Live data from Hacker News

Rent collections are down in New York

politico.com

31–40 of 594 posts

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#31
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff ab…

This is a bit of an intentional result, no? the goal is for peoppe to own the places they live in

Why should that be a goal?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my city, and I assume many others, there's an informal landlord's group that shares lists of problem tenants to avoid renting to. While problematic, I wonder if it's made any impact.

Usually this is handled with credit reports right? It’s only when the state forbids landlords from demanding credit reports that informal networks are necessary. In general as a tenant you can only get away with not paying rent once (until eviction happens, no one will ever rent to you again without federal or state assurances), and as a landlord you will only skip the credit report requirement once (because your fir…

In cities with excessive tenant protection laws, sometimes landlords will negotiate agreements with deadbeat tenants in which the tenant agrees to leave and the landlord doesn't report anything to the credit bureaus.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#33

> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but there is a subset for whom that is the case,” [...] Others bristle at the notion that some tenants are not paying rent just because they may be able to get away with it. These people absolutely exist. To pretend that they don't is willful ignorance. They are, h…

There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff ab…

[dead]

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#34

> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but there is a subset for whom that is the case,” [...] Others bristle at the notion that some tenants are not paying rent just because they may be able to get away with it. These people absolutely exist. To pretend that they don't is willful ignorance. They are, h…

There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff ab…

Tenant "protection" laws are the type of idiocy that economically illiterate progressive politicians always produce. They end up having the opposite effect by making property owners less willing to rent out to anyone. The only effective way to protect tenants is to set public policies that encourage new housing development. When there is a housing surplus, the laws of economics force landlords to treat tenants well. Build more housing!

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#35
i occasionally come across some of the forums and online groups of landlords and the things they have to deal with, particularly in cities with strong protections for the tenants and its interesting to watch the perspectives.

on one hand i feel for some of the landlords who have to deal with some of the very real slacks who go out of their way to be difficult tenants.

on the other we’re talking about homes, by this i mean to stress home over investment. i think we’ve made a terrible mistake in incentivizing people to use homes as an investment. it should be difficult to evict someone from their home, and it should be risky and a pain in the ass to use someone else’s home as an investment.

i feel bad for _some_ of the landlords but from a larger societal perspective we’re going to look back at incentivizing so many people to invest as a landlord as a massive mistake.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#36

> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but there is a subset for whom that is the case,” [...] Others bristle at the notion that some tenants are not paying rent just because they may be able to get away with it. These people absolutely exist. To pretend that they don't is willful ignorance. They are, h…

I anecdotally know of a few cases in Seattle where tenants with high incomes that could easily pay just don't. There is a subculture that actively encourages this type of behavior and the laws are setup such that there are almost no consequences for it. I've also met people who bragged about doing it. While rare, it is still common enough that it has become a real problem and has become socially acceptable in some circles.

It is corrosive to the social contract when government policy tacitly encourages this behavior.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#37
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff ab…

If you think the Reddit communities of tenants are bad, you should try reading the Reddit communities of landlords (at least the UK ones).

Yeah.... So many bad tenants. So many bad landlords... So many weird laws protecting and hurting both.

What if we shifted to a different system?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#38
post #28

[flagged]

I can guarantee you that the overwhelming majority of low-income people who are delinquent on their rent have no clue who Cea Weaver is. Nor is there any kind of organized rent strike occurring. Do you live in NYC?

[flagged]

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#40
post #6

> We have to consider what the unintended consequences are of public policies or practices where there are no immediate consequences for someone who falls behind on rent > Many [landlords] say they don’t actually intend to evict anyone, but that filing these cases is the most expedient way to get emergency rental aid from the city. Economics in one easy lesson: incentives matter.

While that is certainly true, it's a very narrow view disconnected from the reasons for the policies. The most likely explanation for more people not paying their rent is that even fixed rents have become increasingly unaffordable because other costs have risen faster than wages. So yes, people are "choosing" not to pay rent because the consequences of not paying the rent lag substantially behind the consequences of…

>plenty of economic indicators suggest

> — and no one's sure why

Now that i saw the framing, i am looking differently on the discussion here. The smalles troublemakers are more news worthy than broad economic factors behind us all, so you dumb down your headline...

Post reply on HN