This is an insanely bad take.
> For instance not renting to the first qualifying tenant is a common root for discrimination. Why wouldn’t you rent to the first qualifying candidate?
You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house. If you're a building owner, there are reasons that you might want to be able to have freedom of choice in choosing who you have live in your building. When the government forces you to choose the first applicant who meets your selection criteria, your selection criteria becomes incredibly strict—720+ credit score, makes 4x the rent, etc. Especially when evicting a bad tenant becomes basically impossible, landlords work even harder to vet candidates, meaning there are a lot of false negatives that aren't offered housing. Seriously, you can't evict a tenant just because its winter? You know how many people take advantage of that — read my sibling comment in my thread. I myself in Seattle have dealt with multiple tenants who have done this so they could have free rent as their lease expired. What do you think this does to my tenant selection process? I up the bar.
> Maximum rent increase being capped also makes sense - I’ve been hit with 15-20% rent increases with no choice but to move.
You act like there's an oligopoly that dictates rent prices from their mountaintop that we all have to abide by. We live in a free market, and small landlords compete with large buildings for tenants. Creating these types of caps just makes the system less efficient — focuses efforts on the false pretense of tenants rights rather than the true equalizer like building more housing. And honestly, it just drives small landlords out of the market who can't handle it. This just leaves corporate landlords who are certainly less tenant friendly and will further this tenant vs landlord arms-race. We should be creating incentives and making it easy for individual homeowners to become landlords (at least in Seattle) if we want the paradigm to improve.
I've lived in properties with no form of rent control whatsoever. Landlords issuing 10%+ rent increases is awful. it denies you the stability that's granted by fair/consistent rent increases. It erodes the community fabric by having a revolving door of tenants who live there 1-2 years before leaving.
I do agree that we should focus on other remedies such as building more. However, even in a market with ample housing, I'm not convinced that some Landlords would still just as happily take the 'I bet they'd rather a 10% rent increase than deal with the hassle of moving' gamble.
Most of the people I've met who are anti rent control/stabilization usually don't have the pleasure of a landlord who has decided to engage in such tactics. Almost always they argue from some place of guaranteed housing safety.
this is an issue that applies to people making 30k and also people making 300k.
I like the approach Finland took when it abolished rent control in the 1990s. Basically, you are not allowed to chain fixed-term leases indefinitely. If the actual intent is that the tenant stays until further notice, the lease agreement must reflect that.
Now, if you have an indefinite lease, the landlord can't increase the rent, unless the basis for the increase is already in the agreement. Typically the rent is tied to a measure of inflation, and the landlord chooses once a year if they should make the increase.
That's actually fine, but the people who oppose rent control would probably not accept that because that's basically the system (give or take) that already exists in places where rent control already exists.
My ex also had a lease that stipulated automatic 5% increases, until they made him sign a new agreement mandating the non-negotiated increase would be 7.5% instead.
NYC has a particularly spectacular brand of hostility towards tenants (the latest trend I've seen is, instead of broker fees, absorbent move in/move out fees paid to property managers).
You could sign a longer lease and get the stability you desire. Negotiate a five year lease and stability is yours.
None of the landlords I’ve rented from wanted to do that. Sample size of like 8.
I've done it multiple times. Everytime I wanted to do it, it was possible.
If you offer to sign a 5 year lease at current prices, then yeah, can see why they might not go for that.
> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house
We already tried that. It turns out that people are racist, so now we need laws to protect against that. It sucks for all the decent non-racist folks but the alternative of not having those protections was far worse.
If you force people to have someone in their house that they don't want, they are not going to rent their house out. This will lead to less units on the market. Your point about racism is fair, but I don't think the answer is a solution that reduces rentable units on the market.
What alternative solution to housing-related racism would you suggest?
The one that actually exists? Have you never heard of the HUD fair housing initiatives programs? You hire a white actor and a black actor with the same job, income, credit, etc and if a landlord consistently refuses to rent to the black actors, you sic the DoJ on them for violating the Fair Housing Act
Nope, I hadn't heard of that. Neat. I see two problems though:
1. I can see this being effective against larger landlord that will have many units available every year, ensuring that adequate testing can be performed. But on smaller landlords with only a few units, it seems like it'd be hard to test. (for example, you get rejected from an apartment. The landlord rents it out to someone else. You file a FHIP complaint, but the landlord no longer has any units available so they cannot test.)
2. It seems like this is largely driven by complaints? If I was rejected from an apartment, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to glean whether or not it was based on race.
Re #2: I feel like people of the kinds of races that often get discriminated against have pretty decent radar when it comes to figuring out why they were rejected.
Okay, sell it to someone who will live there then. You're not a saint for taking a unit someone wants to buy and forcing them to rent instead.
How is renting different from hiring in that regard? Nobody would consider requiring employers to hire the first qualified candidate, but at the same time, we don't allow employers to discriminate on the basis of race.
Why couldn't the same law apply to residential leasing?
Are we sure that law is working as intended? Or are employers simply not admitting to factoring race into the decision? It is next to impossible to prove a candidate was rejected on the basis of race, especially when you can legally reject someone for not being a "culture fit" on the team.
I'd also argue the stakes are higher when leasing, so landlords will be less likely to take a chance on a race they don't like. Most jobs in the US are at-will employment so you can be fired at any time for almost any reason, but evicting a tenant can be a long process.
