3/27/2025 at 5:53:32 PM
I've grown a little bit more skeptical of what can realistically be achieved by the passive nature of YIMBY-ism.In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing.
I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it should be a no-brainer, so I'll bring up and ask why not? And there are basically two reasons:
- There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights, and the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.
- They don't need the money. If you can afford a home in the area, you're already pretty well off. Even though adding a rental could be pretty lucrative, there's just not enough motivation to go through with it.
To me it has little to do with incumbent politicians and everything to do with the incumbent middle class. I'm all for removing red tape and restrictions, but we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things.
by legitster
3/27/2025 at 6:03:43 PM
It’s more about long term, but I see what you mean about lighting a fire under butts.One of the most eye opening discoveries for me on my urbanism journey is how Amsterdam got better. It wasn’t always a bicycle paradise; its city center had massive parking lots, huge roads, and a poor pedestrian environment.
But today it’s much different — because policies were enacted decades ago which ensure roads are re-configured when it’s time to replace them. So over time, the city has become better.
These long-term policies are deeply important. We didn’t get into the current situation because someone woke up and decided housing scarcity would be cool. It happened after decades of planning and building under policies which seemed like the future 60 years ago, but have become unsustainable. Parking minimums don’t instantly turn your town into a parking lot — it takes decades as buildings are replaced and more and more land is carved out for parking.
So yes, YIMBY doesn’t instantly solve the crisis, and we need to do more. But over time, as houses and lots sell, people remodel and build, the financial incentive to make more housing units available is very strong —- so over many years, things will definitely densify.
by anon7000
3/27/2025 at 6:18:25 PM
Boston was a mess before the big dig. Enough ink has been spilled over how long it took, but just about everybody agrees the city is better for it.by rm_-rf_slash
3/28/2025 at 12:06:52 PM
There’s a great podcast that delves into the Big Dig. It was an exceedingly difficult giant construction project. The original cost estimate was a made up number for political expediency. They lied knowing once they dug a big hole the sunk-cost fallacy would pull them over the finish line.by silverlake
3/28/2025 at 3:17:58 PM
>lied knowing once they dug a big hold the sunk-cost fallacy would pull them over the finish line.That's essentially what the CA high speed rail folks did. It remains to be seen if it ends up working out for them.
by MostlyStable
3/28/2025 at 3:37:20 PM
[flagged]by ShrimpHawk
3/28/2025 at 1:56:38 PM
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ9wEUKs4U4by PaulHoule
3/28/2025 at 5:02:48 PM
This aligns with my observations. There's a huge amount of noise made about things like zoning reform. Politicians are usually smitten with themselves once reform is complete. In practice, it's hardly meaningful if applied to an area that has been extensively developed. Just for example: covenants on the deeds can render the zoning change moot. Likewise, it seems unlikely that existing residents are going to uproot their lives just to advance some specific concept of reform.Some of this reform is also stupid, like Austin attempting (and failing) to mandate 9 ft ceilings in the name of "affordability".
My observation has been that if you're looking for an observable change in the next few years - just move somewhere else. It's less headache and the results are instant.
by sidewndr46
3/28/2025 at 12:42:38 AM
>We didn’t get into the current situation because someone woke up and decided housing scarcity would be cool.I mean, in a way, we did.
CEQA didn't become the monster that it is now because the California legislature intended to enact a monster. It was effectively an accident of an interesting, and arguably activist, interpretation by the CA Supreme Court in a case called Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors:
>In 1972, the California Supreme Court broadened CEQA by interpreting a "public" project as any development that needed government approval.[4][5]: 1 Since then, CEQA has become the basis for anyone with a grievance against a project to file lawsuits to slow projects by years or kill projects by imposing delays and litigation costs that make projects infeasible.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali...
https://casetext.com/case/friends-of-mammoth-v-board-of-supe...
by scoofy
3/28/2025 at 12:08:32 PM
Those are legal requirements for the roads, unlike this being legally permissible. It's not going to fix the concerns about problem tenants.by giantg2
3/27/2025 at 6:09:46 PM
As someone who owns a second house on a farm that has two rental units in it, I’m skeptical of attempts to expand ‘tenant rights’ in New York.I had a tenant who decided that he did not have to pay the rent, it took months of trying to reason with him, we hired a lawyer and went through the process which took several months, in the end the tenant stayed on a few months past what would have been the eviction date but at least he was paying rent. Between that and another tenant losing her shit we lost at least a years rent plus still have a unit vacant even though we have been using the time to catch up on maintainance.
I’ve seen other small landlords in the same situation where they were psychologically devastated by the process of dealing with a bad tenant and evicting them. Right now my wife is helping a friend who inherited two homes from their parents who recently passed away which might have been a takeaway and not a gift because she has yet to clean up the mess left behind and struggles to with precarity (doesn’t have a working car, can’t find the title abstract and will have to cough up a few $1000 to be able to sell, …) renting the place out for a few years made some money but probably resulted in lost value in selling it.
The juiciest gossip in our small town us that the owner of an equipment rental company (probably able to afford to do it right) attempted an illegal ‘self-help” eviction by crashing into the building with a backhoe which is not only an own goal in terms of property damage but could probably cost $10,000 or more in court. (A friend of our who has struggled with homelessness got a settlement of that much for being illegally evicted by the homeless shelter when it closed but then struggled to cash the check because he had no bank account an no id to create a bank account…)
by PaulHoule
3/27/2025 at 7:00:31 PM
I've been a renter since I was born, and I have rented from both mom and pop landlords and bigger corporations, and I can tell you that whether or not the "small landlords" were good people or not, our financial interests were diametrically opposed. If I did not live in cities with good tenant protections, there would be no incentive whatsoever for the people who owned the place where I lived from providing basic services such as repairs and advance notice of rent increases. Many did not anyway.What is often forgotten in these cases is that being a landlord is not an identity, but a choice. It's hard not to feel like the housing market is basically a cartel run by small homeowners across the country conspiring to make home ownership as inaccessible as possible in order to make the value of their property as high as possible. I would love to purchase a home, but even 10 years of a software engineering salary are not enough for that in NYC. And so I will continue to rent, and I will continue to advocate for expanded tenants rights.
by throw4847285
3/28/2025 at 2:43:52 PM
Financial incentives stop aligning because of two things:* Rent control means that tenants are paying less than market rate.
* Extremely low property tax rates combined with anti-development policy mean that asset price appreciation exceeds rents by a significant amount.
Stop controlling rents, tax the hell out of these people, and one way or another spend it on residents, and you are exacting a redistribution of wealth that doesn't distort the market in a way that leads to slumlords.
by mapt
3/30/2025 at 4:00:36 AM
Yes, but without rent control landlords will charge as much as they want to charge. The price of what the market will bear just goes up because everyone will raise prices. Software like RealPage will become even more prevalent. It really only helps the landlord, who is already well off to begin with.Additionally, I can’t think of any homeowner who will vote to increase their property tax, especially if it’s already based on a $1M house.
by pixelatedindex
3/30/2025 at 3:57:52 PM
Landlords require a certain multiple of rent in proven income. So the rent is automatically capped by local wages.It's pretty black and white - either the landlord asked a price in line with local wages or they didn't. If they go too far,the landlord gets punished with expensive vacancies, or they loosen rent/income requirements and get punished with even more expensive evictions.
Point is, landlords aren't gangsters who can demand whatever number they pull out of their arses. They have to keep rent a reasonable ratio of local wages or they feel the pain.
by htss2013
3/31/2025 at 11:36:44 AM
They aren't individually gangsters. But collectively, it is equivalent to a form of extortion.by mapt
3/28/2025 at 1:20:53 PM
Restricted property rights limit the amount of housing and thus give current landlords power over renters. If there were plentiful housing landlords would be forced to provide attractive housing, otherwise tenants would vote with their feet and leave.by BenFranklin100
3/27/2025 at 9:12:55 PM
I have total opposite experiences from renting most of my life. I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me. I was an extremely low-maintenance tenant, only calling for major repairs like mechanicals or outright dead appliances. I handled all basic maintenance and minor wear and tear myself at every property I rented from a small time landlord.This resulted in pretty much zero rent increases across the 15 or so total years renting from such individuals. I had exactly one rent increase during that time due to a large property tax increase which I found to be reasonable.
Sometimes the small time landlords were a bit rough around the edges, but were good people trying their best. All emergencies were handled quite rapidly, and the non-emergency stuff I was quite capable of mitigating myself. I appreciated not having to do basic home maintenance due to my lifestyle at the time. I traded money for time.
I did not live in a city with good tenant protections whatsoever. If you stopped paying rent, you were evicted within 45 days or less.
Corporate landlords were the direct opposite experience. I avoided them like the plague until I bought my own home.
Tenant protection laws in some states have gone far too far in the tenants direction. I think societal incentives need to be reset to make rental units much less subsidized and lucrative, but I can't really fault individuals engaging in the practice. We setup the tax code on purpose to incentivize such behavior. Roll that back and you will see incentives re-align.
Tenants rights should not include the right to basically be a nuisance and a leech upon society. Professional tenant grifting should not be the profession it actually is today in many localities. It harms the rental market and society itself. A single bad tenant should not have the ability to ruin a small time landlord no matter how you feel about the ethical position landlords happen to be in.
by phil21
3/28/2025 at 6:17:29 AM
I'd love to rent out my current home but I hear horror stories of how hard it is to evict non paying tenants in my town. The big players are diversified and can eat the cost but an owner landlord with one property can be bankrupted by a bad tenant.It's a regulatory moat as much as it is tenant protections.
by baskinator
3/28/2025 at 8:26:57 PM
> I'd love to rent out my current homeSell it
by worik
3/28/2025 at 10:55:28 PM
It would be nice to have some cash flow positive investment income. The mortgage payment is low compared to the rent it would bring in.I'll probably end up selling it. Then it will get torn down and replaced with 4-6 units at US $800k+ each. It's hard to walk away from $4.8 million in development potential. I would be lucky to clear $900k selling it.
by baskinator
3/30/2025 at 6:07:37 AM
In place where I live I'm afraid to sell any real estate. We have a law that a seller is responsible for any hidden defects buyer will discover up to three years after the deal. We have seen bankruptcies etc because of that.by obscurette
3/30/2025 at 4:04:58 AM
> This resulted in pretty much zero rent increases across the 15 or so total years renting from such individuals. I had exactly one rent increase during that time due to a large property tax increase which I found to be reasonable.I tried to rent most from mom and pop landlords but the ones here in the Bay Area have been mostly terrible to deal with. I even had to take one to court. I think you’re extremely lucky to just have one increase over 15 years. Conversely, the corporate ones were much easier to deal with it (although the promptness of repair is 50/50).
by pixelatedindex
3/28/2025 at 8:16:11 AM
> I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me.I can think of a couple who were absolute nightmares. I can think of a couple others who were an absolute dream. The worst small-time landlord was WAY worse than the worst big property management firm, but the best small-time landlord was far better than the best big property management firm I've been a tenant of.
