As someone who owns a second house on a farm that has two rental units in it, I’m skeptical of attempts to expand ‘tenant rights’ in New York.
I had a tenant who decided that he did not have to pay the rent, it took months of trying to reason with him, we hired a lawyer and went through the process which took several months, in the end the tenant stayed on a few months past what would have been the eviction date but at least he was paying rent. Between that and another tenant losing her shit we lost at least a years rent plus still have a unit vacant even though we have been using the time to catch up on maintainance.
I’ve seen other small landlords in the same situation where they were psychologically devastated by the process of dealing with a bad tenant and evicting them. Right now my wife is helping a friend who inherited two homes from their parents who recently passed away which might have been a takeaway and not a gift because she has yet to clean up the mess left behind and struggles to with precarity (doesn’t have a working car, can’t find the title abstract and will have to cough up a few $1000 to be able to sell, …) renting the place out for a few years made some money but probably resulted in lost value in selling it.
The juiciest gossip in our small town us that the owner of an equipment rental company (probably able to afford to do it right) attempted an illegal ‘self-help” eviction by crashing into the building with a backhoe which is not only an own goal in terms of property damage but could probably cost $10,000 or more in court. (A friend of our who has struggled with homelessness got a settlement of that much for being illegally evicted by the homeless shelter when it closed but then struggled to cash the check because he had no bank account an no id to create a bank account…)
I had a tenant who decided that he did not have to pay the rent, it took months of trying to reason with him, we hired a lawyer and went through the process which took several months, in the end the tenant stayed on a few months past what would have been the eviction date but at least he was paying rent. Between that and another tenant losing her shit we lost at least a years rent plus still have a unit vacant even though we have been using the time to catch up on maintainance.
I’ve seen other small landlords in the same situation where they were psychologically devastated by the process of dealing with a bad tenant and evicting them. Right now my wife is helping a friend who inherited two homes from their parents who recently passed away which might have been a takeaway and not a gift because she has yet to clean up the mess left behind and struggles to with precarity (doesn’t have a working car, can’t find the title abstract and will have to cough up a few $1000 to be able to sell, …) renting the place out for a few years made some money but probably resulted in lost value in selling it.
The juiciest gossip in our small town us that the owner of an equipment rental company (probably able to afford to do it right) attempted an illegal ‘self-help” eviction by crashing into the building with a backhoe which is not only an own goal in terms of property damage but could probably cost $10,000 or more in court. (A friend of our who has struggled with homelessness got a settlement of that much for being illegally evicted by the homeless shelter when it closed but then struggled to cash the check because he had no bank account an no id to create a bank account…)