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> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but t
by alexjplant 3mo ago
> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but there is a subset for whom that is the case,” [...] Others bristle at the notion that some tenants are not paying rent just because they may be able to get away with it.
These people absolutely exist. To pretend that they don't is willful ignorance. They are, however, indeed a "small[est] subset" to quote the gentleman in the article. In the era of $4 McDoubles and $6 gallons of gas I have trouble believing that one in four people is my burnout college roommate who spends on Fireball shots and Xbox games instead of paying rent. Life is expensive these days.
- naturalmovement 3mo agoThere's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff absolutely happens every day. I saw one recently where the renter has not paid rent for six years and is unable to be evicted. It made national news. So where does that leave the industry? You eventually push out the mom and pop landlords by making the regulations so insane it only leaves behind the large corporate property management companies and their army of lawyers. Who will collude and drive rents up. It's a vicious cycle and these cities are not helping one bit.
- rationalist 3mo agoI have friends and coworkers that want to have rental properties, and I advise them it's not worth it. I don't want to be in a position where I have to pay more to fix damages than I collectected in rent if I accidentally rent to deadbeats. Or in a position where I have to provide services to someone not paying me. One of those friends has parents that rented out their old house to deadbeats at the top of the housing market instead of selling it. Those deadbeats have been nothing but trouble and yet my friend still wants to be a landlord. Somehow the idea of owning rental properties became a pervasive notion in the U.S.
- _DeadFred_ 3mo agoWage theft is the number one form of theft in the USA at around $15 billion. Hopefully you advised your friends to avoid working for wages as that is the number one way to be ripped off by deadbeats in the USA. Somehow the idea of working for wages became a pervasive notion in the U.S. https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage-theft-is-the-costliest-crime-in-america#:~:text=Wage%20theft%20is%20the%20costliest%20crime%20in%20the%20country.,%2C%20and%20other%20larcenies%E2%80%94combined. https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage...
- cherry_tree 3mo agoLandlords typically have insurance coverage for damage by tenants, including lost rent.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- itake 3mo agoIt’s hard for new landlords. People that bought houses to rent compete against property owners of paid off homes or people with 3% mortgages. Tacking on optional insurance products on a property that’s already in the red further encourages landlords to push up rents prices.
- mx7zysuj4xew 3mo agoWell yeah, it's also hard for any random person to start an oil conglomerate having to compete against ExxonMobil
- gazebo2 3mo agoMaybe people shouldn't be buying homes for the purpose of renting them then?
- bombcar 3mo agoThis form of insurance is exceeding expensive and exceedingly rare. Large buildings self-insure (by having a ton of doors) and small landlords don't want to pay it.
- 8note 3mo agoThis is a bit of an intentional result, no? the goal is for peoppe to own the places they live in
- nradov 3mo agoWhy should that be a goal?
- fyredge 3mo agoTo discourage rent seeking behaviour?
- CursedSilicon 3mo agoBecause every human being needs shelter?
- nradov 3mo agoHaving shelter is not the same as owning real estate.
- jen20 3mo agoIf you think the Reddit communities of tenants are bad, you should try reading the Reddit communities of landlords (at least the UK ones).
- mc3301 3mo agoYeah.... So many bad tenants. So many bad landlords... So many weird laws protecting and hurting both. What if we shifted to a different system?
- weakfish 3mo agoThe question that many do not want to think about. We (as a society (referring to all Western Liberalism, not just the US)) are so thoroughly convinced that Liberal Democracy is the End of History, and it's the 'flawed but best,' as many say, but refuse to imagine something better. It's puzzling that a system that is supposed to reward creativity and genius like capitalism limits it's inhabitants in their imagination when it comes to how one might structure society. I don't claim to have the answer, and _no,_ my issues with Liberal Democracy/Capitalism don't mean I'm a communist / socialist / thing-people-don't-like.