And yeah, I'm also a low-maintenance tenant. Unless something's broken, I never want to talk to you, nor do I want you in the space that I'm renting. EZ money for them.
> Tenants rights should not include the right to basically be a nuisance and a leech upon society.
The thing about strong tenants' rights laws is they're not protection against reasonable landlords; they are a shield against scumbag landlords who would treat their tenants very poorly.
For example, in San Francisco, someone who stays in a place for thirty days without a lease becomes a month-to-month tenant that requires an eviction to remove. Why? Because scumbag landlords would refuse to provide leases to tenants and toss them out into the streets on a moment's notice.
Similarly, I recall regulation preventing hotels from requiring tenants to check out and then check back in during extended stays. [0] Why? So that scumbag hotel operators can't prevent the long-term rental regulations from taking effect for renters who are -in fact- long-term renters.
To point at an analogous situation: the same rules and regulations that generally prevent cops from putting very, very careful wrongdoers who should be imprisoned (but haven't left enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing) behind bars generally also prevent cops from imprisoning folks who have done nothing wrong just on those cops' say-so.
[0] Though, I'm unable to muster the effort required to locate this regulation.
by simoncion
3/28/2025 at 1:55:31 PM
I believe in strong tenants rights - IF you pay your rent on time and are not damaging property or otherwise misbehaving. If you stop paying, you should be out within 60 days that your security deposit should cover.There should be mechanisms where through a process tenants can legally withhold rent if basic repairs or maintenance aren't being done. If a landlord can't or won't do it, they shouldn't be a landlord.
Evicting a tenant should be hard or expensive for any other reason (selling the property, landlord wanting to move in, etc).
I have mixed feelings around rent controls, though. In a healthy, competitive market they should be unnecessary over the long term, but if cities are going to restrict housing construction...
by hylaride
3/28/2025 at 3:22:06 PM
> I have mixed feelings around rent controls, though. In a healthy, competitive market they should be unnecessary over the long term, but if cities are going to restrict housing construction...They're a (terrible-outcome-causing) band aid over a combination of too many people and not enough construction.
by robertlagrant
3/30/2025 at 11:19:38 AM
> They're a (terrible-outcome-causing) band aid...Look into California's state-wide property tax control law commonly known as Proposition 13. Then look into California's anti-rent-control law commonly known as Costa-Hawkins.
I do agree that rent control should never, ever have a reason to exist. But sometimes there are super fucked-up situations on the ground that make rent control better than not having it.
by simoncion
3/28/2025 at 8:31:16 PM
Rent controls work in many cities around the worldA simple cap on rent does not work, true. But comprehensive policies to keep rent down and local people housed, can work
by worik
3/30/2025 at 6:40:07 PM
> policies to keep rent down and local people housed, can workFor sure - making sure demand doesn't massively for housing exceed supply of housing is all you need.
by robertlagrant
3/30/2025 at 11:17:26 AM
> If you stop paying, you should be out within 60 days that your security deposit should cover.Sure, if you stop paying, and if there isn't some sort of temporary hardship that you could reasonably fight your way through to make good on back and current rent. Given what you've written, I expect that you know that that's part of what the eviction process is for... determining if the landlord is lying about the state of the tenant/landlord business relationship and determining if letting the tenant stay in the place for a while longer would result in a far, far better outcome for the tenant and minimal harm to the landlord.
> I have mixed feelings around rent controls...
I don't. Rent controls are godawful price distortions that should not have any reason to exist. However, I'm very glad I live in a rent-controlled San Francisco apartment. Why? Because every landowner in the state of California has property tax control, regardless of whether their property is their personal home, a residential rental, or most any other commercial property.
It's massively unfair that landowners across the state get to control a huge part of their costs, but it's illegal for all but a very few cities in the state to permit residents to do the same. [0]
Get rid of the property tax control across the board, wait a year or four for everything to shake out, then I'd be fine with getting rid of rent control in California.
[0] Seriously, Costa-Hawkins can go straight to hell.
by simoncion
3/31/2025 at 1:21:29 PM
I've got a minor in economics, but I'm also not a rabid capitalist, so I do give lots of thought on both sides of any economic argument.Unless it's public housing (which for the record I do support, though I think that in practice it should be at the margins in most jurisdictions), landlords shouldn't be part of the social safety net (unless they have some extra tax advantage in exchange - fun fact is that as much as hospitals whine about the costs of having to treat everybody in the ER regardless of ability to pay, they actually have a very generous tax benefit for it). Having temporary unemployment/hardship vouchers up to some max is one thing, but if you can't pay after a certain amount of time you shouldn't be in private housing. Maybe 60 days is too soon, but in many jurisdictions it can be far, far longer. I am not at all opposed to a due process in withholding rent if the landlord side of the contract is not being upheld, my example was for "I can't or won't pay for some non-housing reasons".
I pretty much agree with everything you said about rent controls, which is why I said "mixed feelings". California, arguably the greatest state in the union, is ungovernable due to the fact that the government literally can't govern when it comes to taxation (and even mandated spending). If there is a healthy market where supply and demand can be balanced, there should be no need for it.
by hylaride
4/1/2025 at 3:03:28 AM
> ...I'm also not a rabid capitalist...Oh, I very much am. But I'm also keenly aware of the need for strong, well-enforced regulation in order to maintain functional markets so that we continue to have a strong capitalist system. The US is sorely lacking in the "strong, well-enforced regulation" department, so...
> ...landlords shouldn't be part of the social safety net...
This is a distinction that's not at all clear.
In nearly all jurisdictions, landlords give up very many of their property rights when they rent it out for folks to live in. For example, they are expected to meet basic habitability requirements (and cannot fob responsibility for this off to their tenants), and are very often barred from wandering into their property whenever they feel like.
Some landlords out there would argue pretty strenuously that the raft of restrictions they're burdened with means that they already are part of the social safety net.
I would argue that providing rental housing to people who can't afford to buy in the area is totally being part of the social safety net.
> ...unless they have some extra tax advantage in exchange...
Man, landlords (especially ones in "hot" areas) get so many financial advantages. I'm disinterested in giving them more.
> ...if you can't pay after a certain amount of time you shouldn't be in private housing.
Perhaps this is what you meant by "vouchers", but what if if The State covers the missing part of the tenant's financial obligations to their landlord? If the tenant's fallen on hard times (but is otherwise a fine tenant), why should the landlord care where the money comes from? The problem with "Just go live in public housing" is that in so many places, public housing just doesn't exist.
by simoncion
4/1/2025 at 2:26:36 PM
I think we mostly agree, but are debating over finer details (which is fine, I do enjoy lively discussions like that).The TL;DR is of course there are edge cases for everything. There are reasons that are perfectly "fine" for rent being late, etc. I could have had a personal emergency. My bank could have had computer problems, etc. There are also reasons it can take time for a landlord to fix something. I may as a tenant willingly prioritize cheaper rent, knowing that my plumbing issue may take longer to fix as a wait for a cheaper plumber not on call 24x7 can take longer.
There are deadbeat landlords and there are deadbeat tenants. IMHO, whatever the law dictates should make it suck to be either. If a rule needs to pick a side, it should probably tilt to the tenant as a landlord should otherwise know what they're getting into with risks, etc.
> In nearly all jurisdictions, landlords give up very many of their property rights when they rent it out for folks to live in. For example, they are expected to meet basic habitability requirements (and cannot fob responsibility for this off to their tenants), and are very often barred from wandering into their property whenever they feel like.
This is not true everywhere. In many parts of Europe, the tenant is responsible for almost everything after it exits a wall, including in cabinets, a good chunk of plumbing, utilities, and appliances (this is particularly true in Switzerland and Germany - there are many stories of perplexed foreigners moving into apartments they saw that was still being used by the previous tenants and seeing striped down kitchens, etc).
> Some landlords out there would argue pretty strenuously that the raft of restrictions they're burdened with means that they already are part of the social safety net.
This is true. Like many people, I've lived in sub-standard housing in my student days. Hilariously, I look fondly on that era of my life because I knew it was temporary and of course we prioritized alcohol, fun, etc.
There's a very real problem that if one removes "rundown" housing that it usually just removes the cheaper rung of the ladder, making it harder for poor people to live anywhere. Some jurisdictions provide specific programs (vouchers, tax advantages, etc) for providing "low-income" housing to cover this. Some, in particular "champagne socialist" groups, use it to push out undesirables.
> I would argue that providing rental housing to people who can't afford to buy in the area is totally being part of the social safety net.
Then I think landlords should totally get supports, either directly or indirectly. I just don't think a rental unit that's geared to professinals, etc should be part of that.
> Man, landlords (especially ones in "hot" areas) get so many financial advantages. I'm disinterested in giving them more.
I agree with what you're saying. Any new policies should be holistic and take full stock of what rules are already present and replace a lot of bad ones.
> Perhaps this is what you meant by "vouchers", but what if if The State covers the missing part of the tenant's financial obligations to their landlord? If the tenant's fallen on hard times (but is otherwise a fine tenant), why should the landlord care where the money comes from? The problem with "Just go live in public housing" is that in so many places, public housing just doesn't exist.
I meant vouchers or public housing as an example of a long term policy, I don't think it should be a short term solution to sudden rent issues. Taken holistically, temp housing support could happen via unemployment benefits that could take rent into consideration (I'm assuming there's also a good reason the tenant doesn't have savings or can't move in with relatives, etc). The issue is that employment insurance, housing, welfare, etc are often the responsibility of different levels of government, making holistic policies more difficult.
by hylaride
3/28/2025 at 2:01:44 PM
> I can think of a couple who were absolute nightmares. I can think of a couple others who were an absolute dream. The worst small-time landlord was WAY worse than the worst big property management firm, but the best small-time landlord was far better than the best big property management firm I've been a tenant of.This is basically my experience I wrote about above, the downside risk for mom and pop landlords is way way worse than corp landlords in my experience (and pretty much everyone else I know).
by jhonof
3/28/2025 at 1:59:20 PM
I (and most of the people I know), have had the opposite experience as you. Essentially everyone I know has moved into corp landlord situations because the downside risk is a lot lower and there is a paper trail if you need to dispute anything. I have like a 50% hit rate on mom and pop landlords being awful, I can give three examples off the top of my head:1. New landlords bought a place I was living in and wanted to do in their words "minor upgrades to the house", but during the construction they would "keep it livable" and not require me to move. I came back after work one day to my water being off (and a toilet removed), and they didn't turn it on for two weeks after that (and kept the toilet removed). I had to get a lawyer involved for rent reimbursement.
