"You Are Under Arrest for the Crime You Are About to Commit..."

It will come as no surprise to you that there is much government interference in our business. Many of the rules, regulations, oversight, fees, fines and penalties to which we are subject are based on the assumption that all owners do, might, or might be tempted, to take undue advantage of tenants. These government controls start with the premise that there is an imbalance of power in the landlord/tenant relationship and that this imbalance must be redressed.

Such laws and regulations begin with the assumption that all owners lean toward an oppressive relationship with tenants. Any reasonable person would acknowledge that there are good and bad owners and good and bad tenants. Government oversight of our industry, however, is overwhelmingly based on the premise that all tenants are good, or at least innocent, and that all owners are bad, or least prone to lean in that direction.

Unfortunately, the magnitude of the attention we get from government is commonly even worse. Government rules and regulations too often not only seek to redress this alleged imbalance but rather to preclude it. Certain practices are preempted by rules and regulations which apply across the board regardless of any actual evidence of malpractice. This puts owners in the position of citizens in the movie Magnolia. In this film, set in a future dystopian society, the police are gifted with precognition and use this power to arrest would-be criminals before they offend.

And so we get rules like those which limit the tenant-selection process so as to disallow criminal background checks or to preclude any inquiry into financial capabilities. We get rules that forbid one party to a contract from ever terminating that contract. We get regulations which demand physical inspection of property without any evidence of any problem. The City of Oakland is collecting information on rent from units not subject to rent control. We get proposals like that made by Berkeley’s mayor several ago to mandate that owners allow pets. Still worse was a Seattle proposal which took the tenant selection process entirely out of the hands of owners by installing a first-qualified-applicant-gets-the-unit system. This legislation started with the assumption that owners were incapable of not discriminating and therefore unqualified to select tenants in a socially equitable way.  

Note the difference between punishment-after-actual-bad-behavior and preemptive usurpation of control so as to preclude any potential bad behavior. It is as if drivers could be convicted, not of speeding, but of a proclivity to speed. Were this the case, instead of an occasional deserved speeding ticket, I would have spent half my adult life in jail.

What makes all this more problematic is that the contractual relationship between owners and tenants is long-term and can be personal.  There is nothing ephemeral here. If dogs are not allowed in restaurants, the consequences are minimal and fleeting. The rule may be prudent or unnecessary, but neither the dog owner nor the restaurant is severely impacted. An owner of rental property, on the other hand, can be saddled with a difficult-to-impossible tenant for years. The tenant is free to end the relationship; the owner is not. In some states, it is easier to get a divorce than terminate a residential lease. No one should be forced into a long-term relationship against his/her will. 

In a way, property owners are a precursor to the current rage of identity politics. We are all members of groups rather than individuals. To the woke, all groups are either oppressors or oppressed. Landlords, of course, are an oppressive class.

To their credit, the woke among us have highlighted some nasty chapters in American history and sought recognition that past group behaviors have had lamentable consequences. Slavery is just the top of the list. However, the woke agenda for reconciliation is scary. The subscribers to identity politics are quite willing to hold contemporary groups responsible for sins of the past which were committed by those to whom some current-day group can be linked, however tangentially.

This is egregious. We are adults and accept adult responsibility for our actions. Certain practices may well be reasonably subject to oversight, but enforcement should be for actual violations. Preemptive regulation is bureaucratically cumbersome, largely unnecessary, and frankly, downright insulting.