Yeah, I’m sorry, but I really want people to think about what a rental world looks like if people can’t be evicted.
Really think about it. What incentive does someone have to pay rent? None. You’re essentially telling landlords that if they get an abusive tenant who refuses to abide by the lease terms they signed in good faith, they have no legal remedy and cannot control their property any more.
In such a world, why the hell would anyone invest in rental housing? Why would any sane investor build a new apartment complex or rehabilitate an existing one? Why would they seek a new tenant rather than just selling everything to some faceless megacorp which can afford to amortize out the risk or redevelop apartments into condos? And yeah, you might think, hey, property values will drop and people will buy rather than rent. But not everyone’s going to be able to buy, and if we lose access to rental housing because it’s gotten impossible to evict tenants regardless of the reason, it’s going to really hurt anyone who needs or wants to rent, as well as provide a major barrier to private investment in constructing new housing.
Some of these landlords have been stuck dealing with abusive tenants for years without access to the law for recourse. Maybe the tenant is paying zero rent, but demanding that the landlord maintain paying large sums for upkeep and utilities. Maybe they’re harassing the landlord or threatening their neighbors. We have no idea what’s going on, and there are often very good reasons why someone gets evicted. Shit, maybe it’s a shared housing situation and they’re sexually harassing another resident.
Ending the eviction moratorium is a good thing, because if it doesn’t get ended, then it’ll be the end of rental housing availability. The entire system will collapse. And maybe that system needs some reform, but letting it collapse isn’t a good end.
It’s almost like this shit shouldn’t be an investment at all.
Someone needs to build and rehab rental houses and put up with tenants. No one is going to do that for free.
Doesn’t need to be free, it also doesn’t need to be profit either.
Without profit, you’re asking for them to sell their labor and expertise for free. Profit is the compensation people gain for the risk of making an investment, for the time and expense of doing what is necessary to manage and actualize that investment, and their expertise in knowing how to do so properly.
Well, expertise is a very, very generous term to use for landlords in any way, shape, or form. And let’s be real, for how much profit they make off of the labor of other people, them having to break a nail wouldn’t kill anybody.
Have you ever been a landlord? It feels like you haven’t, and are just repeating buzzwords like “they dont work but get money!”.