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  • Comment Detail

  • Date: 06/03/23
    First Name: Scott
    Last Name: Price
    Email: scottprice11@gmail.com
    Organization Type: other
    Organization: Small business owner / housing provider
  • Comment

    The "Tenant Protections" that are currently being considered are worrisome given their high likelihood of government overreach plus lopsided "protections". States and local jurisdictions already provide MANY tenant protections, most of which actually increase the cost of doing business (leading to increased rents) and decrease the general appetite for investing in new housing supply (which would increase supply to meet demand and reduce upward pressure on rents). Adding even more layers, most of which are unnecessary and some of which would be new and lopsided, only exacerbates an already difficult situation.

    It is important to fully understand that housing providers have to save up huge amounts of money as down payments and then every month pay mortgages, utilities, insurance, property taxes, repairs, maintenance, cleaning, vacancies, property management, staffing, and more. The amount that gets left over for "profit" on both the housing provider's initial capital outlay and the large amount of ongoing professional time required is generally small, as proven by studies showing actual net cash flow. When the natural balance of mutual obligations is knocked out of whack by one-sided approaches that only support tenants and ignorantly act as though the housing provider is just sitting on a huge flow of never-ending cash, then the overall system goes downhill for EVERYONE involved. These well meaning (to one side) policies make justifiable evictions and obligations harder to properly enforce, enable problem people to "milk the system" while the housing provider deals with them and still pays all the bills that never go away, and encourages a "something for nothing" society where people misuse housing providers to enact what should be government funded social initiatives. There are few other natural capitalist systems where the government so actively wants to jump in and tinker with the natural order of balance, and this in the end only creates more problems than it tries to solve.

    This is a well-intentioned but misplaced and inappropriate reaction to high inflation (housing providers' expenses don't go down just because limits are arbitrarily placed to help renters), a few corner case bad apple housing providers that are a very small minority, and acting like the government is "doing something" to address affordable housing by trying to make small business owner housing providers pay for it. Tread carefully here, since lopsided policies will backfire on you and all of US society in the medium to longer term even if it seems like a short term "win" for one part of the population (at the expense of others).