I've been a renter since I was born, and I have rented from both mom and pop landlords and bigger corporations, and I can tell you that whether or not the "small landlords" were good people or not, our financial interests were diametrically opposed. If I did not live in cities with good tenant protections, there would be no incentive whatsoever for the people who owned the place where I lived from providing basic services such as repairs and advance notice of rent increases. Many did not anyway.
What is often forgotten in these cases is that being a landlord is not an identity, but a choice. It's hard not to feel like the housing market is basically a cartel run by small homeowners across the country conspiring to make home ownership as inaccessible as possible in order to make the value of their property as high as possible. I would love to purchase a home, but even 10 years of a software engineering salary are not enough for that in NYC. And so I will continue to rent, and I will continue to advocate for expanded tenants rights.
What is often forgotten in these cases is that being a landlord is not an identity, but a choice. It's hard not to feel like the housing market is basically a cartel run by small homeowners across the country conspiring to make home ownership as inaccessible as possible in order to make the value of their property as high as possible. I would love to purchase a home, but even 10 years of a software engineering salary are not enough for that in NYC. And so I will continue to rent, and I will continue to advocate for expanded tenants rights.