[anchpop]

> I'm aware of specific stories where bad-faith tenants have made enforcement difficult, but I'm also aware of enough specific stories from the other side where tenants -- even some who have committed no violations -- have found themselves without housing to know that as a total generalization, these statements are false.

I'm aware of hundreds of stories about homicidal cardiologists, but I wouldn't try to make a judgement about cardiologists based on that because I have no reason to think the stories I'm exposed are a representative sample of cardiologists. In your case, tenants who have committed no violations finding themselves evicted make a much more sympathetic story than landlords who want to evict an annoying tenant, so I'd expect the former to be very overrepresented in what you hear.

[wwweston]

Sure. As the saying goes "the plural of anecdote is not data." And that goes as much for specific stories about sympathetic landlords suffering from abusive tenants as vice versa.

How would we find out what the systemic pattern is? Maybe we'd compile relevant court records and outcomes. Maybe we'd collect information from tax filings.

Or maybe we'd make bare assertions on HN.

[seanmcdirmid]

Once you are exposed to one homicidal cardiologist, it’s no longer an anecdote. Landlords who aren’t very thorough in background and credit checks are very very likely to have a bad experience (and they won’t repeat the same mistake twice).

Being a landlord is a hard way at making money.