[AYBABTME]

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.

[joe_the_user]

Sure, but I think this sort of grandstanding doesn't serve the conversation well. We're talking about realistic, incremental policy changes here.

So we're saying that making it so tenants can't defend themselves against illegal evictions is going to increase the housing supply incrementally?

[km3r]

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.

[joe_the_user]

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.

[AYBABTME]

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?

[joe_the_user]

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.

[strawhatguy]

Not the only policy. But it isn’t a good one to provide a lawyer only for one side. Either both or neither.

[drekk]

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.

[jjav]

> Should the state stop providing free lawyers to defendants, because it doesn’t provide free lawyers to those wanting to prosecute others?

Well, the state does provide lawyers to the prosecution side, since the prosecutor is the state.

[AYBABTME]

Well, that's not true.