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Adventures in being a landlord

Roger-Rabbit-icon1A group is lobbying Seattle city government to enact an ordinance that would prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks or refusing to rent housing to ex-convicts. The purpose of this is to help ex-cons reintegrate into society by eliminating housing discrimination against them. As laudable as this sounds, it puts additional burdens on landlords who are already overwhelmed by responsibilities such as maintenance requests. If you’re a Landlord in the Toronto area, take a look at Absolute Draining & Plumbing to see how they could help with this. The new ruling also impacts on their other tenants and neighbors who may not want to live next door to people who refuse to play by society’s rules. Predictably, the reaction of Seattle Times readers to this proposal in comments below the article was very negative. (Read the story and comments here.)

It’s said a man’s home is his castle; but most of us must settle for small castles with shallow moats. Even so, our home is normally our largest investment; we worked hard for it; and we have a lot at stake — our peace and quiet, the safety of our families, our financial futures, etc. Understandably, we don’t want undesirables as neighbors.

But this article is about landlords, rental properties, and renters. Landlords will often invest in some property management services in order to help them manage their home in a controlled manner, but this can occasionally lead to complications. Large apartment complexes are usually investor-owned businesses run by professional managers. It’s one thing to regulate these companies to protect the public from unfair discrimination; the argument in favor of such regulation is the public good outweighs a relatively minor loss of freedom for the business owner, and they’re able to spread the risks inherent in renting to strangers over dozens or hundreds of units. Some landlords during their career might have to give out forms similar to this https://www.american-apartment-owners-association.org/property-management/landlord-forms/notice-to-pay-rent-or-quit/ to their tenants if things aren’t going well.

This equation is drastically different for mom-and-pop landlords who may be renting a spare room in their own homes, or perhaps own a rental house or two. Are you really willing to force an elderly widow renting space in her home to live with someone who’s done prison time for robbery, rape, or murder? What about a family who, because of an out-of-town work assignment, wants to rent out their family home for a year or two? Should they be compelled to entrust their most valuable asset to someone with a criminal history?

Many commercial landlords require tenants to carry renters’ liability insurance. These landlords also get the cream of the renter crop — young professionals with good jobs and credit, who can get and afford such insurance. Mom-and-pop landlords tend to serve higher-risk and more marginal renters, leaving them more exposed to potential financial losses from nonpayment of rent and property damage. Let’s suppose this ordinance passes, and you own a rental house within the Seattle city limits. Can you even require your tenant to carry renters’ liability insurance without violating this ordinance, if insurers refuse to issue policies to people with criminal records?

Rental housing is already heavily regulated, with various tenant protections impose risks, costs, and burdens on landlords. I’m not in favor of allowing landlords to discriminate against renters based on race, sexual orientation, etc. But being a criminal is different. That’s a choice, and people of bad character who commit crimes should expect to be shunned by employers, landlords, and society. Now the city wants to force private landlords to rent to them?

Many years ago, my wife and I watched a neighbor across the street destroy a rental house. He was upset because his girlfriend left him, got drunk, and took out his frustrations on the house with an axe. The police took their time about arriving, then sat in their patrol cars and did nothing. By the time they finally arrested him, the house was nearly a total loss. That’s why no landlord should ever be forced to rent to someone who isn’t trustworthy. I just hope that they got tenant insurance sorted with a company like these BST Insurance Brokers. Otherwise, it might have cost a fair bit to fix all the damage that that tenant caused.

After my wife got pregnant and quit her job, we could no longer afford to live in our house on my salary alone, so we moved to an apartment and rented out the house. The rental income didn’t even cover the mortgage payments, so I was subsidizing the tenants from my paychecks, and wasn’t paid for the time and work I spent on keeping up the property, finding and screening tenants, responding to tenant complaints, and repairing damage and cleaning up their messes after they left.

Simply getting our tenants to pay the rent on time was an ongoing problem. One charming fellow, an engineer employed by the phone company, paid the first, last, and deposit in cash — but didn’t tell me he and his wife were splitting up and this was the last money I would ever see from him. After he parked his family in my house, she struggled to make the rent payments from her state welfare checks. In effect, he dumped the responsibility for supporting his family on me. Our final tenant had to be hounded every month for the rent, then quit paying altogether, and retaliated for being evicted by vandalizing the house.

My simple solution to all these problems is I’ll never be a landlord again. Even before the city hatched this idea of forcing landlords to rent to murderers, rapists, robbers, and child molesters after they’re released from prison, the disincentives outweighed the incentives. As far as I’m concerned, the city can figure out who’s going to provide rental housing for people who need it. I refuse to do it.


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