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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

She suspected the shock had been caused by exposed wiring in the basement, where there was a pool of standing water. In some states, she could have withheld her rent until these safety issues were addressed. Georgia granted tenants no such rights. Nothing prohibited landlords from kicking a renter out for reporting hazardous conditions to the authorities, what’s referred to as “retaliatory eviction.”

There’s nothing about this that’s OK.

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You cut off the quote too soon. The very next sentence is “(A state law banning such practices has since passed.)”.

Stop making outrage-generating posts like this by cutting off relevant information.

So “she got the boot but we passed a law 100 years too late that might stop half of this problem but still won’t let you withhold rent for unsafe housing” is supposed to be OK?

> So “[fake quote containing strawman opinion about rents]” is supposed to be OK

I said nothing about this, despite your insidious insinuation. I’m saying that taking a quote out of context and/or altering it by cutting off a very relevant bit in order to make it more outrage-inducing is bad. Or, to emply your rhethoric, is any amount of misleading and lying in order to induce rage in readers, as long as it’s rage about the “right” thing, supposed to be OK?

State law banning symptoms just makes us feel better. The people remain the same and now the problems go deeper into the muck.

Maybe. Does that make it OK to take quotes out of context to mislead people?

The problem is layered. Renting is the wrong answer but, unfortunately, better than alternatives.

Homed vs. homeless is just changing problem sets; I've experienced both. Finding a set of problems I'm comfortable with is difficult.

Why is renting the wrong answer? From afar, it seems like there are plenty of thriving countries and cities where renters are much more the norm and accepted than in the US, where they're viewed (to borrow and tweak a quote) as temporarily-embarrassed homeowners?

Some of them, like Germany, struggle through problems with their systems as well. But their problems don't appear to be as devastating as the ones facing the USA.

People desire to be secure in their home and property. Living in someone elses house, like renting, erodes at that.

In Germany it is quite hard to get a renter out. The rights of the tenant are very much protected, exactly so that people feel secure in their (rented) homes. I can't imagine living in a home where the landlord could easily terminate the lease.

As I read the story, this is not a termination of the lease, but rather an expiration of the lease and an election on the part of the landlord to not offer a subsequent lease.

Tenant and landlord mutually agree to a lease contract of defined term. That term runs; both sides live up to the agreement. Tenant and landlord do not mutually agree a follow-on contract. Tenant moves out.

German renters have much better rights than in many other countries including the U.K.

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