Note that the eviction in the story hasn’t taken over a year, they didn’t actually formally start the process for eviction until late last year. The stuff from 2016 to 2017 was just the University trying to talk her out, and deciding what to do about her, there were no proceedings started during that time. The clock doesn’t start ticking until you send some kind of formal notice of eviction which means that a lot of well-run properties do…
They don’t actually want to evict Chronos, but also don’t want him hanging around without paying rent. So they went ahead with formal notice of eviction, because they have to give 30 day notice, but can stop the proceedings anytime they want. If the landlord was like the school, they’d have just talked to him but not filed procedures, and only actually sent him an eviction notice after a year of talking about it.
Yes because landlords hate getting regular rent payments from well behaved tenants and so will evict them in order to go through the time and expense of finding new tenants just because they are mustache twirling villains.
It happens all the time. Not because they are all mustache-twirling villains, but frequently because small landlords want to move an otherwise good tenant out in order to move in a family member or friend, or because property values have increased suddenly, or because they want to move in themselves, or for dozens of other reasons. Tenant courts have to deal with this kind of nonsense all the time. Just because somebody owns a property doesn’t mean they will always act in a 100% economically rational manner. Sometimes they want to do things to the detriment of a tenant; other times they are just assholes.
An acquaintance of mine is a lawyer (though not a landlord/tenant lawyer) who had to help his brother in a similar situation. The brother’s landlord had died, and the landlord’s son decided that meant he was going to move in and the brother had to be out in one week, despite the fact that he had 14 months left on his lease. Lawyer had to send a polite “fuck off” letter and then the guy still tried to file for eviction. The court took one look at the lease and the fact that the property was in probate and told the son to knock it off. And they still had to deal with him twice more because he kept harassing his tenant.
That is not to say that tenants can’t also be abusive, because they absolutely can. But the concept of a lease simply doesn’t work if the law allows one party to break it arbitrarily and with no notice. That’s why we have a system to adjudicate these things, and most of the time it’s fairly straightforward.
In NYC anyway there are landlords who want to sell not rent the apartments, and so want to get rid of those pesky tenants with leases. Perhaps by not repairing the hot water for a few months or more. Not paying your rent seems bad, unless of course the landlord makes the place unlivable. Sure there are bad tenants, but some landlords are scum, thus the laws.
As for political power, the renters may have votes, theoretically, but the land,lords make the campaign donations.
And of course this works both ways. If the tenant wants to terminate the arrangement, they also need to give some amount of advance notice, and if they don’t, they’ll have to continue paying rent or face other penalties.
If it takes six months to chase off a non-paying tenant … the greedy scumbag landlord ain’t going to lose that income … he raises rents on all his other tenants …
Worst case I’ve seen is a car parked in the living room … the tow truck driver couldn’t tow it out because the rig was stolen in another state … all that expense, all the lost rent; not the landlord’s problem … just raise rents …
Higher taxes, more legal costs, insurance premiums, new laws protecting tenant’s rights … all these costs get passed to the tenants …
There’s a limit on how much rent can be raised, just from market pressure … once that limit is reached … it’s not cost effective to add more units … keep adding more expensive laws to the books and landlords will start removing inventory … landlords don’t have a moral obligation to house the homeless …
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To the OP … the eviction process isn’t hard, there’s no traps or loop-holds or anything like that … it’s a fairly simple step-by-step procedure specifically designed to limit the court’s time … the only thing that can slow the process down is if the landlord skips a step, does the step wrong or some other silly mistake … in Oregon, if your rent is due on the 1st and you don’t pay, I can have a gaggle of sheriff’s deputies ass-hauling you to the streets on the 24th … you lost in court because I never gave you a reason to have a defense … “Pearl the Landlord” {YouTube 2’27" (SFW version)}
You might want to look into rules for landlords. Raising rents isn’t as easy as you seem to think in most places. There are limits on how much you can raise it year to year, and charging everyone an extra $25 a month is not going to cover it. I bought a little 4-flat a couple years ago and one delinquent tenant means trouble making the mortgage on the building by the time the person could legally be evicted (not a problem I’ve encountered yet). Two delinquent tenants means I’m in the red.
