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I was a small-time landlord in Oakland, CA for 36 years, owning two properties, for a total of seven rental units. For almost all that time, my business partner and I had very good relations with our tenants. We were friendly with many of them. We cut them financial slack, as necessary. Etc. There was always rent control, to which we were susceptible, but it got increasingly restrictive after 2000, with the passage of just cause laws. Then we met a tenant, whom we'd inherited in a roommate situation, that turned the whole thing to shit. He cost us $100,000 approximately in attorneys' fees and other expenses; he cost five other tenants their homes; and ultimately, he got $5,000 as a buy out, a relative pittance. Rent control and the pro-tenant atmosphere in the Bay Area encouraged this man to waste huge amounts of our time and resentable amounts of our money. The experience soured me on landlording and on the city to which I paid business and property taxes. The tenant paid zero; yet the services created by rent control are designed only to help him, not the landlord. Tenants' rights laws became increasingly onerous for mom-and-pop landlords. Regulations took the fun out of landlording for me and turned it into an impossible business. I exited the business. I suggest not making a bad situation worse.