2. My water heater broke and flooded my house in the middle of the night. The landlord took 1 month to start fixing the completely flooded apartment, and then the landlord tried for a year (threatened legal action as a bluff) to get me to pay for the new water heater despite it being their property, and maintenance being in the lease as their problem. I obv never paid because it was basically just a shakedown.
3. My landlord tried to just not pay me a month of rent owed after they sold the property with me living in it. He called me several times trying to "make a deal", and I told him that it was a cost associated with him selling the house and that I would not leave until he paid me the month owed. He waited until literally the last possible day to pay me and yelled at me on the phone that I was being unfair despite it just being money he owed me.
Every corp landlord I have had has been by the book. Yes my rent has gone up marginally, but at least there is a paper trail and they do not try to do any of the crazy stuff I just described.
That being said, I did have one mom/pop landlord who built me a deck with a bike locker over the course of a summer once, that guy was great.
by jhonof
3/28/2025 at 3:26:31 PM
I think all we are learning from this thread is that there is a non-trivial number of tenants who are terrible and there is a non-trivial number of landlords who are terrible. The activity of renting a home is fraught with risk that your counterparty is terrible. The two parties' financial interests are often opposed, and state and local law tends to incentivize at least one and sometimes both parties towards being terrible.I would never want to be a renter again, and I also have no interest in becoming a landlord.
by ryandrake
3/28/2025 at 8:28:23 AM
> I would love to purchase a home, but even 10 years of a software engineering salary are not enough for that in NYC.
by throwaway2037
3/28/2025 at 11:13:44 AM
If you’re paying a million dollars to own a studio apartment (essentially a hotel room), something has gone horribly wrong. That could be any number of things (inflation, insane property valuations, unreasonable demand for city life), but that same money could be spent very differently and go much further in a different location.by Telemakhos
3/28/2025 at 2:18:40 PM
You pay the million dollars, rent it at $3.5k/mo, get a 3.5% return from rent, and then let the market drive up the value of the place 6-7% a year.You now have an investment returning a fairly steady ~10% annually, which matches the returns on some pretty bad junk bonds, however on paper your risk is much less. Or you could live in it and just get the 6-7% annual return, with even lower risk.
That's why the apartment costs $1M.
by Workaccount2
3/28/2025 at 1:36:51 PM
In Manhattan, in a good building, good neighborhood, 1M USD for a 25sqm studio sounds fine.by throwaway2037
3/28/2025 at 2:10:07 PM
New York City consists of more than Manhattan. There are plenty of other places on subway lines where a million dollars buys a lot more.by nyc_data_geek1
3/28/2025 at 5:16:24 PM
Another factor is the apartment maintenance fees can be steep.by insane_dreamer
3/28/2025 at 8:25:38 PM
This.In New Zealand the only accessible way for the moderately wealthy to save is property (a failed financial system)
So there is a proliferation of "mum and dad" landlords who have huge political power, two "investment" properties, and they make life hell and insecure for renters
I rented until I was in my forties, and that is what it was like. They are not all bad, but many cannot believe that their tennents own their home, if not the property it is in. A landlord can not "drop by" for any reason, legally, but most importantly, morally
Being a landlord should be a business. Nobody should have tenants in an "investment" property. It is a conflict of interest and a power imbalance that immiserates the tenants
On top of that the poorest 60% are handing over the lion's share of their income to the richest 15%
So much needs to change....
by worik
3/27/2025 at 6:33:50 PM
My dad is landlord of an 8-plex in a small town. My brother is a social worker in a big city. When they get together and talk it's amazing how much their jobs overlap. So much of the job as a small time landlord these days is dealing with drug abuse, interpersonal problems, police, social services, housing authorities, etc.by legitster
3/27/2025 at 7:00:47 PM
Around the time we bought our place we had some spare cash and thought about getting another house. I'd seen the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book which had the advice that you should buy a rental property only it was wildly cashflow positive after the mortgage.That's not realistic in most cases but we saw one rental property which looked crazy profitable that was full of Section 8 tenants. We passed on it because it was really buying yourself a job as a social worker and the fact that we were bleeding hearts would make it harder, not easier. I think my wife and I have gained the maturity that we might be able to handle that now but we've also gotten better at setting boundaries such that we wouldn't.
by PaulHoule
3/27/2025 at 9:46:57 PM
I thought "section 8" tenants had a guaranteed rent. But yeah, probably would still be a job.by m463
3/27/2025 at 10:08:47 PM
In section 8 a few bad tenants strip everything of value to hawk for drugs. Sure the rent is paid but now the city is up your ass for code violations when the very people that destroyed the place complain it isn't habitable. Which you must now repair so it can be stolen again.by ty6853
3/28/2025 at 6:56:53 AM
I believe Section 8 also comes with regular inspections. Some locales do regular inspections anyway, but many don't.Some Section 8 tenants have complex interactions with their neighbors and their environment, and I think eviction of Section 8 tenants is harder too.
by toast0
3/28/2025 at 1:49:56 PM
When you live near people who have complex interactions with their neighbours you get comfortable with using the term 'assholes'by harvey9
3/28/2025 at 1:44:54 PM
That's a result of the market your dad is in. Vast numbers of renters and landlords are just ordinary people with no/not dealing with drug or social problems.by harvey9
3/28/2025 at 10:06:02 AM
I thought about renting out property for passive income, but after speaking with a friend locally about issues hes had, changed my mind. Not worth the hassle. In the one case, the tenant stopped paying their power bill and the power company cut them off. The tenant proceeded to tear down the inside of the house and burn it for heat. The kitchen island and kitchen cabinet fronts were burned, for instance. In another instance, when cleaning out a property, he found a miscarried fetus left behind in one of the toilets. Both tenants were also evicted for not paying their rent. So yeah, not worth it.by batch12
3/28/2025 at 10:43:46 AM
Those are pretty extreme horror stories, but in general everything I've heard from small time landlords makes it sound like a terrible value proposition even under normal circumstances. The ones it works out well for are the exception.The dwelling rental niche is far beyond over-farmed and is definitely overhyped. As with so many other things in our economy, the big players are usually the only ones with decent margins, and even they have to cut corners and be somewhat lucky on dice rolls to get them.
by slfnflctd
3/27/2025 at 6:41:18 PM
I’ve also seen this happen in NYS. Tenants do the craziest shit (selling showers to crackheads and discovering a near thousand dollar water bill was one of the tamer tales), fight tooth and nail to stay, and leave the place uninhabitable when they finally are forced to go.Unfortunately the local mom and pop landlords get wrecked by this while only the big corporate landlords have the resources and scale to weather these situations.
by rm_-rf_slash
3/27/2025 at 7:20:04 PM
It's a law of large numbers thing. Americans romanticized mom&pop landlords vs big greedy landlords, but.. it's a bad business to be a smalltime landlord. It's like putting all your money in one stock.If, say, 5% of the population is crazy, and make for bad tenants.. then owning 10-20+ units puts you in a position of always having 90%+ of your revenue coming in.
If you have 1 unit then most of the time you are OK, but every once in a while you may lose 100% of your revenue for 3-12 months, while you have to keep spending on mortgage/tax/utilities, plus lawyers, repairs, etc.
by steveBK123
3/27/2025 at 8:26:50 PM
Sounds like it's time for a co-op.by jjani
3/27/2025 at 8:48:58 PM
Anyone who has lived in a co-op might disagree lolby steveBK123
3/28/2025 at 7:22:11 AM
The key thing would be the government finally go and improve the situation around mental health care accessibility and a proper social safety net.People don't fall for drugs on their own - the utter, utter majority fall for drugs to self-medicate for whatever crisis they're facing. Be it perspectivelessness, losing a family member or one's job - across the Western world, governments have completely given up supporting people who hit a rough patch in life, and now it's a situation that is very, very hard to resolve.
by mschuster91
3/28/2025 at 8:49:18 AM
>The key thing would be the government finally go and improve the situation around mental health care accessibility and a proper social safety net.You're right but we are so far from this now I can't imagine it being possible until one or two full generations of people die out and we start teaching empathy
by Braxton1980
3/28/2025 at 6:40:45 AM
The path forward from this is to stop trying to write laws that are wealth-neutral on these kinds of matters. Small mom-and-pop should be allowed to do many things that extremely wealthy landlords and/or corporations are not allowed to do. The penalties for violations should be ruinous for the wealthy and small for the non-wealthy.by BrenBarn
3/28/2025 at 9:18:30 AM
Why? If I'm renting a place it doesn't matter whether my landlord is a big corporation or some guy and his wife, I still need to know that the rent isn't going to triple next week, I still need to know I won't be evicted without notice, and I still need the heating the work.If mom-and-pop can't cope with the responsibilities of being a landlord they should sell up to someone who can, not expect to be let off the hook when they make someone's life a misery.
by jon-wood
3/28/2025 at 9:55:09 AM
That's exactly what the thread OP is complaining about - mom-and-pop homeowners choosing not to increase the housing supply by adding an ADU that they would rent out to someone, even though this is now legal to do, because they can't cope with the responsibilities of being a landlord.Also, if a property did have an ADU in it, and someone was renting it out, a prospective buyer who didn't want the responsibility of being a landlord would find that a huge negative, which would decrease the value of the property to the existing owner, and provide additional incentive to avoid constructing the ADU at all.
by JuniperMesos
3/28/2025 at 3:19:25 PM
That's a big one, I'm sure. Homes are already illiquid assets. Why on earth would a homeowner choose to add something that would make it even less liquid/valuable?If I were looking to buy a home, then a home with a tenant-occupied ADU is less desirable than an otherwise identical home without the ADU. The hassle and risk outweighs the rental cash flow.
by ryandrake
3/30/2025 at 5:07:23 PM
Because of disproportional risk.Landlords generally can't suddenly increases rents. It happens only at the end of lease, and everyone knows when the lease is going to expire, and you have 1-2 months at a minimum to negotiate the lease renewal. If a landlord suddenly increases the rent by a lot (although most leases, or city laws, cap max rent increases), it will be disruptive to you. But your worst case scenario is to move to another market price rental in 1-2 months.
For a landlord, a tenant who stops paying rent, damages the place, etc is a much bigger financial and logistical risk. In most places, it's a lengthy, high-effort process to evict a bad tenant even when you have documented evidence. This is a very difficult scenario for a mom and pop homeowner, hence rules should be different for them at least, compared to large corporations.
