If housing becomes prohibitively expensive to people in need just because we hold landlords accountable for abusive actions, maybe we should consider a different way to allocate housing resources.
Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here. The kind of stuff that hopefully solves the problem at hand while limiting the blast radius of what could go wrong. Throwing away how property ownership works in most of the world would likely cause large scale shocks and I think it's disingenuous to suggest these kind of things in a conversation about municipal policies.
I think it's more saying that there is a line where making it easier and easier for tenants to defend themselves has effects on the total number of houses available for rent, and at a certain point, may reduce the number of housed people.
If there was a 10M fee for any evictions, it would certainly reduce the number of unjust evictions, but many landlords would be unwilling to assume that risk and just choose to not rent the property. Obviously its an extreme example, but there is a line somewhere where we can optimize for maximizing our housing supply usage.
I think it's more saying that there is a line where making it easier and easier for tenants to defend themselves has effects on the total number of houses available for rent, and at a certain point, may reduce the number of housed people.
No number of lawyers allows a tenant to just flagrantly break the law.
The thing is, many landlords casually break the law and generally benefit from doing so - they fail to make timely repair, they take deposits unjustly and so-forth. Most tenants put up with this since fighting it isn't worth their while - the advantage the small opportunistic landlord takes is like a tax that tolerable though not pleasant.
Occasionally you get a sort of cagey and kind of crazy person who turns around and uses all the shenanigan of the sloppy landlord against them. The "grifters" - I've seen these types. Sure, they too will break the law but they get their mileage from the normally sloppy and abusive behavior of the small landlord.
The original poster I replied to on this thread believed that legal aid for tenants is what allowed these "grifters" operate. I dispute that and even more dispute the idea that not legal giving tenants legal aid would increase the housing supply. As I noted, the so-called grifters know the law and removing their free lawyers isn't going to change much. It's average tenants who need lawyers since they don't make a business of staying in apartment when a landlord is trying to legally or illegally evict them.
Further, a change making it easier for a landlord to illegally evict a tenant wouldn't improve the housing situation - the illegally evicted tenants would be looking for more housing and the opened-up units would be at a higher price.
I didn't say this "make it so tenants can't defend themselves". My argument is that punitive policies against landlord are about the only tool being wielded, and the only tool proposed, along with the only alternative being nuclear options.
I think there's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and that many landlords are bad actors in many markets, and that may tenants are bad actors in many other markets. I'm not even sure that landlording makes sense, it's rather feudal. I'm pro realistic rent control. I just think that, short of throwing away the entire system and making a revolution (that would kill millions), we should approach the problem from a carrot and stick perspective, not a stick-only perspective.
If you want to make eviction hard for the average tenant, fine. But if you leave it at that, where's the incentive for renting to riskier tenants? There's nothing re-balancing the risk exposure, nothing that makes up for the risk-adjusted expected loss of renting to a risky tenant. If we want these risky tenants to be housed _while_ preventing undue evictions, we need to fix up the incentive structure so that landlords still have something to gain from renting to risky tenants. Otherwise, why would they do it?
I didn't say this "make it so tenants can't defend themselves". My argument is that punitive policies against landlord are about the only tool being wielded
The only "punitive policy" that's being discussed is giving tenants free lawyers so they can defend themselves in court.
It’s the only one I’ve seen explicitly mentioned. As for the fairness aspect, tenants and landlords aren’t equal partners in the power dynamic. Should the state stop providing free lawyers to defendants, because it doesn’t provide free lawyers to those wanting to prosecute others?
I don’t know where this image of the “yeoman” landlord is coming from, these people are clearly financially stable enough to speculate on a human necessity but also want to be able 100% shielded from any risk? That’s not how business works, though maybe that is how business works now given how many companies and banks US taxpayers are expected to bail out.
You are not accounting for bad faith actors who lie about the landlord's actions for their direct own financial gain. Living rent free in a property is saving a tremendous amount of money! Like, as a % of income it's probably more than the average person pays in taxes. The financial incentives to abuse the system are enormous
You don't just get to send men with guns to take large chunks of peoples wealth without dire social and economic consequences. To believe otherwise is pure fantasy.
Dire economic and social consequences clearly do not discourage authorities from sending men with guns (and threats thereof) to confiscate people's wealth. It happens all over the globe, frequently, and with large magnitude, both 3rd and 1st world and and with the full support of nearly all of the public.
In many places in the US we have government officials who decide who gets to live in which house and how much they will pay for rent. Tenants are part owners in properties, sometimes majority owners.
Zimbabwe sent men with guns to take the land of evil white farmers exploiting hundreds of thousands of black farm workers. (this is sarcasm). They lost their agriculture sector, became dependent on food imports without having any export sector (like oil) which ultimately lead to starvation and then finally hyperinflation as the government was no longer able to pay for the imported food.
One simple way that's already practiced in some places is to tax unoccupied residencies - and, ideally, use that tax to subsidize housing. And then you either live in your apartment yourself, or put it up as a rental under the terms required by the law, or you pay up.
Subziding housing drives up the price, because it increases demand for housing. Have we not learned this lesson? After so many years, this basic economic fact is still tripping people up?
Please, stop with the housing subsidies. Why do you want to make housing more expensive?
Direct housing subsidies don't prevent additional supply. Rent control prevents additional supply.
Also, politicians have to be accountable for the subsidies which means that restrictive zoning will burn a pocket into the local budget. They don't give a damn about losses due to rent control. I.e. they privatize political gains and socialize the economic losses.
The idea that the price of housing will not increase if a good is subsidized because the supply isn't "prevented
from increasing" is so confused and wrong it literally makes me sad.
We have the data of house prices rising as a result of subsidies. Housing is half land and half structure, and in constrained areas, 80% land and 20% structure. Land does not increase. Moreover even if housing was all structure and land was free, the subsidies cause houses to become bigger, as people can afford more structure, leading per house prices to rise.
Then you continue with a string of cliches, "privatize gains" etc. And a complaint that other people don't care enough.
Well, OK, but what of it? We don't shoot ourselves in the foot because other people don't care.
Adopting policies that make the world a worse place just because you are morally outraged is a terrible way of doing public policy.