>t is next to impossible to prove a candidate was rejected on the basis of race
It is possible to prove a company is disproportionally one or the other when making the claim. Of course when an industry has far less applicants or members of a certain group that's to be expected but still. Consequentially I've heard of some pretty blatant race based selection especially in the US. It's just that that selection ends up excluding white people (or east asians) A while ago I even discussed with a hr person here on hn who was defending their hiring of that sort with the most flowery wording about 'just giving priority' or 'reaching out to members of their prefered group specifically' fist if all they get is not the desired group.
This is utter BS. Seattle is about 40% non-White. And has never been racist, or even had slavery (outside the Native population).
If you think there aren't any racist landlords in Seattle (or any particular place), then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...
Having a large non-white population is not a protection against race-related discrimination.
Of course there are racist people in Seattle. But they are not a significant part of the population.
> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house. If you're a building owner, there are reasons that you might want to be able to have freedom of choice in choosing who you have live in your building.
That’s basically discrimination? Make a strict selection criteria, that’s fine. The city also has affordable housing for people who don’t qualify. You set what works for you, why do you care if it’s too strict?
I am not acting like there is an oligopoly, but not having tenant protections means tenants are at the mercy of shitty landlords. And there are a TON of them. Am I not supposed to have any rights, and the landlords gets to do whatever they want? Free market doesn’t mean regulation free.
Edit: you said “We should be creating incentives and making it easy for individual homeowners to become landlords (at least in Seattle) if we want the paradigm to improve.” - what do you propose? What about landlords who don’t want housing built because they like owning a scarce asset? What kind of rights do you think tenants should have?
Yes, discrimination based upon characteristics that aren't immutable is perfectly fine and something we do every day. I discriminate against my neighbor who invited me over drinks in favor of my best friend who invited me to his birthday. I discriminate against the potential hire who doesn’t have experience in this line of work in favor of the person who’s a nationally renowned expert. I discriminate against a tenant with a history of failing to make rent in favor of someone who consistently provides payment every month. People are different and valuing one over another in specific contexts is hardly scandalous. It only becomes a proble if you decide to discriminate against someone based upon immutable characteristics such as their race, sex, national origin, etc. because you’re not treating them as an individual.
I get where you’re coming from, but none of them are scarce inelastic resources. The work one especially doesn’t feel like discrimination.
It’s also very different - you’re hiring someone to do a job for you, vs wanting someone who’ll pay rent on time and not destroy the property. A mediocre employee vs an excellent employee can make any huge difference to a business.
That’s not the case with renters - if person A and person B both pay on time and don’t trash the place then they are quite fungible.
> if person A and person B both pay on time and don’t trash the place then they are quite fungible.
Based on those two sole criteria, no, they aren't. Person A might call weekly about trivial matters that they should be taking care of themselves (lightbulb burned out, oven needs cleaning, refrigerator water filter needs replacement, etc.), while person B just takes care of things and doesn't bother the landlord.
Yeah but you can’t eat your cake and have it too. Part of renting is responding to complaints. If you don’t want to do that then you shouldn’t be renting.
I had a landlord ask me “you’re not going to call me for basic things right?”. I’m paying you money, I’ll call you whenever I want. Didn’t rent from him. You can tell me do it yourself but why would I put money into someone else’s property?
This is such binary thinking. People have different ways of interacting with people. Some people are easier to deal with than others, and that was the parents' point, not that they never want to respond to reasonable complaints.
Landlords should provide well maintained housing and respond to reasonable complaints, and tenants should be swiftly evicted if they don't pay rent or destroy the unit they're living in. That's fair to both sides.
Your experience as a renter is not the same as the experience of a landlord. If you've been on your first job for a month and you pinky swear to pay rent on time and the next candidate has been on their job for 3 years then I'll take that candidate every time. It's a risk calculation. You are more likely to lose your job than the other candidate, and when you do and can't pay rent anymore and won't leave then that is a very expensive problem for me.
The same goes for savings, credit score, and other factors. These are not nearly as fungible as you seem to think.
If everyone did that then how’s the person with a new job able to get a home? They might not all do it but it severely affects choices.
You also have more capacity to absorb a short vacancy in case this person is to lose their job. Can’t derisk your way out of everything.
It sounds like you never had to deal with shitty landlords, or didn’t really struggle too much in life.
> If everyone did that then how’s the person with a new job able to get a home?
That's exactly my point. If the regulations weren't so insane and burdensome (see other posters' points on not being able to evict promptly for nonpayment, for example) then the person with the brand new job would be able to quickly rent a home because it's not an undue risk for a landlord.
You can't ask landlords on the one hand to open their home to anyone, and on the other hand deny them the right to remove tenants that don't hold up their end of the bargain. Do you not see how that's completely unfair?
> You also have more capacity to absorb a short vacancy in case this person is to lose their job.
That is not a universal truth. Landlords have debt service/mortgage payments, taxes, maintenance, insurance and other payments. Especially smaller landlords actually do not - at all - have the capacity to absorb a vacancy or (even worse) a non-paying tenant.
> Can’t derisk your way out of everything.
Yes, but unduly moving risk from one party (tenant) to the other party (landlord) is certainly not the way to go either. If I just take your car and you don't have any recourse to get it back for 6+ months because the courts are backlogged and everyone else goes "well, you have a car, so you must be wealthy, what are you complaining about?" how would that make you feel?
> That’s basically discrimination?
Discrimination is fine, as long as the discrimination is not based on protected classes. If I were a landlord, I'd discriminate against people who act like assholes, for example, regardless of their ability to pay the rent, my rationale being that an asshole will likely be a problem tenant. And that I just don't enjoy dealing with assholes. Not sure "no assholes" is a reasonable thing to list on an official rental advertisement.