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Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

> that they expect you, the tenant, to not understand your rights and the laws that enforce those rights

It could well be that they themselves don't understand your rights. Sure, in the case of the security deposit, they should be smart enough to know what this is.

But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs, where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity to earn money by renting. While one should be able to expect them to know the relevant laws, I bet that most of them don't care to bother because of the time and effort it takes.

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Being a landlord is a job. If you aren't aware of the requirements of the job, you shouldn't be allowed to have the job. If you break the law by not adhering to the requirements, you should be punished. If you have a history of breaking said laws, you should be banned from being a landlord.

> But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs, where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity to earn money by renting.

That's no excuse for not returning a tenant's security deposit though.

The regulations on security deposit in Massachusetts has led me to not use security deposits. I also don’t use a lease. A tenant can come and go from month to month. I only require first and last months rent.

> first and last months rent.

Just to be sure. Is this a smart name for what others call a 'deposit'?

Seems that way to me.

I looked this up and Massachusetts is actually extremely strange that they count "last months rent" separate from "security deposit." In my state any money required to be collected past the first month's rent is legally considered a security deposit and required to be treated as one and subject to legal limits on security deposits. Which makes sense.

It's logical not to bother with the requirements of an extra security deposit if you can go ahead and collect two months rent up front without calling the extra a deposit. In my state the standard is also to collect two months rent up front - because the standard security deposit is a month's rent.

It seems to me that the semantics are different: you return the security deposit ~at handover time, while last month's rent is counted as rent for the last month of the stay, so the tenant "gets it back" (in the form of not having to pay rent they'd otherwise have to pay) a month before they move out. Do I misunderstand something?

I thought the depsosit is for building damage, not for rent?

The deposit is to cover any costs the tenant cause the landlord. Damage and unpaid rent are both costs.

A tenant who has $1,000 in upaid rent and $0 is damage is no different than a tenant who has $1,000 in damage and no unpaid rent. The security deposit can be used to cover either.

I think of it as 2 months rent I now hold. Whatever happens next I have that going for me.

I would never move into a home without a lease. A lease protects a tenant as much as the landlord. What's preventing you from raising the rent arbitrarily or canceling the agreement with little to no notice?

Nothing. What holds a tenant to un-affordable/desirable apartment. I would offer a lease. So far no tenant has requested a lease. I'm not going to force someone into a contract beyond a handshake.

I will see how this works out.

Are you concerned about squatters rights?

Fundamentally I would like to be able to trust the people I'm dealing with where a contract isn't needed and it all works out. I don't have a lot of faith in a contract really satisfying any of my needs. I feel a contract with its specifics and each sides personal interpretation can distract from disputer resolution.

Squatters are my biggest fear. I feel it is a justified fear. I also am happy to offer anyone a lease that requests one. I don't want to mindlessly use one. Live and learn they say:)

I appreciate the sentiment, but your tenants might have rights that you don't know about. These may vary depending on your locale, and may include restrictions on evictions of tenants who don't have written leases.

I give my tenants this as part of the move in documentation.

https://www.mass.gov/guides/the-attorney-generals-guide-to-l...

This was the document I used to shape my thinking and since I have more than 5 units (8 units total) I'm inspected by my town officials every 2 years to assure the livability.

I see the whole relationship as reciprocal and hope to avoid evictions. I do no credit checks and I do my own internet research. I place a lot of value on the personal interactions and so far I have had good fortune.

Sure. No big deal if they don't know about fire safety either, not like it's their real job anyway.

The commenter may or may not feel it's correct, but I didn't see that in their comment.

> But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs, where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity to earn money by renting. While one should be able to expect them to know the relevant laws, I bet that most of them don't care to bother because of the time and effort it takes.

...so ? They earn money for doing essentially nothing, the least they should do is to know the law.

I fully agree with this.

But I just intended to point out that "they expect you, the tenant, to not understand your rights and the laws that enforce those rights" is not the only reason.

While I am no landlord, I have relatives who are and they don't care about the law. It's something you they will be made aware of when it arises and then dealt with accordingly.

Take the example of GP's post, he kindly did the research for his ex-landlord until he convinced him. His ex-landlord may now see himself confirmed in that his approach to not caring is the right one, until the ex-renter brings up a very valid point.

