How awful. The government should do something about this kind of degradation.
and thats the problem. if you watch any of Louis Rossmans videos on NYC real estate he explains the Issue.
Buisness dump invested money into expensive building. If no one rents then it stays vacant.
Why vacant, isnt the landlord going to lose money? well yes but if he rents a lower amount then his valuation goes down and he is suddenly upside down on his loan. So he is compelled to not rent versus renting it.
Add to this governments make more tax yearly if its valued hire and now there is no incentive to fix this.
>I am not personally familiar with the way France is structured, but I have been told that the cities are where the wealthy live, and the suburbs are where the not-wealthy live.
1.5 million housing units != 1.5 million housing units for affordable rent
London literally has tens of thousands of dwellings sitting empty. Many are investment properties and will be sold multiple times without ever being lived in.
It's easy to make money at the high end from rising property values without the hassle of dealing with tenants.
It's easy to make money at the low end by packing as many tenants as possible into small properties and spending as little as possible on maintenance. There's occasionally some legal hassle with evictions, but generally for landlords it's a seller's market, with minimal regulation and enforcement.
There is, indeed, tens of thousands of empty homes in London. In a city with millions of homes. Current statistics show a vacancy rate of 2.2% [1], which is an incredibly low rate, which implies a pathologically supply-constrained market. Additionally, there is no evidence to support that even a statistically relevant proportion of those empty homes are empty for investment purposes; vacancies can happen for a number of reasons, including being between tenants, non-primary homes, etc.
I think a lot of the supply at the low end is irreplaceable, because building codes and regulations have changed significantly over the years. It's effectively illegal to build some of the more affordable buildings in certain jurisdictions.
This is true. I'd estimate at least 70% of all rental unit currently under construction will not be "affordable" for two people working full time for minimum wage. In northern New England it's easily 100% of units.
That said all rental projects that I know of in Maine and New Hampshire are all rented before they even finish construction.
EDIT: I'd also like to make a point about current regulation and zoning. It's not unusual for a developer to pay around $500,000 or more in state fees, environmental review, and layer time to get a new apartment complex approved. This requires insider connections and specialized knowledge of the municipality if you want it completed in a reasonable time frame. Partially this is because national building codes are more complicated then ever but more often building anything at all requires a zoning exception or amendment.
If you pull of the zoning maps for your town or city you'll likely find it riddled with parcels that have been cut out or otherwise exempted from the rest of the zone. This process can be expensive and take years to complete.
"not unusual for a developer to pay around $500,000 or more in state fees, environmental review, and layer time to get a new apartment complex approved"
If a complex had 500 units, thats a negligible cost
That's a nice fiction. This is a bit old (1999) [1], but California's own housing policy administration at one point sifted through the data and found it averaged something like $15k/unit for apartments, and worse for other forms of housing. I'm not sure there's any evidence it's gotten an order of magnitude better since then.
I can't possibly understand how you can be debating in good faith when someone shows your optimism is likely off by a factor of 10x and you try to spin that into some sort of "doesn't explain it away" non-issue. When you set the bar at $1000 a unit and it is $15k+ (in 1999 dollars) per unit, that's kind of a big deal which you disingenuously brush away because it was fantasy. Development fees are just one piece of the regulatory barrier, these expenses add up, and they absolutely help explain the problem.
A house is made up of individual pieces of wood, drywall, bricks that are "under 10% of the cost" individually by the single piece but when stacked up they absolutely help explain the (much greater) cost of the house. It's going to be difficult to point to a single smoking gun; with housing it's death by a thousand cuts (in California development fees are one of the bigger ones).
According to architects who know, it’s the price of mandatory parking, especially in MDUs, that drives up the cost of housing much more than the additional cost of adhering to more stringent building codes.
How many of them are starter homes? Majority of the home constructions I came across is always above 3.5k sqft homes, some are McManison. It is great about 1.5 million housing units, we need starter houses than 4k sqft homes.