- nradov 3mo agoWhat would you like us to imagine? So far everything that we've tried at scale other than liberal democracy and capitalism has inevitably led to war, famine, and genocide. Western liberalism appears to be the only system that empirically works. Some would claim that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" works better, but if you look below the surface prosperity in first-tier cities the actual economic situation is rather grim and the human rights situation is horrific.
- margalabargala 3mo agoArguably, benevolent dictatorships tend to be the best. Singapore is a good example. The trouble is making a system that can guarantee the "benevolent" part in the longer term.
- poopdick 3mo ago[dead]
- nradov 3mo agoTenant "protection" laws are the type of idiocy that economically illiterate progressive politicians always produce. They end up having the opposite effect by making property owners less willing to rent out to anyone. The only effective way to protect tenants is to set public policies that encourage new housing development. When there is a housing surplus, the laws of economics force landlords to treat tenants well. Build more housing!
- senectus1 3mo agosure because a property owner is going to not rent out a property and just take the month on month hit for having an empty property. They'll either rent it or sell it. There is a middle ground, just need to find that point.
- nradov 3mo agoApparently you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the rental market. Landlords in cities with strong tenant protection laws will absolutely leave a unit vacant for months until they find someone with a high income ratio and credit score. This leaves poorer people stuck with no options.
- archagon 3mo agoVacancy tax. No one should have the right to buy multiple, rentable homes and keep them unused in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s sociopathic.
- mx7zysuj4xew 3mo agoSo in the Netherlands, For many years any property left vacant and unused dor more than a year could be legally squatted. it forced landlords to keep their properties on the market and insured full usage of the severely limited available housing stock
- mmooss 3mo agoDo you have evidence? There is evidence that RealPage software illegally coordinated (maybe coordinates) landlords in keeping units off the market in order to reduce demand and increase prices for everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/technology/realpage-doj-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/technology/realpage-doj-s...
- ethbr1 3mo ago> especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. And that said, some renter protections are definitely needed, because there is a subset of landlords that engage in flat out illegal behavior. Deposit withholding, making illegal demands, illegal renter selection practices, etc. Imho, that tends to be concentrated in the "1-5 unit" landlord range, because those landlords are usually (a) not lawyers & (b) treat their properties like pets instead of a business.
- pixelatedindex 3mo ago> The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. I don’t know about that… the voting landlords (NIMBYs) sure make it a point to reduce development “to preserve their neighborhood character”.
- kelnos 3mo agoYou're conflating landlords with property owners as a whole. There are a lot more people who own and live in their home than there are landlords. Homeowners are less likely to favor pro-landlord legislation than landlords themselves, and many may even strongly support pro-renter legislation (like myself, though I agree some of the pro-renter legislation certainly goes too far). The NIMBY "character of the neighborhood" phenomenon has nothing to do with landlords; that's a homeowner thing. Landlords might be anti-development because a constrained housing supply means higher rents, but that's something else entirely. And if NIMBY homeowners magically stopped being NIMBYs tomorrow, we wouldn't even bother talking about NIMBYs anymore, because NIMBY landlords wouldn't have enough political power to matter.
- pixelatedindex 3mo agoDoesn’t help that the landlords want to squeeze the renter for what they are worth. It’s weird to me that shitty landlords are normalized but shitty tenants get a (rightfully) bad rap. These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part - they’re keeping assets that have massively increased in price and want to extract more and more out of the tenant. If you have a home that’s paid off your expenses are basically just property taxes, maybe they should do what they can to keep good tenants instead of chasing profits.
- bombcar 3mo agoRental prices stay surprisingly steady even when house prices go insane - compare similar apartments/houses in major expensive cities and cheaper ones.
- pixelatedindex 3mo agoSure but the rent will follow the increased purchase price. They also don’t go down, or at least they’re extremely sticky.
- bombcar 3mo agoThey're limited by what people will pay - and "techbro" cities have people with insane salaries willing to fork over big bucks. But there are similarly expensive areas that don't support the income necessary, and there often you find huge rental inversions.
