Tag: landlords

While in most cases having a nonprofit as a landlord is considered a win, it doesn’t prevent conflict with tenants. But organizers can take some different tactics when interacting with nonprofit landlords.

Access to counsel in evictions is now funded statewide, and several other tenant protections have passed, but the Maryland effort shows that solidifying tenant protections can be a multiyear process.

A deadly fire in an affordable housing complex in the Bronx was said to have been caused by a space heater. But a pattern of negligence created the conditions for the tragedy, and made the fire more deadly.

Responding to tenants’ top concerns, organizers pivoted from affordability issues to landlord accountability and won a package of new tenant protections.

Some leases plainly contradict state law or include questionable, punitive, or egregiously anti-tenant clauses.

Why should owners of buildings in illegally poor repair be able to buy more rentals? As Washington, D.C., found, it’s not the easiest thing to prevent.

It’s difficult to know who owns a property because corporate landlords and investors tend to structure their business as limited liability companies, or LLCs.

Sealing eviction records at the point of filing is an urgent step toward dismantling harmful tenant screening practices.

Housing tools in New York City demystify building ownership information and help renters, policymakers, and housing advocates spot and address problematic landlord behavior. Could tech-savvy groups outside The Big Apple replicate these tools in their communities?

The UK saw a dramatic change in landlord behavior once security deposits were put into the hands of a third party.

Beyond the immediate need to stop mass evictions, there is much more that state and local officials can do to facilitate housing stability in a longer-term transition out of the pandemic emergency. The time for those critical measures is now.

New York City became the first in the nation to give low-income tenants free legal representation. Now, several other counties and cities have either passed similar legislation or have drafted bills in the pipeline.

If we simply pay tenants’ rent indiscriminately, we have no way of knowing where the ultimate benefit goes.

The landlord tech industry, while alive and well prior to COVID-19, has ramped up in the past year to develop new ways to accumulate wealth at the expense of tenants. 

Most communities lack a way of collecting real-time data on whether landlords are complying with rules. A rental registry could change that.

Dozens of cities and states are considering legislation allowing alternatives to upfront security deposits, such as "security deposit insurance." The only problem? It's not actually insurance.

Millions of renters will soon navigate a costly and inefficient system. We take a closer look at one person’s experience after her landlord decided to evict.

A review of a documentary about the decade-long period in the South Bronx when 80 percent of its housing, home to around a quarter of a million people, was lost to fire.

Across the U.S., sexual harassment at the hands of landlords, property managers, and others in the housing industry can drive poor women and their children into homelessness. It is a problem badly understood and virtually unstudied.

When I picked up Peter Shapiro’s book, The Good Landlord: A Guide to Making a Profit While Making a Difference, my first thought was, “What happens when you can’t do both, or have to choose one over the other?”