And in your good (but overzealous) intent to protect the general majority of good tenants, you're not realizing that thenet result of the above is:
- Landlords are hesitant to rent their places or ADUs unless they really need the money, which reduces supply, thus increasing rents
- Landlords have to charge higher to account for the risk of a bad tenant, as well as for a complex eviction process, thus increasing rents
Rent control like laws benefit current renters, in their current properties, while harming both landlords and importantly for your pov, future renters, including current renters in their next rental. But since this cost is diffused to the future, it's easy to ignore and forget.
by tsycho
3/28/2025 at 12:23:04 PM
Because that is a short-sighted system where society is incentivized to, over time, concentrate all property and power into the hands of fewer and fewer wealthy individuals and corporations, until eventually one day there is no more mom-and-pop. Mom-and-pop is shrinking and will continue to shrink because of "wealth-neutral" policies. Just like what's happened with agriculture. You can't buy a ranch or farm today if you're not a millionaire, and eventually the same will be true of all property that is resource-constrained.by Lendal
3/28/2025 at 10:52:03 AM
> Small mom-and-pop should be allowed to do many things that extremely wealthy landlords and/or corporations are not allowed to do.The problem is, then you end up with structuring/smurfing. It's already a common thing in real estate to have one LLC per each building in a development to prevent creditors from clawing money back from the actual developer corporation/fund, no need to entice this even more.
Besides, small landlords already are notorious for egregious violations of regulations. Creating effectively two classes of renters doesn't solve the problem, at all.
by mschuster91
3/28/2025 at 6:37:45 PM
There need to be greater transparency requirements around that, and legislation targeted at "beneficial owners", with ruinous penalties for any attempt to conceal beneficial ownership. Anything other than full disclosure of all beneficial ownership would mean that if it is discovered, the penalty is you will lose all the real estate you own.by BrenBarn
3/28/2025 at 3:25:49 PM
Most people I know (including my parents) who've tried to do the whole "middle-class route to riches!" thing by becoming small-scale landlords have advised me to never, ever, ever try, for exactly the reasons you state: sooner or later you'll get fucked over so hard by a tenant that it wipes out years of income, and you've done it all for nothing.Exception: one guy, well aware of these issues, had a hack for it—he only owned houses near medical or nursing schools. Nursing and medical students pay their rent and don't trash the place.
by alabastervlog
3/27/2025 at 5:58:24 PM
>* There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights, and the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.*This is a big problem in a lot of places. It's really hard for cities to strike a good balance between renters and owners, and I think few do it well. Especially for the edge cases (really bad owners and renters).
by e40
3/27/2025 at 6:07:45 PM
The balance simple - renters have total rights as long as they pay on time and there is no damage on the property except normal wear and tear and 0 when when not paying. You as landlord can't say anything as long as the property is not damaged for the duration of the contract. You always renegotiate at market rates. There is no concept of squatting and evictions are fast.That's it. Works like a charm. No bullshits like rent control or whatever.
by ReptileMan
3/27/2025 at 7:19:54 PM
I think this completely elides the point the gp was making about the edge cases being the hardest part. As siblings have pointed out, even establishing "no damage to the property beyond normal wear and tear" is frequently contentious and not self-evident. Rights (and courts) exist precisely because parties frequently represent the facts of a situation to their maximal benefit.Also, while reasonable people can agree that there's room to improve the balance on tenants rights, the idea of swinging from "total" to "0" rights based solely on payment status doesn't strike me as the debate's end.
by ethersteeds
3/27/2025 at 8:52:14 PM
It works wonders for utilities and telcos. You stop paying your bills - your phone is dead, you have no internet and electricity in X days after skipping an invoice. Why should be leasing real estate any different?by ReptileMan
3/28/2025 at 8:50:13 AM
Because they don't cut those off right away, especially electricity.by Braxton1980
3/28/2025 at 11:36:06 AM
In my country they do. You have 2 weeks delinquency and that's it.by ReptileMan
3/27/2025 at 9:27:13 PM
It is expensive to be poor because of feedback loops.If you lose a job and miss a paycheck this month, maybe you need an extra month to get back on your feet. If you lose housing right away, it's gonna be harder to find a job ("why is your suit wrinkled? why do you smell like you haven't taken a shower in a week?"), which makes it harder to get an apartment that would stabilize things.
We have safety nets so the smallest bump doesn't shoot you right to the bottom.
It shouldn't be indefinite, and the problem is finding how many months of friction should exist before we reach "this aint gonna get better", but instant-cutoff quickly becomes a feedback loop of shit.
by floatrock
3/28/2025 at 12:21:34 AM
Ok but we have plenty of other safety nets. Govt programs like SNAP, Unemployment, TANF, etc. We have other potential safety nets such as family, churches, various other organizations that help out, friend’s couches. I don’t understand why a small time landlord who probably doesn’t have huge cash flow on a property should be unable to pay the mortgage on the property for 6 months or a year. It doesn’t seem right to me.by lotsoweiners
3/28/2025 at 2:22:04 PM
If a landlord can't pay the mortgage then they probably shouldn't be a landlord.by sc68cal
3/28/2025 at 2:29:33 PM
[dead]by totalkikedeath
3/27/2025 at 9:38:40 PM
This is laughably wrong.I can stop paying my electricity bill in november and our state's utility companies CANNOT cut me off until the spring, because without heat I would literally die in Maine. There are similar laws for gas utilities.
I can have a billion dollar bill with Verizon, but if I dial 911, they are legally obligated to connect me to emergency services.
Also, ask people who work for utility companies how well any of this works to actually compel payment from the kind of people who are good at abusing debt.
Answer: Fucking not at all. My brother worked for the cable company, rather limited regulation in terms of requiring the company to continue servicing someone who was delinquent. 95% of his job was still disconnects, often involving someone showing up to the door with their rifle to make a point.
by mrguyorama
3/28/2025 at 6:21:53 AM
[flagged]by Der_Einzige
3/28/2025 at 6:28:43 AM
Given there are more renters than landlords it's a literal Laffer Curve of popularity.by defrost
3/27/2025 at 6:36:38 PM
> as long as the property is not damagedAccording to who? Landlords already tend to exaggerate to try to keep your security deposit, tenants would have no motivation to admit to damages after the lease ends. If the answer is "go to court", then "evictions are fast" will have to be amended.
by gs17
3/27/2025 at 6:51:20 PM
[flagged]by KennyBlanken
3/27/2025 at 10:31:27 PM
Berkeley, CA in the 80s (90s?) a lady went into the hospital for an extended stay and rented her place. She had a verbal agreement that they'd leave when she got out. She got out, they didn't leave. Last I heard about the case it was 10 years later and they were still there.Yeah, I know, Berkeley. Rent control was very anti-landlord. But "rents have total rights as long as they pay" sounds too harsh to me.
by e40
3/27/2025 at 10:42:57 PM
I feel for the lady, but the problem is that she didn’t get it in writing. Renter protections are almost orthogonal.by archagon
3/28/2025 at 8:09:47 AM
> Renter protections are almost orthogonal.You think something other than renter protections was stopping her from kicking her squatter out?
by thaumasiotes
3/28/2025 at 10:41:46 AM
It's not squatting if the tenant is paying rent.by tomjakubowski
3/28/2025 at 12:19:51 AM
Yeah, that’s usually the answer. At the end of the day, never communicate with your tenant except through a lawyer or an officer. Corporate is much better fit for rent than small scale landlords. No emotions involved, no trust required, and they can achieve economy of scale with legal fees.by eddythompson80
3/28/2025 at 5:04:38 PM
Not only that, after X months of not paying the landlord can request an eviction, and from the moment the eviction is requested to the moment its executed the government pays the rent to the landlord (I believe 3 is reasonable for X, but it can be higher or lower).I'm a renter and always have been a renter, but it has always been crazy to me that the cost of people without a house is dumped on the unlucky landlord. If the decision is that this cost must be put on society, at least it should be spread among all citizens/landlords (e.g. with a tax on rent).
Not having the government paying while waiting for the eviction is the same as now: the government can just take ages.
The risk to landlords when the renters doesn't uphold the contract needs to be limited. This is also the reason why an insurance would be an inferior solution: there is still no incentive for the government to intervene fast.
We might find out that it's preferable to build social housing rather than paying rent to landlords, and the government starts actually doing something about it
by MakersF
3/28/2025 at 9:08:23 AM
"renegotiate at market rates" is extremely tenant-punishing, because the cost of moving for the tenant is much higher than the cost of finding a new tenant for a landlord. It becomes better if you remove the "renegotiate" part and couple the allowed rent increase to some index.by loglog
3/28/2025 at 10:24:04 AM
Why should an individual landlord have to subsidize an individual tenant? Its a scale of social interaction that doesnt make any sense.This can have lots of issues. Imagine something like a good school zone changing, an event that may not be accounted for by the index. Insurance and taxes are determined by current value, that is partially determined by market rent, but the landlord cant adjust.
This also hurts a specific landlord when it comes time to sell, making a tenanted property potentially less valuable (and reducing the incentive to take on a tenant at all). This does not impact the general property value mind, as the tenant only benefits and creates this problem if the index is below the market.
If you want a fair balance, "its mine as long as I pay market rent" is pretty good. "its mine as long as I pay indexed rent" is not great, as it removes the financial benefit of capital investment from the landlord.
by flask_manager
3/28/2025 at 11:21:42 AM
Yes picking carboard boxes from the store and stuffing them in the tiny US cars for a couple of blocks is a great cost.If you as a tenant want to lock a rate - sign long term contract. Then a year or six months before expiring start renew talks. Don't forget that market also changes - you may be in a better position too.
Look - I support the idea of people owning their own homes and renting being the exception than the norm. But you can't solve housing shortage by making the market for whatever stock there is even more inefficient. The brejnevki in the soviet union were terrible quality wise, but they get the job done in providing shelter from the elements for the rapidly urbanizing country.