Few new starter homes in my (non-trendy) city. However, once builders started working again around '12, they started putting up both McMansions and spectacularly ugly apartment buildings (partially fills the role of the starter home, I guess, in that at least it's a place to live, if not a stepping stone to financial stability, so should take pressure off the market) at a crazy-fast pace. Construction everywhere, constantly. Downtown? New several new or converted high-rise apartment buildings. Just off downtown? Tons of new ugly-ass mid-rise apartment buildings in that new style everyone's using. 'Burbs? New and developing McMansion-filled neighborhoods everywhere, and a ton more of those same ugly apartment buildings.
Doesn't seem to have done much to keep housing prices under control, and houses still sell so fast that you blink and a new listing will be gone. We can't possibly be a major location for internal migration—not like cities in California or Texas or anything of that sort—so IDK what's up with that. My 20ish year old McMansion has increased in value about 30% over the last two years, and was already way up from just a few years earlier. WTF.
The ugly apartment buildings you are seeing are probably one-plus-five buildings (one concrete + five wood floors) that are actually optimized for balancing zoning+codes+affordability for single-family apartments. At least theoretically, they should offer cheaper rent due to their much lower construction costs.
I think of the ugliness of the facades as a bonus that would drive wealthier people to other buildings once options open up a bit.
Yeah, it's those, I just couldn't recall the term for it. Much of the ugliness seems to be a choice, though—lots of weird, haphazard nooks and crannies and bump-outs, and bizarre color schemes that seem designed to dazzle you into not noticing how ugly the unevenly-bumpy exterior is. If they just flattened out the exterior walls a little and cooled it a bit with the crayon-box color scheme, they'd look much better.
In many cases, the superfluous nooks and crannies on 5-over-1's are mandated by local zoning rules that call for "façade articulation" on buildings occupying larger amounts of street frontage (I suppose to conceal the unthinkable horror of a big building existing in a city).
At least in the upstate of SC, I see lots of starter homes, some would say too many. Of course, the average price in the state has risen above $300K and I don't know where people are getting this money from. The starter homes/condos seem to have a sqft of between 1200->2000 (best guess unresearched).
You and me both. Though, the older housing inventory often is 900-1200 sqft, which is a very suitable size for a starter home, but smaller than the modern homes...
I'm in the upper midwest, from what I've seen when traveling in my state it's few and far between. New construction is all MDUs and custom homes in the 5k sqft range.
Fed/State government can issues credits/tax relief for "investors" who build MDUs but somehow starter homes are off the table?
It's not all doom and gloom, Habitat For Humanity appears to be the only outfit that's building affordable houses/starter homes, helps when you get a nice influx of money going into that program (thanks MacKenzie Scott).
Moving McRichPeople out of normal housing and into McMansions can open up housing availability downstream though. The homes they are moving out of are an upgrade for those in starter homes and then those starter homes become available.
That is the case from what I have seen. We've put so much playdo money in the hands of young McRich who worked at a FAANG and there are so many of them. Also Chinese investors are buying up properties and locking them up for a few years to resell. We may get to a point where we have to actually change the law to fight homelessness and rising housing costs.
> There are 1.5 million housing units under construction, which is an all-time record.
No, it isn't. Back in the early 1970s, the US was averaging about 2.4 million housing units started per year [0]. And at the time US population was only about 210 million, compared to 330 million today...
How many of these will be snatched up by scalpers looking to rent them out? It doesn't matter if they build 1.5 million houses if they all end up as rentals anyway.
Housing bought by landlords looking to rent is the most relevent, as it increases competition among landlords putting pressure on them to be less selective.
> An estimated 870,000 Mexican migrants came to the U.S. between 2013 and 2018, while an estimated 710,000 left the U.S. for Mexico during that period. That translates to net migration of about 160,000 people from Mexico to the U.S., according to government data from both countries.
> it's well known bankruptcies stay on your credit report for 10 years.
That isn't exactly true!
Chapter 7 bankruptcy remains on your report for up to 10 years, and Chapter 13 stays there for up to seven years. [1]
Chapter 7, which is known as liquidation bankruptcy, involves selling some or all of your property to pay off your debts. This is often the choice if you don't own a home and have a limited income.