You are giving very charitable interpretation to someone who was clearly withholding the full security deposit for two months past the due in flagrant violation of the law and common sense. He didn't even fully comply with the law when it was shown to him. At two months past due, he would have been required to pay double for late payment, and the OP was generous in not enforcing the law to its full extent. Given the asymmetry between the number of instances where a renter and a landlord will need to engage in this transaction, it is hard to extend the same leeway to someone who does this transaction for multiple units that we might afford someone doing this for one unit. If anything I would suspect that the landlord in question is a repeat offender.

> Take the example of GP's post, he kindly did the research for his ex-landlord until he convinced him. His ex-landlord may now see himself confirmed in that his approach to not caring is the right one, until the ex-renter brings up a very valid point.

I HIGHLY doubt land-lord didn't knew the meaning of "security deposit" and didn't return it immediately "because he didn't knew the law", especially when he was clearly ignoring the former tenant. He most likely counted on people not bothering to get it back when being ignored

Spoken like somebody who has never rented out property, risked $$$$ on building something, or doing anything with a business. Please read up on how real estate businesses work.

It's really hard to be sympathetic considering how rent and housing prices have exploded over the last 20 years and how difficult that's made life and future prospects for the average person.

I would say the rewards extremely outweigh the risk.

That is a policy problem: we make it hard to build housing in the areas of high demand. There is nothing inherent in landlording that says a power differential needs to exist. The low-demand areas, renters have way more power.

...where is the risk ?

Only risk really, if you're getting mortgage to get apartment to rent is that prices go up but you can then just increase the rent. Aside from "tenant completely trashed my house", the risks are nonexistent, it's one of safest ways to invest your money.

Tenants trash the place or don't pay IS a real risk. I have family who just lost 300k in damages and unpaid rent with bad tenants.

Similarly, value decline is another real risk. I have lost 200k in value on home I live in. If I needed to sell, I would be SOL, which is a low occurrence but serious risk.

> it's one of safest ways to invest your money

Are you a landlord? If not, why not, if you are convinced the risks are nonexistent and it's one of safest ways to invest your money?

Reality is that while risk is moderately low (but far from nonexistent), returns are also very low, so being a landlord isn't a particularly good investment. You're much better off in the stock market, at least up to the point where you have so much money that you start needing to diversify.

Risk? Two words - eviction moratorium

Risks are nonexistent?

Sounds like you should try it out, then.

About 0% of landlords risk their own money - it's from the bank.

The vast majority of rental properties in the US are owned by a single person. Mom-and-pop rental homes are exceedingly common in the US.

And they borrow money from the bank to own these rental properties.

That's precisely the problem with many landlords. Being a landlord is not free money without any work, even though many think it is.

That doesn't stop many of them from taking your money while not doing work

>But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs, where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity to earn money by renting.While one should be able to expect them to know the relevant laws, I bet that most of them don't care to bother because of the time and effort it takes.

And you can't fire them for doing a piss-poor job. Do you see why that's an issue?

I mean, you're literally advocating breaking the law in order for already wealthy people to earn more money.

Are they advocating?

> While one should be able to expect them to know the relevant laws

We're asked to take the strongest, most charitable interpretation of people's words, here.

It helps discussion.

People fire their landlord all the time. It's called moving.

Yes but in that case, they at least answer to you and you can have a human to human discussion.

They have a business, too: being a landlord. How about taking your business serious and not get in legal issues with your customer(s)?

>But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs, where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity to earn money by renting

Ah yes, the highly valuable-to-society job that is being a leech.

s/being a leech/providing housing liquidity

Not everyone should have to purchase a home to live.

Funnily enough, we do agree on that end result, but definitely not on the methods. Housing should be a right, and housing should be provided to any citizen of a country. Letting a small minority of wealthy land owners become more wealthy and centralizing home ownership is a sign of failing societies.

A landlord does not "provide housing liquidity". Housing is not a good that I can live without. I'll die without a roof over my head. Profiting off of that is the behavior of a leech.

> Housing is not a good that I can live without. I'll die without a roof over my head. Profiting off of that is the behavior of a leech.

Is your local supermarket also a leech because they'll sell you tomatoes and make a tiny profit off those? Shouldn't everyone have their own tomato farm instead?

You do need food a lot more than a roof to survive, after all.

Why should housing be a right, and not food? Food is even more crucial for survival.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the right to adequate standards of living. It includes housing, food, medical care.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including foods, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

So, yes, they're both part of the same human rights. Note that the US has not ratified the UDHR, because... Well, it's the US.

> The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the right to adequate standards of living. It includes housing, food, medical care.

