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Comment by inigyou | Hacker News Reader

Is there any morally valid reason to evict a tenant other than nonpayment of rent? For bad behavior that should be between them and the police, not you.

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I'm sure there's lots, but lease says no X, tenant insits on doing X seems like a reasonable thing to evict about, but not a reasonable thing to ask the police to adjudicate.

At least as long as 'no X' is a reasonably moral thing to restrict. So no pets, no working on cars in the parking lot, no smoking, no loud noises/no more than N police noise complaints, etc. At least my moral code allows one to form a contract that restricts such thing and that when one party refuses to honor a (reasonable) contract, the other party should be able to require the breach be mended or the contract be ended, and that some breaches can't be mended.

Some things that might not be stated in a lease but would also be reasonable to evict for could include no interfering in the quiet enjoyment rights of neighbors, no storing of dangerous goods, no causing dangerous/unsafe situations.

Why is it moral to restrict random stuff in a rental contract? Would no programming be moral to you?

Pets, and car maintenance can both damage the property. Noise in the quiet time disrupts other tenants

Does programming cause property damage or impact other tenants?

I don't see why that would be an immoral restriction.

I don't think it's a reasonable restriction, but unreasonableness doesn't make it immoral. At the same time, if you make an agreement not to program in a rental and then you program, shouldn't you need to stop or leave? I might have moral concerns about how one enforces a restriction against programming, it's probably intrusive

Now, if your question is no programmers and/or no overnight guests who are programmers and/or you can have six tenants in the unit, but no more than three who are unmaried programmers... Then my moral compass is pointing towards no. Restricting the practicing of a profession on premesis seems fine, descriminating against the practitioners is ick.

Absolutely. The law with respect to behavior has almost no force within multi-tenant buildings. It is primarily subject to contract law. The police have no power there. Tenants that repeatedly violate the contractual rights of other tenants have few remedies beyond eviction.

A single asshole can destroy an entire building.

A lease is a contract that both parties have agreed to. If the tenant breaks that contract, it should be terms for eviction. If the landlord breaks that contract, the tenant should be free to break the contract and move.

If the tenant does something criminal, sure, that's up to the police.

Sure: it's morally valid to evict someone who violates any legally-enforceable provision in the lease agreement they signed.

Ah so yoyre stuck in the Kohlberg stage where follosing the law is the highest priority

Tampering with smoke detectors

Not all bad behavior meets the threshold of police intervention.

Here's a nearly-strawman-but-definitionally-valid example: a landlord may want to remove a tenant who's being unusually hard on the place and accelerating the wear-and-tear. Could be serious enough that paying the tenant to go away would be cheaper than the cost to remediate the damage accrued over the length of the contract.

That's bad. Now everyone who lives in a home (which is everyone) is required to guess what the average amount of wear and tear is, instead of abiding by the contract.

There's common lists ... Check out Appendix 5C and 5D of this HUD publication [1]

[1] https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/hsg-06-01gapp5guid.pdf

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