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by km3r
1692 days ago
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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. |
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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.