So we're saying that making it so tenants can't defend themselves against illegal evictions is going to increase the housing supply incrementally?

No number of lawyers allows a tenant to just flagrantly break the law.

The thing is, many landlords casually break the law and generally benefit from doing so - they fail to make timely repair, they take deposits unjustly and so-forth. Most tenants put up with this since fighting it isn't worth their while - the advantage the small opportunistic landlord takes is like a tax that tolerable though not pleasant.

Occasionally you get a sort of cagey and kind of crazy person who turns around and uses all the shenanigan of the sloppy landlord against them. The "grifters" - I've seen these types. Sure, they too will break the law but they get their mileage from the normally sloppy and abusive behavior of the small landlord.

The original poster I replied to on this thread believed that legal aid for tenants is what allowed these "grifters" operate. I dispute that and even more dispute the idea that not legal giving tenants legal aid would increase the housing supply. As I noted, the so-called grifters know the law and removing their free lawyers isn't going to change much. It's average tenants who need lawyers since they don't make a business of staying in apartment when a landlord is trying to legally or illegally evict them.

Further, a change making it easier for a landlord to illegally evict a tenant wouldn't improve the housing situation - the illegally evicted tenants would be looking for more housing and the opened-up units would be at a higher price.

I think there's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and that many landlords are bad actors in many markets, and that may tenants are bad actors in many other markets. I'm not even sure that landlording makes sense, it's rather feudal. I'm pro realistic rent control. I just think that, short of throwing away the entire system and making a revolution (that would kill millions), we should approach the problem from a carrot and stick perspective, not a stick-only perspective.

If you want to make eviction hard for the average tenant, fine. But if you leave it at that, where's the incentive for renting to riskier tenants? There's nothing re-balancing the risk exposure, nothing that makes up for the risk-adjusted expected loss of renting to a risky tenant. If we want these risky tenants to be housed _while_ preventing undue evictions, we need to fix up the incentive structure so that landlords still have something to gain from renting to risky tenants. Otherwise, why would they do it?

The only "punitive policy" that's being discussed is giving tenants free lawyers so they can defend themselves in court.

I don’t know where this image of the “yeoman” landlord is coming from, these people are clearly financially stable enough to speculate on a human necessity but also want to be able 100% shielded from any risk? That’s not how business works, though maybe that is how business works now given how many companies and banks US taxpayers are expected to bail out.

Well, the state does provide lawyers to the prosecution side, since the prosecutor is the state.

Easy, by having the government send Men With Guns to confiscate it from you.

You don't just get to send men with guns to take large chunks of peoples wealth without dire social and economic consequences. To believe otherwise is pure fantasy.

In many places in the US we have government officials who decide who gets to live in which house and how much they will pay for rent. Tenants are part owners in properties, sometimes majority owners.

OK, sounds promising

> ..use that tax to subsidize housing

record needle scratch sound.

Subziding housing drives up the price, because it increases demand for housing. Have we not learned this lesson? After so many years, this basic economic fact is still tripping people up?

Please, stop with the housing subsidies. Why do you want to make housing more expensive?

Also, politicians have to be accountable for the subsidies which means that restrictive zoning will burn a pocket into the local budget. They don't give a damn about losses due to rent control. I.e. they privatize political gains and socialize the economic losses.

The idea that the price of housing will not increase if a good is subsidized because the supply isn't "prevented from increasing" is so confused and wrong it literally makes me sad.

We have the data of house prices rising as a result of subsidies. Housing is half land and half structure, and in constrained areas, 80% land and 20% structure. Land does not increase. Moreover even if housing was all structure and land was free, the subsidies cause houses to become bigger, as people can afford more structure, leading per house prices to rise.

Then you continue with a string of cliches, "privatize gains" etc. And a complaint that other people don't care enough.

Well, OK, but what of it? We don't shoot ourselves in the foot because other people don't care.

Adopting policies that make the world a worse place just because you are morally outraged is a terrible way of doing public policy.

The other issue is that you can't 'win' in court against someone with no assets. If they owe you thousands, haven't paid rent for months, severely damaged the apartment.... they don't have any assets to seize. And a judge, especially in a blue state, is not to authorize anything harsh. They can essentially not pay rent or badly damage your place with zero consequences