Chapter 13, also known as a reorganization bankruptcy, gives you the chance to keep your property (including secured assets like your home and car) if you successfully complete a court-mandated repayment plan that lasts between three and five years.
Because you lack empathy and perspective? People can be forced into bankruptcy for all sorts of reasons that are largely beyond their control (such as the example you are implicitly referring to in the article). Doesn't mean they should be homeless (or limited to the most marginal of housing conditions) for the rest of their life. Especially if they have nursed their score back to a reasonable state of health.
A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and then stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months depending on the state.
This seems overdrawn (i.e. out of synch with reality). In the one state for which I am intimately familiar with these proceedings (and another certain very large blue state that I did a fair amount of research on at one point), a properly executed eviction proceeding should take no more than 120 days or so, even assuming delays in the court calendar (except in weird outlier cases like the city can't determine the zoning or protection status of the property, etc).
I can imagine there a few states with as grossly dysfunctional (general case) eviction proceeding standards like you describe, but not ... all that many states.
Oh, I've been through two evictions, but I can also see landlords aren't charities.
If you have a bankruptcy on your credit report, no landlord in their right mind is going to want to rent to you.
It's very easy to stretch out an eviction for a very long time, it's not fun, but it's doable.
Here's the rub, a mom and pop landlord can't have half their tenants not pay rent for 6 months, but Greystone can. And big corporate landlords are more likely to be strict when it comes to renters.
If you go bankrupt you are essentially proven to be bad with money. Why would I rent to you? If you don't like it, buy some property like the landlords did.
Not my (a landlord's) problem. Plenty of people didn't have that happen to them. Do you presume that I should have no say on who I allow to live in the home I bought? It's my property
Do you presume that I should have no say on who I allow to live in the home I bought?
No -- you do not have "no" say. But but the law says there are limits in the criteria you can use to reject candidates.
Of which you (as a landlord) are presumably already perfectly aware. As you are of the fact that minute you move out (and establish another legal residence) -- it's no longer your "home".
It's my property.
Sorry, but this isn't an Ayn Rand novel. In real life, property ownership does not give you 100 percent freedom to do what ever you want with your property. It is a social contract, with obligations and limits.
Okay. I prefer to vote for people who make it so, and live in places where, that social contract has better terms for me. We've seen what the opposite policies lead to: Seattle, LA, Portland. I would never step foot in those cities again, and everyone knows why.
Seattle and Portland will find themselves in a Detroit situation in the coming decades. Remote work means people start to realize they don't need to step over human feces in their city to earn a wage. I don't foresee this decay being stopped.
> it's well known bankruptcies stay on your credit report for 10 years.
But it's less well-known that Chapter 13 bankruptcies stay on your credit report for 7 years, which had already passed. Chapter 13 represents about one-third of all bankruptcies.
Chapter 13 is less common, because it's more difficult to go through, and takes longer, but it has substantial benefits.
The article doesn't say what chapter she filed under, but it's easily plausible that it was Chapter 13, and the bankruptcy had already fallen off her credit report.
the US is doing a much shadowier version of china's social credit system. At least with china, its up front and in your face, with this it is much more background and insidious.
Most leases are written for 12 months. There is AFAIK no evicition protection once the lease expires, or am I wrong? It seems to me that 12 months is the limit of the landlord's risk.
Around here (Maryland), landlords are required to offer leases up to 2 years (this might be a county law), although I suspect 12 month leases are still common.
At the end of a lease, MD law requires the lease to default into a month-to-month lease. To kick a tenent out without cause, a landlord need only provide 30 days notice.
However, if the tenent refuses to vacate, the landlord still needs to go through the eviction process.
Yep, easy come easy go. The quickest way to get landlords to become less selective would be to let them toss freeloaders on their ass on day one of delinquency.
Which would result in more improper evictions. As it is we have already seen multiple examples of landlords losing checks so they can evict and rent to someone else at a higher rate.
