Landlording is becoming shittier and shittier now
My state has recently:
- Imposed a 12 month moratorium on lease terminations/evictions for any reason (I would have said fair enough if it was in relation to Covid financial difficulties but this goes way longer)
- Imposed a permanent, i.e. not Covid related, rule making it harder for landlords to terminate a lease, but no harder for tenants to terminate a lease
- Imposed regulations where pool fences and smoke alarms have to be professionally checked every 2 years, i.e. you have no choice but to pay for a certificate from a cartel of tradies that charges $99 for 5 minutes' work;
- Imposed on landlords a condition that if they want to claim rental damage they have to do it within 14 days of tenants moving out;
- Imposed on landlords a condition that a property has to be in good condition as at the start of a lease, i.e. "fair wear and tear" that is done by the previous tenants needs to be rectified - at the landlord's expense!
It's ridiculous. It really tips the balance way in the favour of tenants.
As it is, I'm going to have to put in place measures which are aimed at ensuring I only lease to tenants I feel are qualified for long-term leases now, since short-term tenants can't be moved on in most situations. This means favouring households with long-term ties to the area (read: families with young children) and asking for financial histories and doing all sort of vetting. This is just going to mean that tenants who aren't great prospects have to pay higher rent and/or have a harder time finding a landlord who will take them on.
This is interesting. It seems to me that the examples you pointed out and this issue is illustrative of how I don't think I will ever be able to call myself a Democrat even if I end up voting Democrat sometimes. I do loathe some of the things Republicans do, but it seems in Democrats or at Democratic leadership that there's a default of everything in favor of the tenants, employees, etc. As in everything, there's nuance, and you have to keep people with power and money from being terrible, but in my opinion, you should be biased for the people that own something. Why do people feel that they should be able in general have rights to something someone else owns? It boggles my mind. If I was in that situation where I was truly destitute and would be homeless without a reprieve from eviction, I mean, I'm sure I would take the support, but I would at least feel terrible about it, not have the mindset of I'm taking my freedom from eviction
and screw you, owners, that I've seen around this issue.
I mean, I truly have no horse in this race, because I've only been a tenant, am now in the home owner standing, and likely will never be in real estate. So, it's nothing personal. I just don't think I'll ever be able to broach that chasm in my mind between my view and people who, it seems, feel that there should be all these restrictions on people who have worked to own something (and yes, I know that not everyone has actually done the work, some are born with silver spoons, and there's situations of housing corporations that are jerks about things and so on) and people who rent. We are in a society with tremendous wealth, and I have no problem with programs that work towards giving people a certain cushion because there is so much abundance. To me, that's a different story than, again, things like what Bloop Bloop is describing or, again, the sentiment I've seen amongst people coinciding with the Covid situation where there's been a plethora of articles, stories, anecdotes, etc. of people just so angry about someone being able to, for example, evict someone like at all or ever. The sentiment seems to come down against the owner for daring to evict someone from "that person's neighborhood" if, say, they've lived there for 20 years or something or the ability to raise rents when the contract is up. Well, I mean, when the agreed upon contract is up, it's not that person's neighborhood anymore, and if a new agreement is to be had, the owner can raise the rents. If they raise them too high and price themselves out of the market, then they'll learn quickly what they can and can't do. To declare that tenants shouldn't be asked to leave because the contract is up and the owner wants to get new people and how dare the tenant be asked to leave or the owner raise rents when they feel like it is tantamount to saying you have no rights to do what you want with your own property.
All this to be said, I'm rambling, but I just feel like there's a sentiment out there reflected in some rules such as these that seem to imply that someone who doesn't own something has as much or more rights to it than the owners, and it truly bumfuzzles me.