Actually landlords have a reasonable expectation you don't turn _their home_ into a crack house and no one should be forced to rent to scumbags.
Actually landlords have a reasonable expectation you don't turn _their home_ into a crack house and no one should be forced to rent to scumbags.
> _their home_
It's not their home.
They can't walk in, wipe their shoes on the hallway rug, make a pot of coffee, use the bathroom, turn on the TV, and take a nap on the couch. At least not without their tenant's invitation.
When they chose to rent out the house they yielded some of their property rights. The old landlord argument that "it's my house I should be able to XYZ" doesn't hold water.
So do other nearby tenants who aren't crack users.
It may be the landlord's house, but it's not their home. A home is something you live in.
Why should landlords have that expectation? I think the default case should be that when someone rents a space they have freedom to do what they want with that space until they stop renting it, and then when they stop renting it they must be forced to return it to its original condition.
Did you know in Australia it's normal to give your landlord a tour of your house every 3 months to prove you haven't broken it? That's completely ridiculous.
And how exactly do you "force" the deadbeat broke tenant that trashed your house to return it to its original condition?
Keep their deposit
A deposit doesn't even cover the legal fees to evict a tenant (which can be north of $10,000 between lawyer, filing fees, and so on).
Add to that loss of rents for multiple months (while the landlord has to pay mortgage, insurance, taxes) and damages to property, and now you're asking a landlord to pay tens of thousands of dollars of their money.
$600,000 asset vs a $3000 deposit
It’s not like they don’t have insurance (they do) to cover the cost of damages.
No. There is no insurance in the world that covers the cost of eviction, loss of rents, or intentional damage/vandalism.
Throwing around general statements like these when you don't actually know about the topic doesn't help the conversation.
I researched this. And there are no insurance companies in WA that offer these kinds of products for landlords.
Renters insurance primarily covers damage to _their_ property and only some narrow cases of damage to the unit (e.g. fires, flooding, etc.). A deadbeat tenant also will likely not be paying for insurance past the first month.
To give you some perspective, the eviction process costs around $20000 right now in legal fees. And you'll need to pay them, because the commie "housing justice" redistributionists know all the procedural tricks to delay and derail the process. Even in the best case, you're looking at a year of delay, and it can be more than 2 years for people with children. So that can be $100k+ of loss.
No insurance company is going to assume these kinds of risks without sky-high premiums.