In East and South East Asia they are also quite proficient in building massive 30 stories high rises.
by ReptileMan
3/28/2025 at 4:22:40 PM
I get what you're saying, but you're just not going to get a sofa, large dresser or cabinet, or anything like that into an American car, large as they are. Minivans or pickup trucks are a different story, which is a big part of the reason they're popular despite the online derision.by lupusreal
3/28/2025 at 9:48:21 AM
I strongly suspect that you've never been a landlord. Nor a particularly perceptive tenant in rental housing. Nor seen any police/tenant/landlord cases.Plus, the policy goal of allowing small-scale stuff like ADU's is to encourage people to become landlords. "Your tenant has total right" rules have the opposite effect.
by bell-cot
3/27/2025 at 6:22:51 PM
> You always renegotiate at market rates.As long as RealPage and friends exist, market rates are whatever they say they are. There’s no free market in real estate.
by TimorousBestie
3/27/2025 at 6:46:00 PM
There are now eight antitrust lawsuits against them by seven states + the DOJ. The DOJ and some states have started adding major landlords to their suits as well (since it is a cartel).Sadly, courts move slowly so it will probably be years before a decision.
by Aloisius
3/28/2025 at 6:57:03 AM
It doesn't matter how many suits are pending, it matters how many win and how stiff the penalties are.by BrenBarn
3/27/2025 at 10:45:39 PM
Trump’s DOJ will side with capital.by archagon
3/28/2025 at 1:37:16 AM
I would only assume after they each individually had a $5mil 1 on 1 dinner at Mar-a-Lagoby NekkoDroid
3/28/2025 at 8:50:44 AM
I agree, but most of the tenants' rights and left-wing groups reject this.They seem to want the landlord to take on the government's role to provide social housing and therefore you shouldn't be able to kick them out for non-payment, contracts should be very long (>5 years, or even indefinite), there should be rent control instead of market rates etc.
by schnitzelstoat
3/27/2025 at 6:13:21 PM
This is ideal if you're a landlord, but hell if you're a tenant.by singpolyma3
3/27/2025 at 6:46:52 PM
Limiting tenants' rights is good for vast majority (95%+ at least) of tenants. The way it is there are more and more obstacles (insurance, requiring proof of contract/work, very high deposits etc.) to just rent an apartment or a house. If the government thinks everyone deserves a roof then the government should build cheap, simple housing of last resort instead of forcing the property owners to take the risk.by bluecalm
3/27/2025 at 9:21:14 PM
Tenants rights are not only about how long you get to stay without paying rent. Not being able to compel your landlord to remove pests, mold or fix noisy steam radiators is not something that would benefit the vast majority of tenants.by sir0010010
3/28/2025 at 1:11:57 PM
Yeah, sure those are needed but they are not the reason you have to jump through hooves and pay ridiculous deposits just to rent an apartment. I know quite a few landlords. None of them would complain about stricter rules and obligations when it comes to maintenance. What they think about every day is non paying or otherwise problematic tenants. This affects the process they use to decide who to rent to and the demographic they are willing to rent to as well.The effect is that honest people find it difficult to rent an apartment because abusers run rampant and the system protects them. In some European countries you need to prove you have stable job and get recommendation from the previous landlord to even be in the consideration and then you basically have to go for an interview. It's a ridiculous and humiliating process which wouldn't exist if landlords could throw out abusers without much hassle.
by bluecalm
3/30/2025 at 3:36:47 PM
Ban deposits and proof of work requests like we have hereby singpolyma3
3/27/2025 at 6:25:28 PM
Why would it be hell?In France it can take years to evict people who stop paying rent. So now 90% of all rental contracts have an insurance for non-payments included in the contract.
A few bad apples forced every other tenant to pay more in rent just because politicians decided that squatters had more rights than the owners. And god have mercy on your soul if you decide to take back what is yours when you get tired of waiting for the justice system to do it's job. If you do, you'll be the one the cops will come for, not the squatters.
by rdm_blackhole
3/28/2025 at 8:37:05 AM
> now 90% of all rental contracts have an insurance for non-payments included in the contract.
by throwaway2037
3/28/2025 at 10:48:03 AM
You also sometimes need a guarantor and you need a CDI (indefinite work contract) to be able to rent in the first place. If you are on a short term contract (1 year or less) or if you are a student or out of work, then good luck to you.Then what happens in practice is that the owner will contract an insurance policy via the real estate agency that manages the rental property. As a result of this, in the end if the insurance company deems you to be too high risk, then they won't insure you and the owner will not take the risk to rent his dwelling without it even if they like you and want you to live in their rental.
So what we have is a de-facto rental market that is controlled by a few insurance companies who decide the fate of the tenants. The owner, the real estate agency don't really have much power in terms of decision.
For the owner it makes things easier, they don't really have to think too much. Their rent is guaranteed by the insurance company and for the real estate agency, they can always turn down "undesirable" tenants by claiming that the insurance company rejected their application.
The tenants most of the time have no idea about this stuff.
As you put it, it is a hidden tax on the tenants because the price of the insurance is now baked in the rent that is paid by everyone, good tenants or bad tenants alike. When I was working in RE 11 years ago, the insurance cost something like 2 to 3% of the monthly rent and then another 5 to 7% got paid to the real estate agency managing the rental.
Today, I reckon, after all the inflation from the past few years, most likely 15% of the rent is gone before the owner sees a dime each month. As you can imagine this is not a very good incentive to put your apartment on the market. And that is not even touching on the various rent control policies that have been rolled out in the last few years in certain cities which have exacerbated the rental crisis.
by rdm_blackhole
3/27/2025 at 6:20:23 PM
The courts should be speedy at forcing landlords to rectify problems just as the courts should be speedy at forcing out squatters.There is no reason either should take 6 months+ to litigate (real world example). I even had an email from the tenant stating they would start paying again if we would reduce the rent.
No damage, no question about the facts, just someone who knew that worst case scenario is 6 months free housing for them, simply because that’s how long paperwork apparently takes.
End result? I’m even more selective to who I rent out to, and the costs are borne by innocent people who just don’t happen to have sufficient history.
by lotsofpulp
3/27/2025 at 6:26:00 PM
I’m all for higher property taxes to increase courtroom bandwidth, but I doubt most landlords are.by TimorousBestie
3/27/2025 at 6:39:43 PM
Those higher property taxes will be passed on directly to the renters.by vondur
3/27/2025 at 8:06:16 PM
Prices are not solely a function of the seller’s cost of goods sold. Supply and demand determine price, so if there is sufficient supply, then rents will be too low for large landlords to recoup their tax costs, so they will be incentivized to sell the property. This means less rent seeking, and higher supply of housing for buyers.by lotsofpulp
3/27/2025 at 6:51:52 PM
Landlords typically despise property taxes (and land value taxes, c.f. sibling comment) because they have to pay them even if their property is unoccupied.They’d much rather pass on the cost of higher rental insurance, or failing that an income tax hike.
But anyway, generally speaking, I think they benefit on average more from a slow and inefficient judicial system. The occasional 6+ month eviction battle is a rare negative outcome that comparatively few landlords have to deal with.
by TimorousBestie
3/27/2025 at 6:27:09 PM
I am. I say hit everyone with a marginal land value tax rate too, so the more land value you own (even via partnerships), the higher your tax rate is.by lotsofpulp
3/28/2025 at 8:39:43 AM
> The courts should be speedy at forcing landlords to rectify problems just as the courts should be speedy at forcing out squatters.
by throwaway2037
3/28/2025 at 12:47:48 PM
I see no reason to add multiple tracks to a legal/justice system, except to add avenues for corruption.by lotsofpulp
3/27/2025 at 6:42:20 PM
How is me being untouchable as long I pay on time a hell?by ReptileMan
3/27/2025 at 6:16:48 PM
That is quite an overstatement.by baggy_trough
3/27/2025 at 6:42:41 PM
> This is a big problem in a lot of placesWhere is your evidence of this "big problem"?
No state allows what you describe. This being some sort of widespread problem is a myth that's been running around for decades after Pacific Heights which was part of Hollywood cashing in on white fright in the late 80's early 90's.
For example, in super-liberal Massachusetts: if you are one day late with your rent, the landlord can start eviction proceedings. The tenant is given time to find legal assistance and respond - shockingly, you can't just slap an eviction notice on the door and bounce someone onto the street. You have to prove to a judge that your tenant isn't doing what they should be doing, or is doing things they shouldn't be. Shockingly, your tenant has a right to defend themselves. Do people abuse the process? Sure, some do. They get away with it at most once, because...there's a record of it all in housing court and eviction proceedings are pretty much a deathblow with any landlord doing their homework.
> the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.*
...which is why landlords screen tenants for employment/income and renting history, search for records under their name in housing court, and google them to see if they have any arrests in the news, etc. Come on.
> Especially for the edge cases (really bad owners and renters)
Bad landlord far outweight bad tenants in this housing market. Whereas one tenant might make one landlord's life difficult, one bad landlord can make hundreds if not thousands of people's lives miserable and dangerous. Daniel Ohebshalom is a great example:
https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/news/017-24/nyc-s-infamous-wors...
That press release is the culmination of something like a decade of housing rights advocates trying to get the city to do something about him. And what did he do? Soon as he go out of jail, he started harassing his tenants:
https://nypost.com/2024/05/01/us-news/nycs-worst-landlord-in...
This isn't some anecdote.
Barry Singer, with an average of 1,804 open HPD violations across seven buildings
Alfred Thompson, with an average of 1,285 open HPD violations across 15 buildings
Karen Geer, with an average of 1,193 open HPD violations across seven buildings
Melanie Martin, with an average of 1,132 open HPD violations across four buildings
Claudette Henry, with an average of 1,130 open HPD violations across 15 buildings
That list is a "hundred" of the top violators and it's likely the list of landlords with more than a dozen violations is probably more like "thousand" range or higher.
In my city, landlords are infamous for charging all sorts of illegal fees and also stealing people's security deposits under the guise of made-up cleaning and repair expenses; the courts have repeatedly ruled normal cleaning and simple repair (like fixing picture hangar hooks) is not valid reason for using someone's security deposit - it's part of the cost of doing business.
You can take them to housing court - and maybe eventually get your money back - but in the meantime you're definitely not getting your lease renewed so you're left needing to find a new place...without a reference, which pretty much tanks your chances of finding another apartment because the market is so tight.
by KennyBlanken
3/27/2025 at 6:56:13 PM
> Do people abuse the process? Sure, some do. They get away with it at most once, because...there's a record of it all in housing court and eviction proceedings are pretty much a deathblow with any landlord doing their homework.The problem is that for large corporate landlords this is a statistical risk that can be priced in and accounted for across hundreds of units.
For small mom-and-pop landlords renting out their basement, it's a roll of the dice on whether any given tenant will completely ruin their life and be impossible to get rid of.
Of course many people will respond to this by saying that the rights of people to have a place to live are more important than the rights of homeowners to have a bit of side income, but if the law makes it too risky to rent out a second suite, nobody will want to do it -- which makes the housing crisis even worse for renters as there will be fewer places available to rent.
by seryoiupfurds
3/27/2025 at 7:25:58 PM
It's an interesting problem I'm not sure what the solution is.Being a small-time landlord is unreasonably risky due to tenant friendly laws and backed up courts.
Similarly, I've found renting from small-time landlords to be a worse experience. They tend to do things that a large corporation would eventually face lawsuits over - discrimination, demanding more money up front, keeping deposits, poor upkeep of units, etc.
So I'm not even sure I want to encourage small time landlording anyway.
Some things maybe really are better managed by big, lawsuit-averse, emotionless companies.
by steveBK123
3/27/2025 at 8:29:14 PM
Oh yeah, I definitely agree that it's an undesirable housing option, and that it shouldn't be a priority to grow it into the future.The problem is that in cities that have regulated apartments out of existence it's the only existing place for renters to live, so we should be mindful of things that will squeeze its availability before enough apartments can be built to take up the demand.
by seryoiupfurds
3/27/2025 at 8:53:50 PM
I mean zoning to me really is the crux of it.In expensive Brooklyn all the dense, high-rise new construction is along the water front .. 15 minutes walk from the trains. The buildings are so far from the trains, that many of them advertise private shuttle services to entice buyers/renters.