If I have a right to an adequate standard of living then why should I work? Why should anyone (except those uncommon cases of people who actually enjoy their jobs). I have a right to all the stuff I need already. Now, who do I sue so that it's actually delivered? :)

You ask for this in the snarkiest of ways but... Yes? You actually have a right to all of this, and in many countries, while not ideal, you have such a form of things. You're polish, so you have a right to social security, to a guaranteed amount of money during retirement, a bunch of allowances (zasilek staly/okresowy/celowy and a lot more)

So, why would you work? Aside from the fact that you can legitimately ask that question (productivity has increased a hundredfold in the past years, yet your salary has not. Clearly someone has pocketed that difference, and sadly we can't blame PiS for everything), the right to laziness being an actively debated subject in many circles, from economic to philosophical, note that it says "adequate". If you are content with a basic house, heating and food, sure, stay at home. If you intend to have things like a TV, a PC, books, vacations outside, a social life, you might want to work to pay for them. And with basic needs covered, you can actually work and do something you enjoy, instead of holding a miserable job because you have no choice but to.

>Now, who do I sue so that it's actually delivered? :)

I would recommend Ministerstwo Rodziny, Pracy i Polityki Społecznej as well as Parlament Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. Good luck :)

> productivity has increased a hundredfold in the past years, yet your salary has not.

What? For comparison, check out the standard of living of a 1900 century laborer. Or a 1500 peasant for that matter. We live like kings, compared to both of them.

When people say "food is a human right" they typically want the government to provide food to the hungry. They don't want to make it illegal to operate a restaurant.

When people say "housing is a human right", what they really mean is that they want to outlaw renting or even private home ownership. If the government moved every homeless person to Wyoming and gave them a home, that wouldn't be enough.

on one hand: no, nobody wants to outlaw private home ownership aside from tankies, and everybody hates tankies.

On the other, that'd probably make Wyoming a kickass place to live in.

Who said food shouldn't be a right?

Housing is not a human right. Do you have a right to force me to build you a house? Think about it. Why would we have any nice housing at all in that situation? Why would anyone build it?

These silly things like "x is a human right" miss the point. At some point people have to take responsibility.

> Do you have a right to force me to build you a house?

It's never been about that. Do you have a right to claim ownership of the land, that was created by God? Certainly neither you nor the people you inherited the land from or bought it from created it. It was there 1000 years ago, 100 000 years ago and 1 000 000 years ago. Yet you lay claim to it and demand that others pay you for using it.

That's what it is about.

there's nothing stopping you from taking it. this happens in many countries where there's little rule of law.

There's some things stopping that, like the law you mentioned. But land redistribution by violent means have occurred before, like in China, and the Soviet Union most drastically in modern history. Is that what it takes? Should younger generations do a violent uprising with all the horrible consequences to be able to have a home?

The "ownership" of land is one of the most strong abstract belief among humans. If I tell hacker news that I should not have to pay taxes because I have the right to my own body and work, the people here will react like that is crazy. If I tell hacker news that I have the right to some land that I bought, the people here will heartily agree. Even though that land was not created by anybody and stolen several times during history.

We're in the situation right now when the majority of highly educated people and hard working people in the richest countries of the world has no chance of a future at all. Even something so primitive as Maoist revolution would give them a better shot at owning their own home than continuing to obey Western law and rules. How did things end like this?

Then let me build my own house. Oh, I can’t, someone “owns” the land. Then I can at least stay in a tent somewhere. Oh, no, I can’t, the cops stole all my stuff. All of the alternatives have already been closed.

>Do you have a right to force me to build you a house?

Me ? No. Us, as a society, where we decide to ? Abso-fucking-lutely.

>Why would we have any nice housing at all in that situation? Why would anyone build it?

Nothing prevents you from putting in more money to make yourself the fancy house you've dreamed of. You can decide to give 300k to your favorite fancy house builder to have a prettier house than the plebs living in state housing. The US has the ACA, yet as far as I know the US still has private, higher quality hospitals. Turns out, making something a right doesn't mean "everyone has to have access to the best in class", but "has to have access to something which guarantees livable conditions."

>These silly things like "x is a human right" miss the point. At some point people have to take responsibility.

These silly "people have to take responsibility" talking points mostly shows that you have no regard for human life and would rather perpetuate suffering than provide something as basic as housing to people. Then again, since almost 100% of your post history in the past three months is about "oh no being a landlord is hard", it seems that you actively benefit from misery.

The insults are childish and prove that your arguments are completely unserious. Going through my post history just tells me this is more about elevating your own status and opinion than actually having a dialogue.

