[WSBARP] Landlord Question - Next legislative session

[K. Garl Long]

The government should not favor one group or another. It should supply a 
secure physical environment and a consistent and unbiased set of rules.  
Property owners are not asking for more government, or for government 
funds, they just want government to stop making the problem worse.  As 
you suggest in your last paragraph, reasonable owners and responsible 
tenants can work out issues between them; without government money or 
mandates.

KGL


On 12/17/2020 02:35 PM, Eric Nelsen wrote:
>
> We are all generalizing, whether arguing in favor of tenants or 
> landlords. Policy decisions are generally made by generalizations, 
> after all. The devil is always in the details.
>
> Little of the current situation is a policy outcome I want or agree 
> with; the moratorium was imposed hastily in an emergency that has now 
> consumed our country for almost a year, with every tool of governance 
> forced to run with one foot in a bucket because of gross incompetence 
> and malicious indifference at the federal level coupled with 
> insufficient local resources. It never should have taken this long, 
> too many people have died, too many are going to die still, and 
> governmental capacity to act is still badly crippled. Governor Inslee 
> was given a surgical problem, then blindfolded and handed a 
> sledgehammer and told to take care of it. So we got a sledgehammer 
> solution for a surgical problem.
>
> I do agree that there should be a policy-level allocation of relief to 
> mom-and-pop landlords to help ease the economic burden they have taken 
> on. Personally, I would advocate for limiting relief to landlords who 
> are individuals and closely-held corporate entities (say, max 4 owners 
> of the entity, with additional rules to prevent gaming this limit by 
> having interlocking ownership or control), who own no more than six 
> rental units total, and whose rental revenue amounts to 50% or more of 
> their total personal income. That helps individual small-time 
> landlords that have been front and center of the argument for landlord 
> relief, and avoids benefitting the corporations who typically hoover 
> up the vast majority of “small business” relief. I would also 
> condition relief on release of tenant debt in some fashion. (Obviously 
> those limitations are off the top of my head and could be tweaked.) 
> The idea is, if you’re a bigger landlord than the described threshold, 
> then you’re really an investor and you don’t get a bailout.
>
> The “moral hazard” argument applies both ways. Personally I worry 
> about the constant coddling of property by our legal system, to the 
> point where investors of all kinds, real estate, stock, and whatever, 
> have had literally /decades/ to develop a false sense of security by 
> being constantly bailed out by the government from the natural 
> consequences of investor-class and banker-class recklessness. And just 
> now, there are critical policy reasons to prioritize human life and 
> shelter (that is, life and liberty interests) over profits (property). 
> So that false sense of security is getting zinged and property owners 
> are outraged, forgetting that for themselves, their life and liberty 
> interests are basically already well-provided for. No one owning a 
> rental property is going without a roof over their own head.
>
> Also, a money/contract relationship is not the same as a social human 
> relationship. There is no /moral/ obligation to pay money, because 
> morality arises from social relationships, and money is not that—or at 
> least that’s how we’ve set it up over the centuries. If a landlord’s 
> sole “relationship” to a tenant is based on the rent derived from 
> providing them shelter, then the relationship is about money. Don’t 
> expect a tenant to make an allocation of their resources that benefits 
> the landlord more than they absolutely must. That is, after all, the 
> basis of all “laissez faire” and “invisible hand” preaching: everybody 
> is a self-interested money-calculator and morality based on 
> non-monetary factors is irrelevant. I personally think laissez-faire 
> and the invisible hand is garbage, but if property-owners want to talk 
> in those terms, then they shouldn’t squawk when someone else behaves 
> the same way.
>
> I have pushed back before about the righteous tone on the listserv, 
> about tenants spending their money on goodies and giving the landlord 
> the finger. But if I have $1000 to spend and the choice is between 
> taking care of myself or paying money to a landlord when the law isn’t 
> going to force me to, and my relationship to the landlord is based 
> purely on money, then hell yes, I’m going to spend it on myself. And 
> please note, that is the /proper/ response under invisible hand 
> theories: do the self-interested thing and it will all balance out: 
> the landlord is hurt but Netflix benefits.
>
> But if the landlord is my friend, or has some other /social/ claim to 
> my loyalty, I’m far more likely to pay some rent because I will feel a 
> moral obligation. Contrariwise, if the landlord is my friend, the 
> landlord is far more likely to understand and sympathize if I am 
> genuinely struggling financially, and we have a social connection that 
> opens the possibility of discussing what each of us needs to survive 
> and finding a cooperative solution that gets us through the crisis 
> /together/.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Eric
>
> Eric C. Nelsen
>
> Sayre Law Offices, PLLC
>
> 1417 31st Ave South
>
> Seattle WA 98144-3909
>
> 206-625-0092
>
> eric at sayrelawoffices.com <mailto:eric at sayrelawoffices.com>
>
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