California Bill Would Require Landlords to Accept Pets
California Bill Would Require Landlords to Accept Pets
Supporters say the law would remove barriers that contribute to the housing crisis, but property owners are balking at the plan.
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“Goolsby now has four dogs, seven cats, a fish and a bird.”
The woman in the article has over 10 animals. This isn’t a renters vs landlords thing this is an irresponsible pet owner.
You should instead be asking why they chose an obvious outlier to represent pet owners. That one lady has 10+ pets doesn't change that 2/3rds of families have pets and only 20% of rental housing allows cats and dogs of all sizes.
It’s a very odd choice.
I am a renter with pets, and don't think landlords should be forced to accept renters with pets.
I also acknowledge that pets can do an insane amount of damage to a property if not properly cared for.
I helped my brother repair the damage from a squatter (long story) after he allowed 4 dogs to completely destroy the interior. We were sanding pee saturated studs and priming over them, after ripping out all of the drywall, just to try to defeat the stink.
That's more damage than any plausible pet deposit can hope to cover. It was absolutely disgusting.
People can also cause insane amounts of damage, that doesn't mean it's the norm. I'm sorry about your brother's property, but that's not a reason to allow banning of pets. Nightmare tenants (or squatters) exist, it's just the gamble taken for renting out an investment property. Most pet owners take care of their pets and have no serious problems, after all, they're actually living with the results of their pet care.
As someone who works in pest control and spends a lot of time in people's houses, especially those that are nasty and need my services, I assure you, most people live with the results of not only their lack of pet care, but their own. I've seen some shit and there's more nasty fucking people than you think. They don't even know they're nasty either, like it's my fault they have roach issues because they haven't admittedly cleaned their house in 17 years. (Not exaggerating)
You've got a sampling bias, because, as you mention, one of the main reasons people need your services is because they're nasty, and anything serious enough to impact the apartment's value is well outside of even that norm. Most people absolutely do not simply let their pets pee wherever they want, because they don't want to live that way.
I installed internet into people houses for fifteen years. My sample is pretty broad. It is far nastier than most people realize. There majority is decent but it would be close to one in ten is very nasty then another one in ten that will have nice common 'public guest ' areas but when their basement and different story. It is really hard to tell from the outside and often the people seem normal. Hording is really common but then you get hording wet garbage as well.
True, but plenty of these people are quite well off and just simply don't notice it. I have a lot of clients who aren't actually nasty but their habits are. As the saying goes, it takes all kinds, I guess.
Not denying I have a sampling bias, but I've seen plenty of people who just seem oblivious to their lifestyle choices.
I think it's a perfect reason to ban pets.
I do not owe you the house I paid for. You have to apply for it like everyone else and agree to the terms of my lease. If you don't like it, literally rent from anyone else, but you are not entitled to my property. Peroid.
I do not owe you the house I paid for.
Even small-time landlords are not typically paying for the house. They're just considered a better loan risk than the tenants.
Are you suggesting that they do not pay some monthly fees for said house? Or more important, are you suggesting they won't have to pay one hundred percent of any damages done to said house? The government or bank will cover that?
I'm suggesting that they not only turn a profit in most cases, but that also they keep all of the equity.
I said that in the past tense for a reason. I paid off my house before moving and renting it out. That's not the bank's house, that's my house, and you are still not entitled to it.
And let me be clear, I don't care what the law is, I will continue to discriminate against my applicants for any reason that suits me. Do you have dogs, too many kids, or job hop too often? Then your application is going in the trash. I don't fucking need you, so come right if you're going to come at all.
If you don't agree with the terms society requires of landlords you are free to sell the property and invest in something else.
Bitch please. We are the society. Look at the god damn rent prices and tell me again what "we as a society" value.
We value landlords and existing homeowners wealth over the ability for people to live their lives.
Some of you soft bitches need to hear this. The world doesn't owe you sht. Fight for what you need, but blame yourself if you fail.
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-- a landlord who feels entitled to half your paycheck for sitting on his ass
Except you actually don't get to unilaterally decide who can live in your house. You can't ban black people, you can't ban children, you can't ban the handicapped. And soon, if you live in California, you may not be able to ban pets. You live in a society, with rules for what you can and cannot do with the real estate you own.
And how do you realistically plan to enforce that? I have 100 applicants a month for 1 house that has never been vacant. If the current tennant ever decides to leave, how can you expect anyone to pick a potentially bad tennant when a potentially good one has the same right?
Again, that's an outlier and an anecdote.
I would wager that the average wear and tear exceeds $50+/mo or whatever the going rate is. The average animal will just wear things down stupidly fast. Rubbing on walls, carpet wear, stains, and then the extra thing every pet dies at least once, all adds up, and repair time and materials aren't cheap. I think OP's situation is probably in the more extreme side, but animals degrade property.
i've owned pets all my life. they've never wrecked anything, not potty in the house, rubbed on walls, stained or worn carpet. they did die, but what does that matter? it didn't do anything whatsoever to the house. and this seems to be the norm when i've visited others with pets too. for sixty years now.