Meanwhile the subway stations that the shuttle take you to are surrounded by blocks and blocks of 3 story buildings.
Its all completely backwards, except that there was no existing constituency living on the water front to protest & block new development.
by steveBK123
3/28/2025 at 6:59:22 AM
> It's an interesting problem I'm not sure what the solution is.The solution is to make the rules different for small landlords.
by BrenBarn
3/28/2025 at 2:28:08 PM
Sounds good in theory, but in practice this stuff is unworkable slippery slope to unmitigated arb.How do you quantify small - number of units or dollar value? What is small - 1 unit? 2? 5?.
What stops a larger landlord setting up 1000 LLCs each managing 3 unit?
As soon as you get into "different laws apply to different people" you run into problems.
by steveBK123
3/28/2025 at 6:38:46 PM
> As soon as you get into "different laws apply to different people" you run into problems.But when you don't do that, you run into different problems, which is what we have run into already.
by BrenBarn
3/28/2025 at 7:32:57 PM
The reflex to make complex laws/tax structures more complex usually accrues benefits to the bigger players more able to parse, navigate and arbitrage those structures.Every time US tax code gets more complicated, it usually doesn't help the bottom 50%.
by steveBK123
3/28/2025 at 8:41:07 PM
That's true to an extent, and overall I agree that things should be simplified, but I think there's a special case when the "complication" is something like "if you are bigger and more able to navigate this, you must therefore pay more". Create a feedback loop where increasing resources automatically result in higher fees and fines.by BrenBarn
3/28/2025 at 12:06:47 PM
> It's an interesting problem I'm not sure what the solution is.Actually funded court system?
Having to wait months to evict a tenant for legitimate reasons is a huge issue if it's affecting >50% of your rental units.
by lesuorac
3/28/2025 at 2:23:53 PM
Yes funding courts would solve a lot of gray area issuesby steveBK123
3/27/2025 at 9:20:35 PM
> Some things maybe really are better managed by big, lawsuit-averse, emotionless companies.Completely disagree. Every poor experience I had renting was with a big emotionless company. I have never had a poor experience with a small time landlord.
Just like landlord vet their prospective tenants, you should be vetting your prospective landlords. Someone with a few units is pretty easy to track down folks for references.
The problematic ones tended to be the ones in the "midrange" - between small time and big company. Using horrible management companies as contractors to farm out the dirty work, and generally getting away with it since they were big enough to throw their weight around - but not big enough to care about being squeaky clean to the letter of the law.
I'd rent out my basement mother in law unit, but due to tenant rights in my city there is not a single chance I will ever do so. From direct personal experience I know how difficult it is to remove a problematic tenant from a living situation no matter how much impact they may have on your life.
The outcome is that there is one less extremely affordable unit in the area for living in.
by phil21
3/27/2025 at 8:06:31 PM
It's amusing that you picked Massachusetts. You can get rid of all eviction records as part of the Affordable Homes Act.What this means is that you can rent somewhere, not pay, it will take a minimum of 6 months to get rid of them since they can request RAFT and you must wait until the application is processed before the trial can proceed. After they're successfully evicted, after 4 years of no evictions, they can have it sealed, regardless if the judgement is paid or not.
Or, you can pay the judgement and have it sealed immediately, effectively getting a free loan. Not to mention, if you don't pay and proceedings are brought against you, if you pay to cure, prior to going to trial, you can have those sealed immediately with or without the landlord, so other landlords can't even know about that either.
Repeat. Free rent.
by amazingamazing
3/27/2025 at 8:20:19 PM
So what does the abuser do for the 4 years they're not able to get an apartment due to the eviction?by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
3/27/2025 at 8:50:35 PM
they go to a small landlord who doesn't check for eviction records. most likely after the law evictions will no longer show up in credit reports anyway since the penalties for showing sealed records is high, and it's unclear how you would know they're sealed to begin with.by amazingamazing
3/27/2025 at 7:00:04 PM
Eviction proceedings suck. It takes at least 6 months and you don't get rent in that time even if you have a slam dunk case. Imagine if you took out a home loan to build an ADU and lost the equivalent of half a year of payments on it.The risk of legal costs are basically passed along in the cost of rent. And bigger corporate landlords are naturally going to have a bigger advantage because they can pool their risks.
The point isn't that there are bad landlords. It's that you are creating a treadmill. The more you add tenant protections, the more costs you add to housing. And the more incentives you give landlords to screen tenants and otherwise behave badly.
by legitster
3/28/2025 at 1:58:01 PM
> They don't need the money. If you can afford a home in the area, you're already pretty well off.This is a part of the problem which I think isn't discussed often enough. Because of the varying marginal utility of money, if the divide between rich and poor becomes big enough, owners will not want to rent out in their own homes, because nothing the tenant can pay will make any significant difference to their personal budget, and certainly not enough to make up for the stress/risk.
Maybe they can find someone non-threatening enough where the benefit of having someone living in the cellar apartment, to discourage break-ins when they're away etc. makes up for the risk. That is, I guess, how I managed to get a rental in one of the most expensive parts of Oslo ~20 years ago. But I really doubt I'd gotten that if I wasn't extremely non-threatening, let alone if I had been a minority of some sort.
by vintermann
3/28/2025 at 2:38:07 PM
The really expensive neighborhoods are too desirable for anyone to live there. They exist as capital anchors for overseas sovereign wealth funds and various long-run finance concerns to sink into a deeper market than their own, to act as collateral for their business adventures and as a currency reserve hedged against local inflation. No rent you could pay is worth the risk.Low property taxes are highly conducive to this use-case, and notably, tenant residents can vote on raising property taxes and overseas sovereign wealth funds can't.
by mapt
3/28/2025 at 2:32:44 PM
There are often a lot of redundant parts of the legal & zoning code intended to limit development. You can legalize ADUs de jure, but you probably still have setbacks that de facto prohibit ADUs, you still have parking or curb or utility requirements that de facto prohibit ADUs, you still have HOAs that de facto prohibit ADUs, you still have "impact fees" and utility billing issues and all sorts of recently-added building codes that de facto prohibit ADUs. On top of that, the ADUs are usually extremely limited in character - "less than 1200sqft, less than 30% of the floor area of the house, no more than two residents", etc, etc. On top of that, you're paying for a financing category that the banks don't know how to deal with, without the subsidies that homeowners enjoy on mortgage payments, you're suddenly getting a property tax bill that's higher, and you're facing the possibility of squatting tenants under a regime that's designed to be inherently hostile to landlords.You still have all sorts of laws against doing the thing you just supposedly legalized.
by mapt
3/28/2025 at 3:10:41 PM
We recently completed an ADU project in California and figuring out the financing was particularly difficult. Add on additional requirements like mandatory solar, fees on top of fees ($5000 school impact fee was just one of many), a local building department with one person reviewing everything… It’s not an easy undertaking at all!by jprokay13
3/27/2025 at 6:49:24 PM
As a YIMBY, ADUs are an introductory "first step" policy that should obviously be legal, but were never expected to have any real effect.True YIMBY policy would be zoning for six-story apartments by-right citywide, with density going up to 20 stories near rapid transit.
But even policies that sound great on paper are often sabotaged by cities with unworkable affordability requirements that prevent anything from being built.
by seryoiupfurds
3/27/2025 at 9:19:58 PM
In 2007, my house was re-zoned from R-9600 (Single family residential, 9600 SF lots minimum) to a high-density transit oriented zoning (the acronym changes every other year, but was originally PCBTPV, Planned Community Business Transit Pedestrian Village), in expectation that a light rail station will be opening within 1/4 to 1/2 mile by 2035. The new zoning requirement is six story minimum, minimum of 50 dwelling units/acre density, tax credits for elder housing and child care facilities, etc.This is in a suburb just north of Seattle. I am currently 4 miles from the nearest light rail station, which is a 5 minute walk + a 10 minute bus ride that comes along very frequently, then a 40 minute ride to downtown Seattle, so by US suburban standards the foot/transit access is already pretty darn good. There is a small neighborhood market and a few restaurants a 5 minute walk away, and a large supermarket is really only 15 minutes walk. (but yeah, we usually drive there.)
So far, zero occupied single-family houses have been knocked down to build high density developments. There were a few dilapidated/abandoned old houses on large parcels along the freeway that were bulldozed for apartments, which was an improvement. But even if you put policies and incentives in place to encourage re-development, it can take decades for market forces to reach a tipping point where developers are actually willing to make cash offers at or above the market value on existing properties to make these changes happen.
by buildsjets
3/28/2025 at 12:01:06 PM
Two hours of daily commute to work, to live in a dense suburban hellscape is "good"?by itsoktocry
3/27/2025 at 8:49:55 PM
>As a YIMBY, ADUs are an introductory "first step" policy that should obviously be legal, but were never expected to have any real effect.This is such a weird thing to say. Why would lawmakers ever want to support a new YIMBY policy when the people that support them openly admit that it was never meant to achieve what they claimed was going to achieve?
by GenerWork
3/27/2025 at 11:05:33 PM
If you listen to the histrionics that NIMBYs say, it's an example legislation that would lead to typical NIMBY histrionics, but when implemented leads to none of those claimed issues, because it doesn't get used that much."See, that wasn't that hard". It's baby's first upzoning.
by mac-mc
3/28/2025 at 3:11:05 PM
Another factor for me is there is risk to hiring contractors. If i could just pay money and have confidence things on my house would be fixed I would do it in a heartbeat. But you have to become a lawyer and project manager to make sure they do it.> There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights
Yes, these laws also increase the cost of housing.
by grandempire
3/28/2025 at 4:13:42 PM
Laws that protect individuals vs corporations usually hurt small businesses vs individuals a lot. Maybe not more than the harm caused by big corps, but it certainly has unfortunate side-effects.by packetlost
3/28/2025 at 5:17:49 PM
Yes. I agree. It could still be a net benefit. But it does have cost.by grandempire
3/27/2025 at 7:07:55 PM
> we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things.I've been watching something similar happen in LA with Measure HLA, a "safe streets" bill that was supposed to require the city to include safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists during regular road maintenance. The bill passed with broad support but none of the people in charge of the agencies seem to want to do any of that stuff, so they either drag their feet or simply don't comply, leading to lawsuits and delays. (Just today, Metro voted unanimously to not include a now-legally mandated bike lane along a major new busway, claiming it's not their problem. Which might be true — and that's a separate issue — but playing hot potato with safety & mobility improvements feels like a leadership problem, not a legal problem.)
