Across major American cities, bad-faith tenants have taken advantage of generous legal protections and inefficient and overly complex housing courts. In New York City, high-profile stories about squatters have revealed unjust and even tragic consequences for local landlords. Some have even allegedly been murdered by these intruders.
Other landlords face more mundane, but still pressing, threats. Take Ed Yau, a second-generation Chinese American, who owns a building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. One of his tenants, a computer programmer, owed Yau at least $72,000, three years of back rent. At the same time, the tenant listed the apartment on Airbnb and Craigslist and collected tens of thousands of dollars. “I feel betrayed by my politicians, the bureaucracy,” a frustrated Yau told the press.
He isn’t alone. Average rent arrears remain elevated in post-pandemic New York. Landlords know that they face a yearslong slog in housing court to evict nonpaying tenants. They also cannot expeditiously evict roommates, friends, or other lawful occupants who have stayed for over 30 days. Rather than forgo rent and incur legal expenses to secure eviction warrants, landlords are paying unwanted inhabitants to leave.
As Yau’s story shows, large corporate landlords aren’t the only parties hurt by this arrangement. Small landlords depend on rental income to cover their expenses, building maintenance, and mortgage payments. They don’t have law firms on retainer and staff on payroll. A “professional tenant” or squatter can thus lead to personal and financial ruin, spoiling years or decades of daily sacrifices. In essence, the situation threatens the American dream.
Though Gotham’s landlord-tenant issues have gathered much national attention, other states and municipalities are experiencing similar problems. Squatting occurs across the United States, and many red-state metros face similar political pressure as their blue-state peers to prioritize tenants’ interests over landlords’ ownership rights.
The disregard for landlords’ rights strikes at a central principle of America’s founding philosophy. The Constitution’s framers were so concerned about federal expropriation that they wrote into the Fifth Amendment two protections for private property—against deprivation without due process and taking without just compensation—and thus enshrined property rights as a pillar of the rule of law.
Immigrants fleeing larcenous regimes come to the United States expecting to enjoy stability and legal protection. Those features of American life are eroding—not by accident, but because of our elected officials’ policy choices and a lack of capacity in our legal system.
Our leaders must find the political will to fix these problems. In that spirit, this series explains landlord-tenant issues from multiple perspectives. The entries propose solutions to restore fairness and stability to the housing market—and end the abuse of Americans’ property rights.
Photo by Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union via Getty Images