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by camgunz 1218 days ago
See, the casual way you say "you could evict" makes me think you don't appreciate that that's someone's home, maybe even a family, and you're uprooting them for personal convenience. I think a law preventing that would be a good one.

Your argument sounds like, "if you let landlords evict as much as they like, they would rent their places out rather than treating them like pure investment vehicles." But how does that help renters? Great they can now maybe rent that vacant place, only to maybe get evicted with little to no notice, for any reason?

I think where we want to get to is a place where people who rent homes have stability, and don't get kicked out because their landlord's in-laws want to move in instead. You're not lending a bike or renting out lawn equipment. Families live in these places. Going full "I should be able to do whatever I want with my property" is at best insensitive.

I'll also say that SFs problems seem to be 100% supply related. The vacancy rate is 3% [0]?? That's crazy low. I don't think this is a complex market that's beyond my meager understanding; they just need more supply.

[0]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/how-many-vacant-homes...

1 comments

> the casual way you say "you could evict" makes me think you don't appreciate that that's someone's home...

It's their home and your property. I'm not advocating anything crazy. As that hypothetical landlord your tenants deserve dignity, but it's your property and that has to confer certain rights beyond their tenancy. Otherwise, you don't really own it. You should be able to ask your tenants to leave with some amount of notice. You should be able to plan on your parents living in that unit at some point. Make the amount of time and planning for that very large, say 2 or 3 or 4 years. Doesn't that seem pretty fair?

Restricting ending tenancy in good faith all together creates perverse incentives. It pits your interests as a landlord against your tenants. If you bought a duplex in SF today, it would be in your best interest to do everything you could not to rent out the other unit. That is the problem.

I mean, not being able to do literally anything with my property doesn't mean I don't own it. You can't run a meth lab in your house--you still own it. Etc. IDK if I'm making a straw man here, but just want to say there's always limits.

I think a year or two is reasonable, but I generally don't like the mechanism of eviction. I live in the Netherlands and they do either fixed term or indefinite contracts here. Details are here [0], but the gist is that tenants get some stability while landlords can chance a vacancy period and raise rents while they're vacant and not rent controlled.

https://www.iamexpat.nl/housing/netherlands-rentals/rental-c...