Rent collections are down in New York • Hacker News Board

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#61

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

weakfish wrote: post #44

mc3301 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The question that many do not want to think about. We (as a society (referring to all Western Liberalism, not just the US)) are so thoroughly convinced that Liberal Democracy is the End of History, and it's the 'flawed but best,' as many say, but refuse to imagine something better. It's puzzling that a system that is supposed to reward creativity and genius like capitalism limits it's inhabitants in their imagination…

It's not Liberal Democracy that is the problem but a society where all of the slack has been optimized out, every extraction maximized, every infraction forever a scarlet letter on an individual, zero stability but constant crisis inflicted on individuals. There is no room in modern day America for people in the margins. Society needs to make a place for them and a path out of constant crisis, or the homeless problem will continue to grow.

Another hidden issue in the USA is many households are dependent on contributing income from a retired/disabled/working past retirement age elderly parent/family member. Those people are going to start passing in mass, and a lot of households will become even less resilient.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#62

Post by archagon » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #34

naturalmovement wrote: post #19

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…

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.…

Do you own your own house? Are you rich?

I’ve known acquaintances who got de facto evicted without warning just because their landlord decided to make a few extra bucks. Were that to happen to me, I would not be able to rent in my current city at all due to the recent influx of wealthy tech workers. (Read: extremely high rents with ridiculous income requirements.) Fortunately, my city has robust tenant protections and rent control, so I don’t have to live my life in fear of ending up on the curb. Some people see that as a bad thing; I guess they think I should save up a few million dollars to buy a condo or abandon my community and move to the boonies.

This would be less of an issue with more housing stock, but that takes decades to build. As a city resident inconveniently living in the present, that does not help me much.

Obviously, I’d never vote for a politician who would make it easier for a landlord to evict me arbitrarily. And I’d eagerly vote for the same protections for any other renter.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#63

Post by cherry_tree » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

rationalist wrote: post #23

naturalmovement wrote: post #19

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…

I have friends and coworkers that want to have rental properties, and I advise them it's not worth it. I don't want to be in a position where I have to pay more to fix damages than I collectected in rent if I accidentally rent to deadbeats. Or in a position where I have to provide services to someone not paying me. One of those friends has parents that rented out their old house to deadbeats at the top of the housing…

Landlords typically have insurance coverage for damage by tenants, including lost rent.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#64

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

naturalmovement wrote: post #19

alexjplant wrote: post #2

> “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…

> especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone

The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported.

And that said, some renter protections are definitely needed, because there is a subset of landlords that engage in flat out illegal behavior.

Deposit withholding, making illegal demands, illegal renter selection practices, etc.

Imho, that tends to be concentrated in the "1-5 unit" landlord range, because those landlords are usually (a) not lawyers & (b) treat their properties like pets instead of a business.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#65

Post by toast0 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

polski-g wrote: post #47

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Credit reports do not have a section for "plays music loudly" or "secretly smokes by the bathroom window".

They can have a section of public records if anything rises to the level of filing with the courts.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#66

Post by archagon » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #51

senectus1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure because a property owner is going to not rent out a property and just take the month on month hit for having an empty property. They'll either rent it or sell it. There is a middle ground, just need to find that point.

Apparently you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the rental market. Landlords in cities with strong tenant protection laws will absolutely leave a unit vacant for months until they find someone with a high income ratio and credit score. This leaves poorer people stuck with no options.

Vacancy tax. No one should have the right to buy multiple, rentable homes and keep them unused in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s sociopathic.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#67

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

cherry_tree wrote: post #63

rationalist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends and coworkers that want to have rental properties, and I advise them it's not worth it. I don't want to be in a position where I have to pay more to fix damages than I collectected in rent if I accidentally rent to deadbeats. Or in a position where I have to provide services to someone not paying me. One of those friends has parents that rented out their old house to deadbeats at the top of the housing…

Landlords typically have insurance coverage for damage by tenants, including lost rent.

[deleted]

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#68

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:49 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #54

nradov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

There's an economic floor for the price of housing: the amortized cost of the building and its maintenance, plus taxes and overhead imposed by governments, utilities, mortgages, etc. In other words: even in a plentiful housing market, there will always be someone who struggles to pay rent (including transiently), because a rational housing market can't offer $0 rents. Tenant protection laws exist to protect that pers…

[deleted]

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#69

Post by kbar13 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #60

All slack has been removed from society. All pricing has been maximized. Every interaction capitalized. Every point of extraction extracted from. People living in these situations now live from crisis to crisis. Not paying rent/dealing with the consequences is just another on the list. At some point people just become numb. Modern society at the peripherals is not sustainable. There will always be people in the perip…

and the middle class is being destroyed

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#70

Post by cyberax » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

CursedSilicon wrote: post #42

jandrewrogers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ci…

As someone who also lives in Seattle, I'd be curious to see any verifiable citations to such a wild claim

There are such people. I have a unit in Seattle that sits empty because I don't want to risk getting stuck with such tenants.

In Seattle, you can't:

1. Evict people from November to April (it's "winter"). 2. Evict people with schoolchildren during the school year. 3. Run background checks on prospective tenants. 4. You _must_ rent to the first qualifying tenant. 5. You must offer 3 months in rent as compensation if you decline to renew the lease. 6. The maximum rent increase is capped.

Oh, and eviction process takes about 1.5 years now because the courts are overloaded and the tenant can use procedural tricks to drag out the process.

If you want names, this case made newspapers: https://wealthandpoverty.center/2025/02/11/the-bellevue-squa...