Race in America: The Marital Counselor Analogy

[Josh]

A marital counsellor usually doesn’t let one spouse blame 100% of its problems on the other and then hold one spouse to be at fault for the other spouse’s bad behaviour.

Precisely. That's a central point of my analogy.

And it is why your analogy is inaccurate when it comes to race in America.

Just to give one example to make the point. Here is a long story about a certain well-known landlord in New York City who notoriously discriminated against Blacks and had a pattern of refusing to rent to Black applicants in direct violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was sued by the Federal government, settled with a consent decree, then violated the consent decree for decades. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/p ... -race.html

Play the marriage counselor here and tell us what percentage of blame should be assigned to the landlord in this case, and what percentage of blame should be assigned to the Black applicants who were otherwise qualified to rent but were denied housing because of their race?

People should be allowed to rent to anyone they want to. Or not rent to anyone they don’t want to.

[temporal1]

People should be allowed to rent to anyone they want to. Or not rent to anyone they don’t want to.

The U.S. is decades away from that. Today, it’s about twisting the screws ever-tighter.
The stuff of law schools. No contest, no profit. $$$$

[RZehr]

Precisely. That's a central point of my analogy.

And it is why your analogy is inaccurate when it comes to race in America.

Just to give one example to make the point. Here is a long story about a certain well-known landlord in New York City who notoriously discriminated against Blacks and had a pattern of refusing to rent to Black applicants in direct violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was sued by the Federal government, settled with a consent decree, then violated the consent decree for decades. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/p ... -race.html

Play the marriage counselor here and tell us what percentage of blame should be assigned to the landlord in this case, and what percentage of blame should be assigned to the Black applicants who were otherwise qualified to rent but were denied housing because of their race?

People should be allowed to rent to anyone they want to. Or not rent to anyone they don’t want to.

Oregon has been busy passing laws that give renters even more rights, and is one of the least landlord friendly state.
As I understand them:
1. Landlords cannot evict a tenant if they’ve been holding up their end of the agreement, such as timely rent, and not violating other rental terms. In other words, you couldn’t evict someone just because you want to rent the house to a family member instead, or because you want to rent at a higher rate.
2. Limited rent increases.
3. Can’t evict a renter in order to sell a house. Can only give them eviction notice after the house is under co tract to sell - cannot evict in order to list house for sale.
4. 90 day eviction notice required.

It will be interesting to see how these policies affect the housing availability, homelessness, housing prices, rental supplies in the future.
I think some of these make a lot of sense. Moving is very expensive and time consuming. I’m optimistic that these policies provide housing stability for people. But I also don’t know really how much of a problem these things actually were. Many small time landlords end up charging longtime renters much lower rents than the current market anyway.
Last week one guy told me that he has been charging a couple $350 per month for 10+ years. This house would probably rent for $1,350 per month.

[temporal1]

.. Last week one guy told me that he has been charging a couple $350 per month for 10+ years. This house would probably rent for $1,350 per month.

It’s surprising his property tax bill didn’t squelch that. (Sometimes property taxes can be frozen to prevent owners losing their property to taxes, but i wouldn’t think this would apply to rental property.)

[Ken]

Precisely. That's a central point of my analogy.

And it is why your analogy is inaccurate when it comes to race in America.

Just to give one example to make the point. Here is a long story about a certain well-known landlord in New York City who notoriously discriminated against Blacks and had a pattern of refusing to rent to Black applicants in direct violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was sued by the Federal government, settled with a consent decree, then violated the consent decree for decades. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/p ... -race.html

Play the marriage counselor here and tell us what percentage of blame should be assigned to the landlord in this case, and what percentage of blame should be assigned to the Black applicants who were otherwise qualified to rent but were denied housing because of their race?

People should be allowed to rent to anyone they want to. Or not rent to anyone they don’t want to.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says you are wrong about that.

Would you feel the same if all the retailers in your state refused to do business with conservative Anabaptists? And you were forced to drive to Pennsylvania to do all your shopping?

[Ken]

It will be interesting to see how these policies affect the housing availability, homelessness, housing prices, rental supplies in the future.
I think some of these make a lot of sense. Moving is very expensive and time consuming. I’m optimistic that these policies provide housing stability for people. But I also don’t know really how much of a problem these things actually were. Many small time landlords end up charging longtime renters much lower rents than the current market anyway.
Last week one guy told me that he has been charging a couple $350 per month for 10+ years. This house would probably rent for $1,350 per month.

I'm not super up on landlord/tenant laws in Oregon since I don't live there. But I would expect the problem is more acute in the larger cities like Portland and the high-demand locations like Bend.