Why do you think pets dying wears out your property? 4 people cause more wear than 2 which causes more wear than 1. Kids cause wear and tear and yet generally speaking rent is a singular figure based on the value of the property. Landlords usually buy the cheapest flooring they can get and clean it between tenants until it actually falls apart virtually always changing flooring between tenants for obvious reasons. You want to collect rent per month and then redo the cheap flooring as infrequently as you were already planning on. The only difference is that the flooring you intend to throw away will be slightly more worn when the tenant leaves not meaningfully increasing costs for you while you collected $600 a year.
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I haven't rented in over a decade, and it's great. I will ideally never have to again. That said I 100% believe that landlords should have no obligation to allow pets, especially for free.
Outlier. Anecdotal. Do you actually have reliable statistics to say otherwise, or are you walrusing?
I mean, it's definitely anecdotal. But I agree neither of them are using actual stats to back up anything.
Renting houses, I would say half the pet owning renters would result in some pet related damage. A rug replacement or scratched wall. Repairable but not expensive. Then there would be one in ten that could do a significant amount of damage. Pee being the biggest one. A rug replacement is free thousand dollars. Let cats pee everywhere and you can have costs exceeding 40,000 dollars.
There is no real easy way to know which renter you have.
There are a lot of disgusting ass motherfuckers that let pets piss and shit wherever, and don't bother cleaning it. I don't understand how people are ok with a room of shit, but I've seen it house shopping more than once.
I would agree with you more if there wasn't such a housing shortage and an increasing number of properties being swallowed up by large rich renters.
It steadily means that people have little choices, and are forced not to be able to have pets in their lives. Something people have been doing with dogs and cats for thousands of years.
If there's a risk, renters should be required some reasonable cost or deposit to cover it (not something gouging).
Edit: in general, too, I think that the normal "rules" of capitalism should go out the window when we're talking about basic human needs like food, housing, or health care.
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To be fair, right after that, the article says:
Haney said his legislation would likely limit the number of pets landlords must accept and allow landlords to require pet liability insurance. Details on how many pets would be covered under the bill are still being worked out.
But I also don't think this bill is worth giving a shit about when people without pets can't even afford to rent.
That’s true, I think it’s disengenuous of the article to try and play both sides here. Luckily I don’t live in the hell hole that is San Fransisco.
Whether you do or not, people have to because that's where the jobs are. And they can't afford to. And that's the real problem.
Learn to plumb or be an electrician. Both are very in demand and pay well.
While i support trades, specifically those that have unions, even a journeyman plumber would have problems affording rent at $37.80 per hour. The average rent in San Francisco is $3276. Not including taxes, medical, retirement, food, Union dues, or anything else, a plumber would have to work 100 hours to cover rent. Using round numbers, that far exceeds the target of rent being 30% or less of someone's income.
That would also involve moving to less expensive areas where the pay is good and cost of living is lower. Not everyone that lives in the bay area should live in the bay area.
What solution would you like to see that resolves the pay to rent gap? I'm pretty sure cities need the trades people, we're just haggling over "how" now.
Poor people cannot afford the city, if wages rise so will rents and other products in turn, leading to overregulation and strangles on the market until landlords would rather have empty homes than deal with tenants.
Landlords are already leaving housing empty rather than lower rents. Perhaps heavy handed regulations are needed because unfettered capitalism isn't offering any solutions.
Houses are going empty precisely because people are still submitting applications and attempting to live in them. The landlords are waiting for the perfect tennant instead of accepting the ten substandard ones rn. The market will either adjust or these landlords will lose out on revenue streams.
So wait, is anyone supposed to be left there other than the few well off people who can already afford it comfortably??
How do you expect that not to immediately collapse?
That’s the point, the people doing the work move away, the market falls to a level people can live in the city, everything balances out again. The only issue would be making sure the people stay away and the issue doesn’t happen again.
But that’s not what would happen because the people who can’t afford to live there are mostly the people who make society function.
You can’t have a working city without the people at the bottom. So what you are proposing is that the city should collapse.
Rather than, you know… just making sure people can afford to live there instead..
The person you are replying to, refers to the working class as "leftovers". I'm not sure they are worth debating.
The city won’t collapse, the rich that want to live in the bay will see to it. The whole point is there’s an overabundance of people that want to live in the same area, if the leftovers move to cheaper areas away from the bay than the housing crisis will be less impacted as a whole and prices will begin to fall.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Do you think everyone in San Francisco can be a plumber or an electrician?
People need to do things like work the espresso machine at Starbucks because, at least for now, we don't have robots to do it. And they can't afford to live in the city.
No, not everyone in San Fransisco can be an electrician or plumber, but the many that are complaining about high prices of rent can learn a trade and move to lower cost areas where the pay is good. The people working Starbucks espresso machines are in the same boat. If you’re working 40+ hours a week and can’t find a place with roomates to live you need to move somewhere more affordable.
If you’re working 40+ hours a week and can’t find a place with roomates to live you need to move somewhere more affordable.
Fine. Who is going to make the coffee? Or flip the burgers? Or wash the dishes? Or deliver pizza?
Should San Francisco not have any low-cost food options?
Because you sure don't sound like you think service industry workers deserve more pay.
