Another angle on housing costs

This is the long absent Joseph.

I was talking to Mark and one element of the emerging crisis of affordably housing we discussed was eviction law and how it discouraged some forms of housing. That same day, the Washington Post published on opinion case on the Veronica Hegens case, which I thought makes an interesting addition to the debate. 

The facts are stark:

In 2023, Hegens decided to rent out her rowhouse in Southwest D.C. so she could care for her elderly father. For two years, she rented to Phillip Graham, a participant in a D.C. housing voucher program. He died in September.

Hegens would have had no trouble finding a new tenant, except that she’s stuck with Graham’s live-in girlfriend, Gwen Broadie, who wasn’t on the lease but considers herself entitled to D.C.’s extremely generous tenant protections. When Hegens changed the locks in the fall after the woman refused to pay rent, Broadie took her to court. A judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing the squatter to stay.

Almost six months later, Hegens still hasn’t collected any of the $13,000 Broadie owes in overdue rent. As a result, she’s struggling to pay her other bills and has received a foreclosure packet from the bank. When a pipe burst, and Hegens couldn’t afford to fix it, the city government reportedly fined her more than $1,200.

To be fair, this version is the most extreme painting of the facts. Some more balance can be found here, including some pretty decent evidence that Hegens knew about Broadie before the sudden disaster. It is also the case that there is a vulnerable person here -- who has lost both her partner and her housing at once. I will say, that there is something to the idea that if you think that people should have this length of protection (it looks like Broadie will leave in June) then it may make sense to have some funds to cover these expenses. Otherwise you make small landlords reluctant to rent to people who might have issues. 

But where I think that this has the potential to really cause trouble is with the housing model of "boarding house" or "apartment hotel". Housing environments with many shared spaces require the ability to enforce rules. While these rules are often petty or annoying (think of people's deep love of Homeowners Associations), they can also make it hard for people who defy the rules to make the neighborhood worse for everyone. 

In the case of a house, things like fines are backed by assets. In the case of shared living, it's eviction that underlies fines and warnings. Sure, dirty dishes in the common kitchen are no big deal but if you create a norm that they never get cleaned then you can end up with all sorts of hygiene problems as well as an unusable kitchen space. Shared spaces are always tricky. 

Mark pointed out that this started as a comedy line on the show Silicon Valley, except it was funny because it was so true that some of the California eviction laws are a bit nutty.

I don't have a great solution here because it is complicated all around. Providing funds for landlords for tenants fighting eviction risks collusion. Fast eviction risks sympathetic people being treated badly by landlords. The current system puts a lot of legal risk on landlords and makes the risk of being a small businessperson a lot higher. This isn't one for simple solutions, and that is good. The best policy is rarely made by looking at one extreme.