30 day notice is all … “most places” in the USA have no rent control …
Sounds like you could bring rents up some, you have a God given right to 100% profit margins, so that if half your units are empty you can still make expenses … I ran 120% margins for three simple reasons: location, location and location …
Aren’t you holding security deposits? … you need to find out exactly how long it takes to get a tenant evicted, add the time to get the unit rented again … that is how much you should be asking for as deposit … in this way you still get every dime of rental revenue for the time between when the old tenant stops paying and the new tenant starts …
If you’re charging for “last month’s rent” at the beginning of the tenancy, then you cannot use the procedure for non-payment of rent, the tenants did pay rent, the money is there in your hand … the procedure here adds an extra month until you can evict, but once again you still get the rental revenue for that month …
Ah … I know what you’re thinking … “but withholding security deposit in all cases is an important source of revenue” … you might find this is illegal … you’re already getting 100% margins under the law, just flat greedy stealing the tenants money at the end of the tenancy …
BTW … NOW is a good time to investigate leveraging your current rental holdings into more rental holdings … 100% profit margins … double the work for double the pay at a minimum, some economies of scale start creeping in giving even more profit … and start getting ready to be filthy rich … there’s a tax professional in your future so you can save even more money … the rich keep getting richer, go for it !!! …
As a landlord, I’m here to tell you, if I could just raise the rents, I already would have done so. I’m not running a charity here. Prices are set by the market, not landlord magnanimity.
It’s the same thing you hear whenever people talk about raising taxes on corporations or increasing minimum wage. “They’ll just raise prices and pass the costs on to the customer”. It doesn’t work like that. If McDonald’s could just raise prices on their hamburgers, why do you think they wouldn’t already be doing that? They already charge the highest price they can. If they raise prices any more, they lose money.
While it’s true that rent control is only done in a few large cities, the ‘30 day notice is all’ is untrue. Everywhere that I’m aware of, the rent is specified in the lease and cannot generally be changed until the lease is up. If someone is on a month to month lease then 30 days notice is all you need to raise the rent, but if someone is on a year lease you can only raise the once that lease runs out.
This is true of the long term chronic homelessness. But most homeless people are short term and this is definitely affected by the number of affordable places to live.
The way tenants rights laws make fewer affordable places to live is that it discourages people from renting places. Many people have extra room that they could be renting out for money but since if they pick the wrong customer then they can spend months trying to evict that person, they choose not to. One of my in laws, bought a house and rented it to someone who only paid the first month’s rent. Six months later he was able to evict the tenant with a lawyer. He then got out of the rental business.
An extreme example is Mumbai India, they have such strong tenant laws that one landlord has been trying to evict certain tenants for fifty years. Because of this 15% of residences in Mumbai are vacant. In 1961, 90% of housing was rental and in 2011 that fell to 26%.
No it’s fucking not. I say this as someone who actually has been homeless and living on the streets. It was very much about not having a place to live in my experience. Have you actually been homeless? You see, I have, and if you want to continue this incredibly stupid line of conversation, I would be happy to do so in the pit.
In my state (New Hampshire) the total of all deposits may not exceed one month’s rent. It doesn’t matter what you call it: security, cleaning, last month, whatever. The total may not exceed one month’s rent. If a landlord violates this law, the tenant may sue for up to two months rent.
Good points all … All my claims come from Oregon State law, and my understanding from California landlords is that it is much the same … the biggest differences being length-of-time for the termination process …
Exactly, you’re already charging current tenants to pay for future tenant misdeeds … and the local market dictates how profitable that is … if this is not enough earnings for you for the risk you’ve taken on, then you are unlikely to add more rental units … not until the rental market improves for you … my guess is the recent economic downturn did not effect your local area all that hard … in places where things were more dire saw huge increases in rent, the past ten years have been great for landlords … the bottom line is that if rents are low, and supply is low; then something else is wrong …
You signed a contract that prohibits you from raising rents for a year, does your law require this provision in your rental agreements? … if not, then you made a choice … there should be either a law or a court precedence that establishes the default condition, unless otherwise stated, the rental agreement are treated as one or the other … here the default is month-to-month … so it’s 30 days unless the contract says otherwise …
Looks like New Hampshire law allows a 7-day “notice to quit” … how long before the court hears the case? … in Oregon, the courts are required to hear it 8 days after the complaint is file (which is after the notice to quit period), 4 days for the sheriff to schedule the manpower … it’s realistic to have a new paying tenant the 1st of the next month … a landlord only needs one month’s security deposit … I never charged a penny more …
My business model was to give the security deposit back in it’s entirety at every opportunity … word gets around and better tenants turn in applications … [wolfish grin] …
As someone mentioned above - long-term homelessness is about health issues like mental illness or drug addiction. Short-term homelessness (which, yes, I’ve experienced) is about financial setbacks or drastic change to your housing situation (getting kicked out of the family home or something). When I was homeless in Chicago, it wasn’t a lack of affordable housing - it was a lack of funds to pay for ANY housing. Once I got a job, I lived in a $10/night SRO until I’d saved enough to get another apt, and that was one of several cheap options I had.
I think there’s a very small segment of homeless people that have funds but can’t find anything affordable housing because there are lots of low cost options out there if you’ve got some sort of revenue stream.