Please go live in some government-run housing before demanding that the poor do so. And look up "luxury belief". :)

>The insults are childish and prove that your arguments are completely unserious. Going through my post history just tells me this is more about elevating your own status and opinion than actually having a dialogue.

There's no dialogue to be had with someone willing to leave people to die in the streets because "hurr durr they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Debate happens with reasonable positions, not with the depths of human indecency and Ayn-Randish takes.

>Please go live in some government-run housing before demanding that the poor do so.

I have been poor. I did. As a child, I lived in HLMs, which have been in existence in my country since 1894. As a student, I lived in student housing, that has existence since 1955.

>And look up "luxury belief". :)

Believing that people deserve a roof over their head without paying half of their income to a leech that did nothing be born with money is not a luxury belief.

You are misrepresenting my opinion and values because I don't agree with your particular solution to the problem of homelessness. Your ideas are bad, proven time and time again that they don't work. Instead of debating the merits, you paint me as some caricature. Thus proving that you live and operate in a world so insular that you have no idea how the real world actually works. You have no data to back up your claims, only insults. This is why nobody takes arguments like yours seriously.

I could very easily say you lack "human decency" by forcing the poor to live in run-down government housing. And that argument is just as strong as the one you are promoting.

You need to recognize that you are putting in effort here to elevate your own status in some "in group", not actually trying to argue a position with data and facts. Armchair socialism is entertaining, usually promoted by wealthy kids who have very few problems of their own. Honestly, this is me trying to help you.

Please talk to somebody (a real person) who has built a business. Broaden your perspective.

Do you realize that every single one of your arguments so far has been a straw man ?

- First you pretend I'm trying to force you to build houses, which I'm not, I'm telling you it's the state's job to provide housing should none be available at reasonable prices. If you built a fancy house, sure, rent it for higher costs, if you can find a renter. If you built a house that barely matches a government built one... match government built rents.

- Then you go on and pretend I'm trying to force the poor to live in government run units, which I'm not. Both because _many of them already do anyways_, and because I'm not saying to ban owning property. Merely that there should be a force preventing you from raising your rent for what happens to be a basic life necessity.

- Then you go on and pretend that it is a luxury belief to have my positions, when I have been in the exact situations that are a problem, and even as of today, despite my situation being much better, a bit over 50% of my salary goes either to my landlord or to electricity/heating my home. Paying my landlord's loan isn't exactly my goal in life, sorry.

- Then you go on and pretend that every government housing is run-down which... no ? I can't even find an answer to that because it's both not an argument _and_ a lie.

- Then you go on and pretend that I'm doing this to elevate my own status in some "in group", without even considering for a single second that the reality of things is that I actively care for people and would rather see them in (basic) housing than cutting off a meal a day to pay off a landlord, or being out in the streets.

> Please talk to somebody (a real person) who has built a business.

Cool! I do on the daily. Also, being a landlord is not a business. A business has the added benefit of producing value. A landlord merely hoards housing.

To finish up on that: "Your ideas are bad, proven time and time again that they don't work". Despite all the evil that stalinist policies and maoist policies have caused, their involvement in insuring that everyone has basic housing affordable and available to them meant amazing development from farmer focused countries to absolute powerhouses of manufacturing and knowledge. You can debate various 'communist' and 'socialist' policies all you want (not real communists state capitalism yadda yadda yadda), you can be very aware of the damage they caused, while still recognising that the one thing we're talking about is probably the one that actually fucking worked.

This is me trying to help you: every single one of your arguments has been projection of what _you_ would do if you were in a situation like that. It is not healthy, and I recommend you take a deep look within at your own morality.

You are advocating for government control of housing, which has been a failure in this country and in other places. Nobody wants government housing and there is no evidence that they can do a good job. All you have is "evil landlords!". Your glorious idea of rent control is a failure - do know of the cheap city that is called San Francisco? They have the most strict rent control in the country. Do your research.

Again, look up the term "luxury belief". It's not what you think it is.

Again, you clearly have never built anything or risked anything. Building and operating housing isn't some easy job that requires no risk, investment, or effort. To suggest such exposes how little you understand about businesses. Yet, you keep asserting that you know everything about what a business is. Odd. The massive profits being generated in the housing market are mostly owners of gentrified houses, not those evil developers. This takes 5 minutes of research to confirm. The rest are due to government policies that limit housing production. Again, do your research.

And... holding up Stalin as an example. I... just can't. You must be a parody account, right? Right? Please be so, because otherwise.... jesus christ.

Ending this one, as it's clear you have major gaps in business knowledge, basic economic theory... and Stalin? lol.

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