If you cannot afford to live in San Fransisco you shouldn’t live in San Fransisco. If all of these people left, the market would fall to the point where the city becomes affordable again. The rich hate being inconvenienced more than anything, and if all these workers moved to cheaper areas they would feel it.
You think only rich people drink coffee and expect to eat off of clean dishes? Really?
Also, what cheaper areas would those be? And why should they have to endure even longer commutes than they already endure?
All of this sounds like you want to punish poor people because they're poor.
Ok, where do you live. I want a town name. You tell us where the cheap housing is, and I guarantee that Californians will fuck up your housing market because we have the money to do so. Ask literally anyone in rural America about Californians and the housing prices.
And both destroy your body. People who say what you just did neglect to explain that they can’t walk stairs without pain and their shoulder aches painfully when it gets cold.
Weak, my grandfather was a master plumber, lived his whole 92 years completely fine until he caught the black lung after 9/11. The people’s whose bodys are destroyed are the ones who don’t take care of them in the first place, take care of your body, prioritize yourself, and you’ll be fine.
Blah blah you have an anecdote. George burns worked until nearly 100 and lived a terribly unhealthy lifestyle. Don’t copy him.
And? People work these kinds of jobs and are fine for all their life, but because some don’t take care of themselves it vilifies the job as being hard on your knees and you’ll never be able to walk again.
Because the people who do this sort of work know that they are destroying their bodies so they fashion themselves into some sort of folk hero warrior that are some of the few people who live an authentic life compared to all the idiots around them. All of what you said is really something that exists within your own brain.
Sad that you couldn’t leave a simple comment without insulting hundreds of thousands of people for no reason. Pretty pathetic really.
It’s sad millions of people want to live wall to wall in a city that treats illegal aliens and street shitters better than the tax payer.
lol lol stop. You literally don’t believe that.
No, people like that drink their right wing Flavor Aid and assume the talking points reflect reality. The person everyone is arguing with also believes that rent will come down if Starbucks employees leave, ignoring both the actual price fixing scheme in the rental market and the fact that prices keep being driven up by external factors unrelated to the labor and consumer markets in San Francisco.
The City of San Fransisco is currently more worried about making space for illegal immigrants and homeless people more than improving the lives of taxpayers and upstanding citizens. Any govenment that has such housing epidemics that they must overegulate to even try and have a semblance of normalcy while also touting the area as a safe haven for illegals is corrupt.
LOL you're never going to stop pushing your personal narrative against reality, are you? Why even come here to spout nonsense that people will attack you over? You should find a MAGA rock and hide under it again.
Do you have a source for this claim?
https://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom Establishes the housing crisis for more than just the very poor, affects normal people with decent paying jobs.
https://www.sf.gov/information/sanctuary-city-ordinance Establishes the city as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Including not asking if people are citizens for city funds, benefits, and services.
While Americans toil and struggle to find housing in these areas, the city of San Fransisco would rather focus on improving the city for illegal immigrants over helping Americans. If San Fransisco wants to solve some of their issues they can start by repealing Sanctuary City laws and working with ICE to remove criminals from the US.
Yawn
I mean, a fish is pretty negligible in this case, but yeah. There's no way that 4 dogs and 7 cats are being given an acceptable quality of life in a rental. Honestly, I take issue with dogs in apartments, point blank, as conforversial of an opinion as I'm sure that is. The cherry on top is the bird, which tells me everything I need to know about this woman.
This bill will result in all rental costs increasing slightly. You can legislate anything but the costs will always be one hundred percent covered by those using the services. There is no way around this.
I own pets and love them but I can expect an additional cost to house them.
Alternate take: the post rental cleanup industry becomes more competitive.
It won't. Will simply result in more damages this increase in overall rent and less people willing to invest in rental properties this fewer homes to rent. Thus a double hit on increased rental rates.
similar to how min wage eats into profits and ceo pay without affecting overall employment, the scam deposit fee bullshit industry can actually absorb the hit and I'd wager more rental managers would just start using actual cleaners instead of their cousins phony cleaning company that charges way too much
You can legislate anything but the costs will always be one hundred percent covered by those using the services.
This smells of what I've heard described before as "the fallacy of immutable profits". Landlord profit margins aren't set in stone. The state could pass any number of additional renter protection measures to force landlords to eat the costs if they wanted to.
But they won't
You can not force people to become landlords. Pass all the laws you want but that just means fewer and fewer places to rent. Is that hard to understand? What do you think happens when there are 100 houses to rent and 200 families needing shelter? Prices keep rising until it becomes profitable for people to invest money into rental.
What the protection measures result in is pretty much only large commercial operations can be landlords due to the need of someone trained to get the maximum out of renters and have the ability to navigate the courts if they do any damages. We see that already as rental costs rise and low inventory is common in most markets.
The government could actually force people to rent out vacant property if they wanted to, but that doesn't really have much to do with anything.
You don't need to force people to become landlords because it's stupid profitable to be one.
It'll still be stupidly profitable if they force people to accept pets, and I wouldn't be surprised if the net output is that more people just charge more fees for pets and allow them.