I've wondered about taking a different approach: The landlord is free to evict on the day of delinquency, but must move the possessions to a storage facility (paying a month's rent at that time) and they must post a substantial bond. If the tenant shows the eviction was improper they get the bond + costs. (And I would apply the same thing to foreclosures.)
Instead of a long process of showing that they are acting properly they are putting up a substantial financial promise that they are acting properly. Make improper actions a costly mistake and there will be few of them.
Somewhat of an aside, but as a non-American, I find it quite weird that it seems to be common to pay rent with a monthly check. Every place I've rented, I've paid automatically by standing order. (Oh, except in a couple of third-world countries, where cash was the norm.)
The building I live in has an online payment option, but the only payment option that the organization doing the collection takes is PayPal. Fuck PayPal, I can go to the bank and get a check (I haven't personally written a check for decades).
> The quickest way to get landlords to become less selective would be to let them toss freeloaders on their ass on day one of delinquency.
The quickest way to get landlords to become less selective is to say "any vacant apartment/home not occupied by at least one fulltime resident can be claimed by someone homeless as of [date]." You'd have landlords begging people to sign leases (and people would because then they would get a sure nice apartment as opposed to a lottery for one of the few ones left).
Now, that produces bad other results, but so does allowing people's homes to be ripped away from them at a moments notice.
> quickest way to get landlords to become less selective is to say "any vacant apartment/home not occupied by at least one fulltime resident can be claimed by someone homeless as of [date]."
This is basically extreme squatter's rights. Places which have those produce some combination of people paying guards, those who can't afford guards taking matters into their own hands, people demolishing perfectly-good housing to avoid risking the land, et cetera.
I actually meant via a lottery system, not armed competition. Paying the guards when the city says someone else gets the house is not a real thing. And demolishing housing could be fixed by going off zoning.
You’re proposing to reassign millions of dollars of property based on various levels of evidence for whether someone was physically present? That’s basically the 90s in Russia.
It’s certainly a neat fictional universe. I imagine everyone who can afford to would live in a hotel, leaving the scramble of defending your property to those who can’t. Also, fraud. Lots of fraud.
Simple, comrade. 15 years you work on potato farm and trade ration-booklet for wood and drywall. You pay for and possibly build with your own two hands nice home for hard working fellow comrade to live in, and you ask in return they pay you some amount to help you recoup your investment.
After a couple years, nice family leaves, so you spend long time to find another nice family to fit into the house you worked hard to provide. Instead Kommisar come along, give house to homeless in name of proletariat. Social welfare bureau hold lottery, and the neighborhood violent drunk under the bridge is ecstatic his number came up, as he was very sad he no longer has home to beat wife in. Much vodka is drunk while copper piping is gutted and appliances scrapped to dealers in nearby Ossetia.
Sit back and cry: I work on potato farm for 15 years to build nice second home to house hard working families! Instead government create lottery and hands to drunk who destroys house in only 15 days. Decide to stop trying. Start drinking everyday. Become a drunk yourself, enter the lottery, now you gut houses of others to survive. Process repeats -- now all units look like Grozny in the late 90s.
The point is that, if you want to incentivize landlords to rent out places, this does this. Other people hear your story and rent it out to a responsible person instead of waiting for a "nice family". Or they auction it off in the time they have and pocket the money.
Responsible people who don't rip up housing are sought after and pay a reasonable rental rate. People who buy and sit on property are taken out of the system. A new equilibrium is reached and most people take reasonable care of their rental properties they are given because they don't want to have to enter lotteries that will likely end them up in a slum. Homeless people end up in better than the street.
Either I'm being far less clear than I think or you're being deliberately obtuse.
Everyone has a primary residence. I'm saying, if the only goal is to force landlords to rent out houses, simply have any residential property without at least one person identifying it as their primary residence given away by the state, ideally in a lottery. It would only change things for landlords. And I don't know what "fraud" would be engaged in. I suppose a couple could rent two apartments only needing one, but I don't see why a landlord would do that as opposed to renting to someone who presumably wants it and would pay money.