I like designing good incentives but in this case just passing laws is not working. You also need the actors to want the change. (I personally would be focusing on installing new leadership.)
by danphilibin
3/27/2025 at 7:22:54 PM
What usually happens with these mandates is you get road markings that pretend to be a bike lane just to satisfy the contract requirements and siphon off federal ISTEA funding for the budgetary savings. The reality is that they are usually fancy death traps with no engineering rigor put into making them safe or functional for bicyclists.by kevin_thibedeau
3/27/2025 at 7:23:52 PM
Or worse, "sharrows" in the middle of a busy car lane. Ride here if you don't value your life.by baggy_trough
3/28/2025 at 4:49:06 PM
ADUs are particularly ineffective, because each one requires the owner to work as a part-time landlord with the tenant being almost their housemate. All the headache without much increase in income.I happen to have chatted with the head of a large commercial contractor in Portland a few months ago. He told me Portland's unattractive to developers because, compared to other cities, rents are low and the cost to build is high, so the flow of real estate investment dollars into Portland is slow.
Since the problem we're trying to solve is making rent cheaper, conditional on the current state of the economy, the solution here is making it cheaper to build dense residential in Portland in the urban core and improve transit options.
by directevolve
3/27/2025 at 7:30:27 PM
> There's a general fear of being a landlordYes. And this is fixable, if there is political will. There is a long list of locales where I'd never want to be a landlord due to how little recourse you have in cases of tenant misbehavior/nonpayment. CA is near the top. Portland is too.
Until this is fixed, however, those locales will tend to lose independent landlords, as they cannot afford the rent losses as they are not diversified enough. Big faceless companies like Avalon will grow cause they can.
by dmitrygr
3/27/2025 at 6:08:17 PM
> There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights, and the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.Yes, there's no chance I'm going to rent an ADU under these incredibly tenant-biased regulations as in California. I have to be able to evict people at the end of their lease for any reason if they are going to be in an ADU on my property.
by baggy_trough
3/27/2025 at 7:48:21 PM
I rent an ADU in California, and many of the Tennant rights are waived for it if the primary property is owner occupied, aside from some cities like oakland.I would not want to rent a separate property in CA as an individual, especially as counties start banning criminal background checks.
by s1artibartfast
3/27/2025 at 10:17:10 PM
> many of the Tennant rights are waived for it if the primary property is owner occupied, aside from some cities like oaklandAnd this can change overnight... CA cities have made some pretty drastic changes quite suddenly in the past. Not worth it. Eg: https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2025/01/29/mountain-view-stren...
by dmitrygr
3/27/2025 at 11:19:52 PM
Oh how I know it. I know someone who got fucked by the COVID eviction moratorium. 3 years of lost rent on a Bay area house while eating the mortgage, plus 250k property damage.Judgement proof Tennant mean that comes out of retirement and college funds. Makes me wish criminal charges were viable.
by s1artibartfast
4/1/2025 at 5:38:57 PM
How did they do 250k of property damage?Not doubting it, just curious. Ripped out all copper, all appliances, and flooded it intentionally on the way out?
by harambae
3/27/2025 at 6:14:49 PM
I actually think it's kind of a good sign that the policy was able to be passed without significant immediate disruptions.I have some pretty radical views about the benefits of land value taxes, but I don't think it's a good idea to immediately change all taxes by a large amount because disruptions are very painful. If you can enact positive incentives slowly with gradual changes then you can avoid disruptions while moving towards a better future.
by adverbly
3/27/2025 at 7:31:21 PM
My small city in Washington is the template for the state's ADU law and multi-family density law. When the ADU law passed, we saw a lot of people convert garages into ADUs and anymore any custom builds almost always add an ADU. But to your point - it isn't clear how many have become rentals. What I observe is that many people saw it as good resale value, as multi-generational living, or simply a place to put guests when they came to visit. It was about the same time we put a moratorium on VRBOs, which had been another reason people saw these as beneficial without becoming a full-time landlord. Personally I have one and it has been beneficial income while also giving my tenants a good transition point (college students, people escaping bad marriages, people who need a place to land while they look for a place to buy, etc)by poulsbohemian
4/1/2025 at 6:00:43 PM
> as multi-generational livingArguably this still improves the housing situation overall (slightly), if the grandmother was previously living somewhere else.
by harambae
3/27/2025 at 8:10:51 PM
I live in an area in Los Angeles that passed a similar law a few years ago (actually I live in an ADU) I can say the exact opposite has been true here. SO many houses have added ADUs - some rented out - but the vast majority are turning their properties into multi-generational living. Can't say that rent has come down per-say, but I have managed to rent one at below market. Having individual landlords with the pressure of paying their HELOC means they are less likely to sit on an empty unit for 5 months waiting for the most high dollar tenant. I 100% feel like this policy has been a big net positive.what I would really like to see now is allowing owners to sub-divide and sell the ADU. This could bring back the "starter-home" that no longer exists and has kept me out of the market
by yaba_money
3/27/2025 at 6:16:41 PM
the extremely unpopular but logical next step in managing change would be to induce development by increasing property taxes. Basically compel people to move and sell their land to developers who build up the land.by orange_joe
3/27/2025 at 6:43:15 PM
So, what if it were you in that position? What if your income was reduced and now the Government increases the property tax so you can no longer afford to pay for it? And let's add in the Government has a large tax on capital gains, which will kick in if you sell that property, and now you can't afford a new property somewhere else?by vondur
3/27/2025 at 6:54:43 PM
1. I’m being descriptive not prescriptive. property taxes being used to drive urbanization and development is a standard urban planning practice and was used to be used in LA during they heyday of its growth.2. Your issue with what I said seems very dependent on something you chose to “add in” — Why am I being asked to defend something I never said?
by orange_joe
3/27/2025 at 10:14:11 PM
> is a standard urban planning practice and was used to be used in LA during they heyday of its growthDo you thus imply that ANY part of LA at all is a sane model for anything at all?
by dmitrygr
3/28/2025 at 8:34:43 AM
Do you mean vacant land property taxes or property taxes for all real-estate?by csomar
3/27/2025 at 6:32:15 PM
It's amusing to me that anyone would think a random smattering of ADUs would do anything at all to push the needle when it comes to housing. This is like fixing linter warnings (but not even doing that!) instead of building an entirely new section of an app. We need the latter.by Fauntleroy
3/27/2025 at 6:38:35 PM
Fixing housing isn't one thing, it's many dozens. ADU's are just one of many. If your list isn't at least 50 items long it's going to be ineffectual. Here's one example of a reasonable list, it's 55 items long: https://www.ontario.ca/page/housing-affordability-task-force... And there are still many other things I would add.by bryanlarsen
3/28/2025 at 5:12:34 PM
It takes a pretty specific type of property to accommodate an ADU and it has to be in a specific location to make the ADU worthwhile. If you're in the suburbs you also have HOA rules to contend with. The only place we could put an ADU in our suburban house is to build out our 4-car garage -- it's large enough (and we onyl need 1 car), but we'd have to build a bathroom and a kitchenette. But even if we could afford the initial substantial outlay, I don't think we'd have a lot of takers as people who are likely to rent an ADU typically need to live closer to the city.by insane_dreamer
3/28/2025 at 6:09:31 AM
Just a bit north of you, in Seattle, it feels like every house in my neighborhood with enough land added an adu, a dadu, and condoized. My realtor says almost everyone looking for single family homes wants an existing dadu or somewhere they can build a dadu.I don’t know that anyone has claimed allowing ADUs is all you need to do to solve our housing crisis. But in a lot of places it’s the only thing the NIMBYs will let you get away with. So if you can’t middle housing, at least allowing ADUs gets you something more.
If the demand to live in your city dramatically outstrips the any possible number of ADUs that can be built, then it won’t help on its own, the cup still runs over.
by HEmanZ
3/28/2025 at 3:52:58 PM
I am a big fan of YIMBY-ism but I think your points here are fair. This is a controversial take among YIMBYs but I think the benefits of ADUs are oversold. Of course I am all for allowing them if that is all we can do but the idea of the ADU only exists because it is supposed to allow building more housing while preserving the overall "character" of single family neighborhoods. Subdividing a lot and building a new home is better in every way for both the homeowner and the resident of the eventual structure. ADUs seem like they could provide a lot of housing because it is a huge increase in what is theoretically allowed but it is not a huge increase in what people will realistically build in the United States in 2025 in single family neighborhoods. This is true for the reasons you state and also many other reasons because it is the opposite of economies of scale that typically brings costs down.We have an answer to building more housing at a lower cost and it's apartment buildings. We need more apartment buildings. We don't need them everywhere, there will still be plenty of places with predominantly single family homes, but we need them in more places than they are today. They don't have to be big high rises but there needs to be a enough number of units in a single building to make projects pencil.
by morsecodist
3/27/2025 at 10:01:11 PM
I don't understand why you brought up ADUs... nobody thinks ADUs are the solution to the decade+ long housing crisis. Blue states need massive state-wide zoning reform that overrides local control.by uses
3/27/2025 at 8:04:41 PM
Maybe landlord coops could be a solution. Band together to co-own with multiple small landlords and share the risk.by evilsetg
3/27/2025 at 8:00:28 PM
Third:I have my own property because I don't want to share it with someone else. If I wanted to share, I'd rent a room or get a townhouse or some other form of housing where sharing space is common.
Fourth:
Building an ADU is actually very expensive and the payback time is quite long. You have to dig for sewage and water, pour a foundation, and so forth. If doing it at a high level, it's going to be as intensive as building a house... It's just smaller. Most people are not handy at all and therefore will need to hire out every bit of it... Which is very expensive.
by bradlys
3/27/2025 at 6:29:07 PM
People don't put 10k of their money towards the bakery opening up next block either. They put it in the bank, which will loan it out. No one needs a million negligent single-rental landlords to create housing. But it does mean you are not entitled to having the same style McMansion built on the close empty lot in eternity, it might just be something with some more space efficiency. It means you can't continue paying a tax rate set 30 years ago for land that has appreciated many magnitudes in value.by stefan_
3/27/2025 at 9:55:48 PM
They did something similar in Vancouver, BC. To me it just seemed like everyone's been leaving the city and saying "We literally can not afford to own a place here" and politicians heard "You want us to manufacture more landlords and pull up the ladder even further!? Ok, we'll try".Yes in my backyard shouldn't mean literally yes, you can live in my actual physical backyard, more than there shouldn't be undue restrictions on building more densely nearby
by brailsafe
3/27/2025 at 5:56:28 PM
> In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing.Yeah, see, this mindset is exactly the problem.
Letting anyone put a granny flat on their property if they have space for it is radical? Come on, that's a moderate change at most.
