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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

> take a look at the wonderful California Tenants Guide.

I've never once heard people from California praising their state for making renting better. I've heard the exact opposite many times over.

Everything has tradeoffs. Every complexity the state forces into a transaction enables an exploitative company to leverage loopholes to their advantage. Only near perfect systems can reap the benefits of authoritative protections without inadvertently propping up exploiters who thrive on working around the complexity. Something a smaller, (likely more honest) company can't afford to do. There's a reason so many gigantic companies lobby for more regulation in their industry and I sincerely doubt that reason is to protect the consumer.

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> I've never once heard people from California praising their state for making renting better

Let me fix that for you. As a renter in California I had a Landlord who tried to hold on to the bulk of my security deposit (a few thousand dollars) for repainting walls, additional cleaning, etc. The clear guidance in this tenants guide gave me confidence in dealing with the Landlord, clearly articulating my stance, and getting the vast majority of my deposit back. Other Landlords I had were very reasonable and refunded my full deposit without issue (I always left property in a good state) but when I had one that tried to play hardball the guide plus a couple of well written letters with appropriate references to the guide helped me sort out the issue relatively easily.

Making it clear what my rights were and setting clear expectations on tenants and landlords relative responsibilities was a clear benefit to me.

You're rejecting the idea that we can analyze a specific action/edict of government to see if it makes things worse or better. Such a paradigm guarantees that things can only get worse, as the only successful changes will be ones that enrich some well funded interest (ie corruption / regulatory capture).

> Every complexity the state forces into a transaction

I do not see how publishing a guide of public legal advice is adding complexity, regulatory or otherwise, for either party. If you would like to make a specific argument of how it is, please do so.

> I've never once heard people from California praising their state for making renting better. I've heard the exact opposite many times over.

There are incentives to spread the negative/political messages, whereas the gains from repeating helpful individual-empowering advice are diffuse.

I’ve rented in CA as well as other states. CA rental protections were great for getting my landlord to back down from withholding my security deposit for illegal reasons.

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