> don't see why a landlord would do that as opposed to renting to someone who presumably wants it and would pay money
You’re not sure they will pay the money or not trash the place. Same reason landlords are hesitant about renting in the real world.
In any case, this would be defeated by enlisting family members as back-up primary residents. (As in the old world, when property rights were enforced at sword point, sucks to be someone without a dependable family.) Though, again, the wealthy would likely opt out of renting and favour not owning or just own a single massive house and opt out of renting.
The fraud would be in people lying about their primary residences. Also, people lying about others’ lack of primary residence to appropriate their homes for their cronies. The injured family would be homeless while fighting for their property back, which somewhat compromises their ability to engage.
> this would be defeated by enlisting family members as back-up primary residents
I don't see how. The family members still have to live somewhere. Oh no, the person rents to their kid as opposed to a stranger! It still means that wherever that kid was going to live otherwise isn't rented out to them and is on the market.
> fraud would be in people lying about their primary residences.
Yeah, I don't see how. Everyone gets one. So, if you don't need a home and are responsible maybe you get hired to rent out an empty place? It doesn't scale.
> people lying about others’ lack of primary residence to appropriate their homes for their cronies.
That's stupid. It seems just as possible as people lying to get your bank account. There are all kinds of ways that people have to let the government know where their primary residence is.
> wherever that kid was going to live otherwise isn't rented out to them and is on the market
The kid could have been living at home. One spouse in one house, one spouse in the other. Et cetera.
> just as possible as people lying to get your bank account
You're proposing an ad hoc centralized mechanism for expropriating and re-assigning a multi-trillion dollar asset class. This has clear and one-way precedence in history.
> he kid could have been living at home. One spouse in one house, one spouse in the other.
Yes. If the "super-fraud" is that 18 year olds move out to unclaimed apartments or that couples can have a vacation house, I am remarkably okay with that.
> You're proposing an ad hoc centralized mechanism for expropriating and re-assigning a multi-trillion dollar asset class. This has clear and one-way precedence in history.
Except for the ad-hoc nature, the fact that property records and ownership (as well as lists of people's primary residences) are already centralized, that centralization and decentralization of real estate have precedence within the same society at different times, I totally agree. So I guess that's "multi-trillion dollar asset class" I agree with.
>Now, that produces bad other results, but so does allowing people's homes to be ripped away from them at a moments notice.
What an entitled viewpoint. It's not their home; an entirely different person owns it and they failed to hold up to their end of the contract for the terms under which the owner agreed to let them occupy it. The person having their home ripped away at a moment's notice is the landlord.
> It's not their home; an entirely different person owns it
It's not their house. It certainly is their home. I would prefer those be the same person as often as possible to align incentives.
> they failed to hold up to their end of the contract for the terms under which the owner agreed to let them occupy it
Tenants, like many contract participants, have legal rights that cannot be waived (see also minimum wage.) They also have contractual rights due to the contract.
It's not uncommon for landlords to be the first party to breach the contract either intentionally (e.g. losing checks to move a tenant at below market rates out), neglectfully (e.g. ignoring upkeep or repairs) or unintentionally (e.g. entering at will).
Certainly, withholding rent from a breaching landlord is appropriate while the breach is resolved.
> The person having their home ripped away at a moment's notice is the landlord.
Unless the landlord lives there, the landlord's home is unrelated to the property.
>It's not their house. It certainly is their home. I would prefer those be the same person as often as possible to align incentives.
If you take something you're obliged to pay for without paying for it, it isn't "yours."
>Tenants, like many contract participants, have legal rights that cannot be waived (see also minimum wage.) They also have contractual rights due to the contract.
Minimum wage is another thing that crushes the poor, as do eviction protections. Both serve to make jobs/housing (respectively) more difficult for the poor to acquire via regulatory barriers.
>Certainly, withholding rent from a breaching landlord is appropriate while the breach is resolved.
Conversely, withholding housing from a breaching tenant is appropriate.
>Unless the landlord lives there, the landlord's home is unrelated to the property.
In the US, "Home" can simply mean a house [1]. My apologies if you're using a different dialect of English and I misunderstood; I was using home as it's used in one common interpretation of the word in English in my country.