And yeah, that kind of thing is never going to make a big difference over the short or even medium term. You want a big impact quickly, you need bigger changes: allow for higher density "missing middle" housing across the whole city, drastically streamline the approval process to be "as of right", get rid of all mandatory parking minimums, invest tens of millions of tax dollars every year into new public housing, etc.
by TulliusCicero
3/27/2025 at 6:14:21 PM
> invest tens of millions of public dollars every year into new public housinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-room_occupancy
An SRO costs 25% as much to build as a studio apartment.
The real obvious solution is to take all of the money we are pumping into "long-term" affordable housing options into basically just dormitories. If it's good enough for college students, it should be good enough for anyone looking to get off the streets.
I think people really underrate how much of a knock-on affect there would be if we built enough SROs to meet demand. It would essentially establish a housing "floor" in any housing market, and undercut the ability to rent-seek up the rest of the housing market.
by legitster
3/27/2025 at 6:29:46 PM
Yeah, I think form factors like this should be part of the answer. But part of it has to be getting costs down for regular apartments too. It's not uncommon to see that even non-profit orgs take 400k or 500k per 1br apartment in a building in major cities, which is just crazy.by TulliusCicero
3/27/2025 at 7:33:04 PM
Oakland was looking at 800k for half size shipping containers retrofitted into single room studios with windows.by s1artibartfast
3/27/2025 at 8:28:59 PM
Shipping containers are a huge red flag that a project is a gimmick.People have this mistaken idea that there are a ton of shipping containers that need to be recycled (there was a brief period in the mid aughts where this may have been true). But a used shipping container is neither cheap nor a great material to build a home from.
by legitster
3/27/2025 at 10:17:48 PM
Last I checked you could get a 20 ft container for what, 6 grand? That's 160 sq ft. And you need a foundation. And to frame inside for insulation. If you go Amish style without mains power you could finish out a kacynziski sized studio for under 20k.by ty6853
3/27/2025 at 11:22:34 PM
800-20k is a pretty tidy profit margin for someone with connections. I think the bid was for a hundred of them.by s1artibartfast
3/27/2025 at 6:53:24 PM
I am for that as well. Build dormitories as housing of last resort. Limit tenants rights to make eviction of non-payers easier. As it is landlords take all the risk and it makes life of honest tenants much expensive and more difficult. It should be easy to rent and it should be easy to evict non-paying tenants. If the society thinks we should house everyone then that cost should be on tax payers in general not the unlucky landlord.by bluecalm
3/27/2025 at 6:39:47 PM
100 years ago rooming houses housed a large fraction of the population. They've been zoned out of existence. Let them come back.by bryanlarsen
3/28/2025 at 2:22:56 PM
The issue I'm seeing is that right now, you won't even be cashflow positive unless you can put 40-50% down on the construction costs.That's a HUGE ask for someone to build an ADU! If you feel so strongly about it, why don't you just become a developer? The answer is obvious: capital. But that applies at every scale, and thus to a whole lot of those homeowners you're showing disdain for too.
People complain the rents in my area are too high. But the costs of the underlying real estate, maintenance, construction, and repairs are so high right now that it barely pencils out if at all. Most houses in the area were constructed in the 70's or the 90's and have not been well-maintained. So there's added costs of trying to bring old structures back up to snuff. New construction, even medium/high density stuff doesn't make sense unless you have 40-50% down or access to some ridiculously low interest loan.
Something has to give. Either prices need to come down on land, labor and construction materials, or rents need to go even higher.
by Enginerrrd
3/28/2025 at 6:25:50 AM
I think people would like money but being a landlord in addition to probably being a multi-income household is a lot. A lot can go wrong being a landlord even in a place with permissive laws.One thing that I think would be interesting would be allowing the sale and transfer of unused development rights (AKA "air rights.") That lets somebody take advantage of the development capacity without the landowner having to make a gamble on what could be a very risky development. A lot of jurisdictions have something like this allowed already but generally limit it to certain districts, or only landmarked properties get to sell development rights like this, or something else.
by bobthepanda
3/27/2025 at 7:25:40 PM
I also live in Portland. Look into our local taxes for the answer. We have the highest local tax rate in the nation for families earning more than 200K a year, higher than Manhattan. It simply doesn't pencil to build an ADU and rent it out long term, so you’re incentivized to a short term rental like Airbnb, which does little to nothing to help the housing situation.It’s the same for new apartment buildings. Next time you drive over the Fremont Bridge look at the skyline. 5 years ago there were 13 visible cranes mostly constructing high density apartment buildings. Today there are none. It’s the same reason, Portland has made it simply unprofitable to develop new high density housing.
by MrDarcy
3/28/2025 at 10:02:48 AM
What specific tax rates over 200k are you referring to? The SHS is 1% and the state also jumps just about 1% how is that not worth making over 200k?by Braxton1980
3/27/2025 at 8:33:46 PM
This is because ADU laws don’t go far enough. If you can sell your property to a developer for 3x the times the price you paid for it because all of a sudden it’s legal and financially viable to build a sixplex, many people will take that offer.by smadge
3/27/2025 at 6:08:54 PM
It's not really surprising that places with the most onerous "tenants rights" regimes have the biggest problems with housing inventory. I wish the people enacting these laws understood that for every squatter or rent deadbeat you prevent a landlord from evicting, there's a hundred potential landlords that just say no thanks I'll just leave my property empty.https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...
by gotoeleven
3/28/2025 at 11:32:30 AM
I'd guess that it is actually the other way around than you might expect. First there was an affordability problem so everyone was pushed into rentals, then the renters were a big enough political block to soft-seize the houses from the landlords.So I'd anticipate places with tenants rights laws to associate with huge amounts of housing inventory while the incentives really catch up. Then the tenants get pushed to move somewhere else and the laws go away as the renting bloc loses numbers.
by roenxi
3/27/2025 at 6:15:49 PM
Is it that they don't understand, or that they actively seek that result?by baggy_trough
3/28/2025 at 1:40:51 PM
What does it even mean to "light a fire under the butt" of a middle class home owner who is scared to rent because they'd be unable to evict a destructive junkie? What kind of fire do you have in mind, that would scare them even worse than that possible outcome?Whatever it is, it will probably make you or any politician who advances it very unpopular.
by lupusreal
3/27/2025 at 6:09:39 PM
I live in Portland and own my house. I'd love to put in an ADU and rent to some of my friends but it's pretty expensive and I can't afford it.by ragingroosevelt
3/27/2025 at 6:36:46 PM
That sounds nice, but don't rent to your friends. I've been there and it sucks. Everything works great until someone hits the hard times and the resource imbalance between parties gets amplified. You're either going to end up trashing friendships and dealing with the emotional baggage, making a really poor business decision or both.Rent to people you're comfortable evicting/taking legal action against if things sour and then if you're so inclined, help your friends out by subsidizing outings/entertainment etc.
by korse
3/27/2025 at 7:05:23 PM
“When you loan money to a friend, be prepared to lose the money or the friend” is a maxim I’ve lived by and has guided me through some tough decisions over time.by rm_-rf_slash
3/27/2025 at 6:23:54 PM
The permitting in PDX is very permissive if you do the work yourself. You don't need to build a second house - you can essentially stand up a large shed and do some pretty basic work to finish it into a studio apartment.Alternatively, the tiny home bubble has popped, and you can buy a used, pre-built tiny home and just park them on your property.
by legitster
3/28/2025 at 2:41:15 PM
We already have highly inflationary monetary policy that makes capital accumulation for middle class people impossible outside of high risk vehicles like stock or property. We also already have a complicated network of grants, tax breaks, statutes, and pressure organizations to incentivize or ramrod through housing as long as the expected inhabitants are any demographic that is reliably expected to vote for “our democracy”. I just really don’t know what more you want here. Confiscate everyone’s bank anccount and liquidate it to build housing projects?The United States has plenty of vacant housing. It just doesn’t have plenty of free or nearly free vacant housing in the downtown sections of our dozen largest cities. Maybe the issue is that we don’t want every single person on earth living in San Francisco or New York. Encouraging remote work was probably a step in the right direction on relieving that demand, but I think maybe there is some structural problem about hyper concentration of capital in a few extremely large cities that we are trying to fix with zoning ordinances, or, I guess stealing from the perfidious Kulacks to give to the noble proletariat.
by dughnut
3/28/2025 at 2:47:20 PM
Our monetary policy changes by the month. And currently it is sustaining a 3% inflation just like it was when the ship was turned around during Biden's admin. The target is a 2% inflation rate, which no one considers "highly inflationary".by daveguy
3/27/2025 at 6:02:25 PM
YIMBYism is having a much greater impact in red states.Noah Smith (left wing blogger) has a fascinating article on it: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/blue-states-dont-build-red-sta...
In Austin, TX, rent has been falling for 2 years because they've been building so much new supply: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-f...
by matthest
3/28/2025 at 3:22:53 PM
>They don't need the moneyYeah. At a certain affluence, I'd rather have extra space and privacy than extra money. I can't think of a reasonable amount of money that would incentivize me to rent out an ADU in my backyard. $10k a month? idk my kids play in that yard...
by ahmeneeroe-v2
3/28/2025 at 7:45:46 AM
TL;RD: to make housing affordable you need to make everyone poor - not just the renters, but owners too.by anovikov
3/28/2025 at 2:42:37 PM
> radical new zoning laws> ADUs on their property
If this is "radical" then it just shows how far we've fallen.
by rcpt
3/28/2025 at 7:34:50 PM
(author here; ED of YIMBY Action)I'm super curious about why you think YIMBY-ism is passive. I feel like the main criticism we've often gotten is that we're too in-your-face with our advocacy.
Say more.
by LauraFoote
3/28/2025 at 10:29:17 PM
Maybe it's not the bulk of the cost but site development fees for a new ADU in Portland are like $40k, to say nothing of the cost of actually getting approval checked off.by cake_robot
3/28/2025 at 1:57:45 PM
ADU = Accessory Dwelling Units (for those of us not "in the know" or whatever)by stronglikedan
3/28/2025 at 7:09:38 AM
Removing barriers is necessary, but not always sufficientby BrtByte
3/27/2025 at 6:06:11 PM
what are ADUs?by NullPrefix
3/27/2025 at 6:11:30 PM
See https://www.cityofithaca.org/786/Accessory-Dwelling-Units-AD... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_suiteby PaulHoule
3/27/2025 at 6:12:55 PM
Additional Dwelling Units, basically additional houses on lots traditionally zoned for only one.by creaturemachine
3/27/2025 at 6:11:26 PM
fwiw Google search works well for this, but it means "Accessory Dwelling Unit", aka "Granny flat".by dboreham
3/28/2025 at 9:48:52 AM
[dead]by imtheopposite
