halfxing

Lots of breakthroughs in medicine happen without editing genes?

Why would the presence of breakthroughs in medicine on other fronts mean that we shouldn't try gene editing?

what happens when we get to the point where we need to use the scientific method to test if the gene editing was successful and didn't cause negative outcomes for the child's entire existence perhaps?

That is what clinical trials do today for medicine. Are you opposed to those as well? Many have died and many have been saved in the pursuit of better care.

"Small" is a word indicating that quantitatively relative to other things, it is less, i.e. Very Small < Small < Medium < Large < Very Large.

According to [1] (Doorloop, 2026), Greystar manages 823,581 units as the largest landlord. The 10th largest landlord is WinnCompanies with 120,855 units. These are "very large" to me. If we make a generous curve then a large landlord has 10% of those units, so somewhere in the 10,000 unit range, a medium landlord 10% of that or 1,000 units, a small landlord 10% of that or 100 units, and a very small landlord has the last interval of 1-10 units. Hence, 55 units is somewhere between very small and small.

[1] https://www.doorloop.com/blog/largest-property-management-co...

This is such binary thinking. People have different ways of interacting with people. Some people are easier to deal with than others, and that was the parents' point, not that they never want to respond to reasonable complaints.

Landlords should provide well maintained housing and respond to reasonable complaints, and tenants should be swiftly evicted if they don't pay rent or destroy the unit they're living in. That's fair to both sides.

I am also for housing all people and for all housing to be well maintained. As a societal issue our government should provide housing where needed though, including paying for (via our taxes) reasonable housing where someone can't afford it.

However, to force a private party to provide a service at non-market rates to another private party doesn't seem right to me, and as I mentioned in other comments, causes a decrease in housing (and therefore makes the problem worse rather than better).

an investment must yield a return to make sense Agreed, but we can and should cap that return if not doing so leads to housing insecurity.

Again, if you cap the return, you cause a redirection of investment in housing to other asset classes, and effectively reduce housing. Your stated goal is in direct conflict of your desire to cap the return.

There's a huge lack of financial literacy in some of these comments. From you I'm seeing a huge lack of understanding about what capitalism is good and bad at.

How so? Feel free to elaborate.

Repair costs are hugely jagged: Sometimes you have a few months with no repair, and then a huge sewer/roof/electrical repair, so rents need to account for that.

I also never said they shouldn’t make money - they absolutely should, otherwise nobody would want to be a landlord.

Correct, and that is why it is so important that the housing asset class remains competitive with alternative investments. If you force the return of housing to be less than other investments at the same risk level, it reduces investment in housing and in return creates more scarcity and higher rents, exactly what some of the people here seem to want to avoid yet don't understand that the policies they're arguing for is causing.

Homes are quite inelastic and a necessity for everyone.

Yes, but homes in a particular location are not. If you want to live in Manhattan you have to be able to afford to live there. You don't get to claim living in Manhattan is a necessity for everyone and that therefore prices there must accommodate your financial circumstances.

a landlord has far more “financial padding” to account for macroeconomic shocks compared to a renter

That is not universally true since smaller landlords typically have a pretty big mortgage to service for a long time. They don't have the flexibility to just not pay just because a tenant decides not to pay. A house is not easy to sell in an economic downturn and may even be underwater.

No. There is no insurance in the world that covers the cost of eviction, loss of rents, or intentional damage/vandalism.

Throwing around general statements like these when you don't actually know about the topic doesn't help the conversation.

A deposit doesn't even cover the legal fees to evict a tenant (which can be north of $10,000 between lawyer, filing fees, and so on).

Add to that loss of rents for multiple months (while the landlord has to pay mortgage, insurance, taxes) and damages to property, and now you're asking a landlord to pay tens of thousands of dollars of their money.

If everyone did that then how’s the person with a new job able to get a home?

That's exactly my point. If the regulations weren't so insane and burdensome (see other posters' points on not being able to evict promptly for nonpayment, for example) then the person with the brand new job would be able to quickly rent a home because it's not an undue risk for a landlord.

You can't ask landlords on the one hand to open their home to anyone, and on the other hand deny them the right to remove tenants that don't hold up their end of the bargain. Do you not see how that's completely unfair?

You also have more capacity to absorb a short vacancy in case this person is to lose their job.

That is not a universal truth. Landlords have debt service/mortgage payments, taxes, maintenance, insurance and other payments. Especially smaller landlords actually do not - at all - have the capacity to absorb a vacancy or (even worse) a non-paying tenant.

Can’t derisk your way out of everything.

Yes, but unduly moving risk from one party (tenant) to the other party (landlord) is certainly not the way to go either. If I just take your car and you don't have any recourse to get it back for 6+ months because the courts are backlogged and everyone else goes "well, you have a car, so you must be wealthy, what are you complaining about?" how would that make you feel?

It's also ok if people lose money on investments.

The more likely it is for landlords to lose money on the housing provided, the more rents will go up to account for that risk premium. It's no different than risk-return calculations for any other investments such as stocks.

but I think you've drunk a bit too much of your own kool-aid

That (rather judge-y) part negates the "nice" part your started out with. I don't think OP "drank too much of his own kool-aid", he simply listed all the nice things he does for his tenants, which are great and well beyond what you could expect from an unrelated party in a contract for a service.

I didn't invoke a "mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit" idea, that's your own that you're projecting on my comment.

I did say that they are a small landlord, and I stand by it given that a large landlord is several orders of magnitude larger than them. If in your world that's only a label you want to give someone renting out a single spare unit, then so be it. I disagree.

So, you would like there to be less housing, which makes housing more scarce and raises prices on everyone else?

Totally wrong. A home has a lot of expenses beyond taxes, especially maintenance/upkeep. If the landlord just breaks even, where does the money to repair the roof come from?

Also, providing housing is a service that should be done at market rates, and as an investment must yield a return to make sense. Or do you expect stock investments to yield nothing and just retain their value too? Should companies not raise their prices for goods? Do you realize that this also means that you would never get a salary increase? Are you never asking for a raise because you'd be "chasing profits" for yourself?

There's a huge lack of financial literacy in some of these comments.

And how exactly do you "force" the deadbeat broke tenant that trashed your house to return it to its original condition?

Your experience as a renter is not the same as the experience of a landlord. If you've been on your first job for a month and you pinky swear to pay rent on time and the next candidate has been on their job for 3 years then I'll take that candidate every time. It's a risk calculation. You are more likely to lose your job than the other candidate, and when you do and can't pay rent anymore and won't leave then that is a very expensive problem for me.

The same goes for savings, credit score, and other factors. These are not nearly as fungible as you seem to think.

Are you also wanting a company to have to hire the first qualifying candidate and immediately stop all hiring? That is nonsensical. A landlord and a tenant should be free to contract as both parties wish.

I'm sure OP meant 6 houses with several units in it each, not 7-11 people per house. Otherwise the distinction between house and unit doesn't make sense.

This is a small time landlord. Large landlords have easily over 10000 units, and he is one half of a percent of that.

I hope he is able to live off the rental income. It's a big job to manage 55 units and keep everything in shape and administratively going, deal with turnover and so on.

What are you basing your judgment of OP on? He is listing various ways he goes above and beyond for his tenants even though he certainly doesn't have to. Your credit card company doesn't waive your late fees, yet he does when he knows tenants experience hardships. That's pretty awesome.

Also, the money doesn't go into a void: Tenants receive housing in return.