'Home' and 'house' are perhaps synonymous when preceded by the indefinite article. In the abstract, a house and a home can be considered the same thing. A house is, at least in principle, a home for somebody. But you can't call a rental property the landlord's home, since the key characteristic of somebody's home is that it's the place they live.
Nearly every landlord I have interacted with when renting single family housing has referred to the house he is renting as a 'home' even when no one was living in it. I understand local dialects may be differ.
That would probably be one of the terms. Which meets the stated goal of ensuring the housing is being used.
Although I don't see how that clause would be enforceable. A tenant almost certainly doesn't have enough assets to go after to make up for a building. Otherwise they could have bought the home for their own use.
That would very quickly escalate the already very bad homelessness crisis in many parts of the country. Some levels of tenant protection are a way society can help their citizens get back on feet after a difficult time, which almost every person will encounter. Freeloaders will eventually get kicked out.
I'd argue the effect may be the opposite. Tenant protections lead to homelessness by forcing landlords to be selective against vulnerable peoples, making it harder to get back on their feet after difficult times. Risk in renting to these people is greatly reduced if you can toss them out as soon as they stop paying.
Either way, you’re making someone homeless, which is an intractable problem as long as the housing demand exceeds supply. The only change being made is the criteria for who gets to suffer.
If you're looking to increase the number of temporarily homeless people, this sounds like a great approach.
Unfortunately, temporarily homeless people have a habit of turning into chronic homeless people. And living in a city that's full of chronic homeless people, I don't think we need more.
Your comfort and convenience as a landlord does not rank higher than my desire to not step over human shit on my way to work.
Raising regulatory barriers increases cost of housing. Increased cost of housing disproportionately effects those who have less money. Eviction protections are incredibly harmful to homeless as it makes it can make it risky (costly) to rent to homeless, taking housing even further out of reach. Homeless become even less competitive renters.
Your comfort and convenience to have the option not to pay a landlord does not rank higher than the desire of homeless to have better access to housing. Places with homeless problems badly need to remove these protections from renters.
Except it doesn't work the way you describe, because all it does is determine the quality of tenant that gets to stay in a housing unit in a shortage.
Eviction protections are incredibly helpful at preventing people on the margin from ending up homeless, by increasing the friction of evictions for landlords. This is absolutely necessary, because the cost to the tenant of getting kicked out of where they live is enormous - doubly and triply so if you are the kind of marginal person that gets kicked out of their home. It is incredibly disruptive to their life - much moreso than for someone in a stable situation not being able to find a different place to live.
Remove friction from evictions, and everyone on the margins is constantly at risk of losing their home - and once you do so, your ability to stay afloat becomes incredibly precarious.
If, on one extreme, tenancies were for life, and you had no way to kick someone out of a unit, you'd have an 'unfair' but stable distribution of housing. There would be very few life disruptions to people's lives, at the cost of housing being stuck in a local optimum.
If, on the other extreme, tenancies were day to day, and you constantly had to outbid other contenders for your apartment, you'd have a 'fair' but incredibly unstable distribution of housing. Between the incredibly high pain of moving/looking for a new place to live, anyone on the margins would suffer incredibly from this.
Economists rage against a stable but 'suboptimal' distribution of goods. But people whose lives constantly get upended from the instabilities of an 'optimal' distribution of goods are the ones who will suffer.
Harm minimization is exactly why there is more friction to throwing someone out of their house than 'the landlord feels like it'.
>Except it doesn't work the way you describe, because all it does is determine the quality of tenant that gets to stay in a housing unit in a shortage.
These protections determine that quality of tenant preferred is higher, thus vulnerably are forced away during a shortage. For those who are accepted, risks mean increased housing costs and thus lower access to the poor.
>Eviction protections are incredibly helpful at preventing people on the margin from ending up homeless, by increasing the friction of evictions for landlords. This is absolutely necessary, because the cost to the tenant of getting kicked out of where they live is enormous. It is incredibly disruptive to their life - much moreso than not being able to find a different place to live.