The answer is to allow more housing and more types of inexpensive housing to be built like we used to do generations ago when homelessness was not nearly the problem it is today. Million dollar nondescript bungalows in Portland are obscene and a direct consequence of restrictive housing policies.

[Neto]

Oregon has been busy passing laws that give renters even more rights, and is one of the least landlord friendly state.
As I understand them:
1. Landlords cannot evict a tenant if they’ve been holding up their end of the agreement, such as timely rent, and not violating other rental terms. In other words, you couldn’t evict someone just because you want to rent the house to a family member instead, or because you want to rent at a higher rate.
2. Limited rent increases.
3. Can’t evict a renter in order to sell a house. Can only give them eviction notice after the house is under co tract to sell - cannot evict in order to list house for sale.
4. 90 day eviction notice required.

It will be interesting to see how these policies affect the housing availability, homelessness, housing prices, rental supplies in the future.
I think some of these make a lot of sense. Moving is very expensive and time consuming. I’m optimistic that these policies provide housing stability for people. But I also don’t know really how much of a problem these things actually were. Many small time landlords end up charging longtime renters much lower rents than the current market anyway.
Last week one guy told me that he has been charging a couple $350 per month for 10+ years. This house would probably rent for $1,350 per month.

One potential result of a combination of # 2 ("Limited" rent increases - How is that figured? Cost of Living figures?) and # 3. (No eviction before a property sale contract) is that if the property owner purchases a Licensed Appraisal, an under-market rent scale will affect the appraisal figure, because rental income is one of the main factors in the formula used to determine the property value.

[Josh]

And it is why your analogy is inaccurate when it comes to race in America.

Just to give one example to make the point. Here is a long story about a certain well-known landlord in New York City who notoriously discriminated against Blacks and had a pattern of refusing to rent to Black applicants in direct violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was sued by the Federal government, settled with a consent decree, then violated the consent decree for decades. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/p ... -race.html

Play the marriage counselor here and tell us what percentage of blame should be assigned to the landlord in this case, and what percentage of blame should be assigned to the Black applicants who were otherwise qualified to rent but were denied housing because of their race?

People should be allowed to rent to anyone they want to. Or not rent to anyone they don’t want to.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says you are wrong about that.

And I think that act is wrong. Sorry, Ken, but I don’t respect American exceptionalism. This is the same “law” that gave us things like the Dredd Scott decision.

Would you feel the same if all the retailers in your state refused to do business with conservative Anabaptists? And you were forced to drive to Pennsylvania to do all your shopping?

We don’t sue at law for our rights and some people don’t want to do business with plain people. We simply go elsewhere, or end up opening our own businesses to serve each other.

[RZehr]

Oregon has been busy passing laws that give renters even more rights, and is one of the least landlord friendly state.
As I understand them:
1. Landlords cannot evict a tenant if they’ve been holding up their end of the agreement, such as timely rent, and not violating other rental terms. In other words, you couldn’t evict someone just because you want to rent the house to a family member instead, or because you want to rent at a higher rate.
2. Limited rent increases.
3. Can’t evict a renter in order to sell a house. Can only give them eviction notice after the house is under co tract to sell - cannot evict in order to list house for sale.
4. 90 day eviction notice required.

It will be interesting to see how these policies affect the housing availability, homelessness, housing prices, rental supplies in the future.
I think some of these make a lot of sense. Moving is very expensive and time consuming. I’m optimistic that these policies provide housing stability for people. But I also don’t know really how much of a problem these things actually were. Many small time landlords end up charging longtime renters much lower rents than the current market anyway.
Last week one guy told me that he has been charging a couple $350 per month for 10+ years. This house would probably rent for $1,350 per month.

One potential result of a combination of # 2 ("Limited" rent increases - How is that figured? Cost of Living figures?) and # 3. (No eviction before a property sale contract) is that if the property owner purchases a Licensed Appraisal, an under-market rent scale will affect the appraisal figure, because rental income is one of the main factors in the formula used to determine the property value.

Looks like it is 7% plus inflation based on the West Coast Consumer Price Index. 2023 maximum rent increase rate for 2023 is 14.6%.

Once a house in under contract to sell, the renter can be given notice to vacate. The new owner can then find new renters at a higher marker rent rate. Determining the rental income potential isn't difficult, and so the potential buyers wouldn't simply look at what the current rental income is. They would look at what the potential rental income would be.

[Josh]

What prevents a grumpy landlord from selling to an LLC, trust, etc. as a way to raise rents?