- jjav 3mo ago> These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part These laws seem quite unrelated to the problems. There needs to be laws to protect the renter against bad landlords and there needs to be laws to protect the landlord against bad tenants. Nowhere there it implies there should be insane laws that make no sense. Such as creating a system where someone can skip paying rent for many years and continue to live there. Landlords need laws that hold their feet to the fire to maintain the properties to a livable standard (the state/county should define) and fulfill any other obligations of the lease. At the same time there need to be laws that force the renters to pay on time and not destroy the property. It's not a case of one or the other.
- BrenBarn 3mo agoThe way to handle this, which no one seems to be willing to face, is to make laws that are not wealth-neutral. If you are a mom-and-pop landlord (with a relatively low net worth), your should have more leeway in dealing with tenants. If you are a large landlord, you should have very little. Couple this with ruinous penalties (e.g., full forfeiture) for attempting to hide the true beneficial ownership of the property.
- bombcar 3mo agoIn many locations, this exists in practice - especially if you rent parts of a building that you reside in (one half of a duplex or 1/4th of a quadplex, etc). In some cases, anti-discrimination laws don't even apply.
- morkalork 3mo agoIn my city, and I assume many others, there's an informal landlord's group that shares lists of problem tenants to avoid renting to. While problematic, I wonder if it's made any impact.
- seanmcdirmid 3mo agoUsually this is handled with credit reports right? It’s only when the state forbids landlords from demanding credit reports that informal networks are necessary. In general as a tenant you can only get away with not paying rent once (until eviction happens, no one will ever rent to you again without federal or state assurances), and as a landlord you will only skip the credit report requirement once (because your first tenant is going to be a deadbeat who screw’s you).
- nradov 3mo agoIn cities with excessive tenant protection laws, sometimes landlords will negotiate agreements with deadbeat tenants in which the tenant agrees to leave and the landlord doesn't report anything to the credit bureaus.
- polski-g 3mo agoCredit reports do not have a section for "plays music loudly" or "secretly smokes by the bathroom window".
- jandrewrogers 3mo agoI anecdotally know of a few cases in Seattle where tenants with high incomes that could easily pay just don't. There is a subculture that actively encourages this type of behavior and the laws are setup such that there are almost no consequences for it. I've also met people who bragged about doing it. While rare, it is still common enough that it has become a real problem and has become socially acceptable in some circles. It is corrosive to the social contract when government policy tacitly encourages this behavior.
- CursedSilicon 3mo agoAs someone who also lives in Seattle, I'd be curious to see any verifiable citations to such a wild claim
- abhinai 3mo agoHe said “anecdotally”. In any case, I was wondering that if I know a friend who does this, how could I ever present a verifiable citation for it? You may have to rethink your ask.
- CursedSilicon 3mo agoAnecdotes aren't usually admissible as evidence, is the thing
- itake 3mo agohttps://www.discovery.org/a/nightmare-tenant-in-bellevue-confronted-by-landlord/ https://www.discovery.org/a/nightmare-tenant-in-bellevue-con... I’m on phone but if you search “Kim Seattle landlord” you can get more details of various articles on the situation.
- abhinai 3mo agoThat is such a sad article.
- rdtsc 3mo ago> They are, however, indeed a "small[est] subset" to quote the gentleman in the article. The numbers don't have to stay small because this behavior is not generated independently in a population. Multiple people may become aware of it by talking to each other, social media, forums, some crazy news event that refers to it, etc. All of the sudden a lot more people decide they can do it as well and tell their friends. I am not defending it or saying one side is right or wrong just that when it comes to things like this there may be a different model at play on how this behavior is generated.
- dominicrose 3mo agoSomeone I know rented a flat in Draguignan to a "friend" of a "friend". After some time he stopped paying the rent and bought alcohol instead. It was a tiny rent but it lasted for a long time. She didn't have a mortgage on it but still I don't think I would be that patient as a landlord.