Eviction protections are incredibly _harmful_ at allowing those on the margin to avoid homelessness, by increasing the friction of becoming a tenant. This is absolutely unnecessary, because the cost of a tenant refusing to leave after non-payment can be _enormous_. It is incredibly disruptive to the housing market -- much more so than not being able to find a different tenant to rent to.
>Remove friction from evictions, and everyone on the margins is constantly at risk of losing their home - and once you do so, your ability to stay afloat becomes incredibly precarious.
I'd argue the opposite, those at the margins who are able to meet their commitment but otherwise look bad at paper are at incredibly higher likelihood to gain a home -- and once you gain a home, your ability to stay afloat becomes much less precarious.
>If, on one extreme, tenancies were for life, and you had no way to kick someone out of a unit, you'd have an 'unfair' but stable distribution of housing. There would be very few life disruptions to people's lives, at the cost of housing being stuck in a local optimum.
This is achievable via something close to the 99-year leases available in many nations, where you prepay the lease up-front. You can negotiate for one of these if you can find a voluntary counterparty.
>If, on the other extreme, tenancies were day to day, and you constantly had to outbid other contenders for your apartment, you'd have a 'fair' but incredibly unstable distribution of housing. Between the incredibly high pain of moving/looking for a new place to live, anyone on the margins would suffer incredibly from this.
That's basically what a hotel is, which those on the margins often end up in due to renter protections that introduce risk for landlords to take in those on the margins.
>Economists rage against a stable but 'suboptimal' distribution of goods. But people whose lives constantly get upended from the instabilities of an 'optimal' distribution of goods are the ones who will suffer.
Renter protections make it look more 'optimal' to rent to the rich and stable. We're actually in a suboptimal state that disfavors the homeless, and allowing a freer market would give better opportunities to the homeless.
>Harm minimization is exactly why there is more friction to throwing someone out of their house than 'the landlord feels like it'.
Increasing regulatory barriers to homeless gaining housing is harm maximization, and should be eliminated. These renter protections maximize harm.
"Increasing regulatory barriers to homeless gaining housing is harm maximization, and should be eliminated. These renter protections maximize harm."
I am sirry but this sounds like youve never seen the bottomn of the housing market and what actually goes on there, and basically live in cloud coocooland.
I know a landlord who should be in jail for abusing student tenants, commiting fraud on deposits, renting out houses with mold, rats and leaking riofs, without working heating. Safety railing on stairs sre attached with hot glue. After years of criminality she got a RangeRover and a small fine.
Proving the point further. The regulations fail to protect the intended individuals, only serving to make housing even further out of the reach of the vulnerable.
>I am sirry but this sounds like youve never seen the bottomn of the housing market and what actually goes on there, and basically live in cloud coocooland.
Well at one point (and not so long ago) I lived in a closet in a basement for ~$100 a month in a relatively nice part of Oregon, and frankly I was damn happy someone was willing to look beyond the "formal" means available. Had only the "legitimate" means been available to me, I definitely would have been homeless. Renter protections would have eliminated the only housing available to me. I'm definitely no stranger to "substandard" housing.
>I know a landlord who should be in jail for abusing student tenants, commiting fraud on deposits, renting out houses with mold, rats and leaking riofs, without working heating.
Agree that elimination of renter protections should go hand in hand with elimination of landlord protections: that is, if someone moves out because the landlord hasn't held up to his end of the contract (provide habitable housing), then there should be no protection for that landlord in the courts to force the tenant to continue paying.
A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and then stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months depending on the state .
Wow that's insane. If I was renting out a property I owned I'd expect to be able to throw someone out within a day after an active refusal to pay rent.
With the recent rent moratoriums, I expect landlords to get even harsher. A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and then stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months depending on the state .
If this person went and filed for a second bankruptcy, they could then delay the eviction by years.
The bigger issue of course is we haven't built up enough new housing over the last 40 years, you want there to be so much available housing landlords can't be selective. They have to take the risk of losing a bit of money, because they're going to lose an absolute ton if they let their units remain vacant.