[srcreigh]

Would they get any more than the status quo?

I suspect the extra support may translate to decreased profits for landowners. Tenants would have more time and money to file maintenance issues and represent themselves in the legal system, which would cost landowners. In Ontario it costs $50 and takes a lot of time and energy to file a complaint to the LTB. Tenants would also have more ability to change their situation in response to abuse, shop around for a better deal on housing, etc.

[jeffbee]

In many U.S. states you need not even bother going to court, because of robust "implied warranty of habitability" statutes and precedents. A person who experiences real habitability issues such as no heat, no cooking fuel, doors or windows that don't close and lock, etc after notifying landlords and waiting a reasonable time (which is as short as 24 hours in the case of no heat) can simply hire someone to fix it and deduct the actual cost from rent. It would be on the landlord to initiate legal action, if they disagreed with the outcome. The tenant has no obligation to go through courts.

[srcreigh]

In Ontario,Canada you can pre pay for repairs, but you aren't allowed to deduct those amounts from rent. Here, you would need to front $500+ or whatever to have the work done, and then pay $50 for a Landlord and Tenant Board hearing booking (which have been delayed months). Then you need to show up, prove the work was needed, that the landlord had enough time to do it and didn't, and that you minimized the costs.

(A joint tenant advice, contracting and paralegal brokerage might be a good business in this area. But do I really want to make myself a major enemy of all the scummy landowners? Noooope.)

Municipal offices will intervene on their own to ensure things like heating are taken care of. In Waterloo the minimum allowed temp is 21C or 70F. In my experience with this city's offices, they will take care of this almost immediately (immediately respond to form on website via email asking for evidence of sub 21C settings, then call the landlord and request the temp be increased etc.)

[teakettle42]

This sounds like it would quickly devolve into a very socially unstable state.

For every legitimate complainant, there’d be a hundred entitled moochies with nothing better to do than work the bureaucracy to their own benefit, entirely at the cost of the few remaining people actually doing any work.

[srcreigh]

One, why waste $50 on a complaint which won't have any effect?

Two, the bureaucracy actually should help with the real moochies. In Ontario Canada tenant protections are crazy and it can take 6+ months for a landlord to evict a non-paying tenant. The official resolution for landlords is to ask the bureaucracy for help.

(The non-official resolution is promoting ignorance about tenant protection laws, legitimately or illegitimately making use of the "family moving in" loophole, and hopefully not any more.)