this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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That's not a great argument at all. Assuming a rent agreement with say a 1-year term, there's a huge difference between trying to change rent in the middle of the contract period (obviously violates the contract unless it has specific provisions for this, which is also unlikely in most places) and asking for higher rent to renew for another term (which Occam's razor says presumably is happening here). A farmer renting farmland would never be leasing for less time than it will take their crops to grow, as that would obviously be an insane risk.
The better point here is on improving the property. Some rental contracts I've seen have terms where if the tenant spends money improving the property they get some kickback (part of it can be reduced from rent, e.g.). If you're improving property someone else owns for free and expect not to be taken advantage of, then I don't know what to tell you except that you're a sucker.
If there are takeaways from this post, it's either that 1) more jurisdictions should include stuff about this as part of their legal protections for tenants, or 2) don't be a sucker and give your landlord money for free.
Edit: if I wasn't clear, my point was that imo there should be better policies around tenants improving the homes they live in to begin with (because obviously nothing here was illegal)
How is this different from a tenant taking their patio furniture with the? "It's worth more with the patio furniture". "The new tenants are expecting the nice patio furniture to be there!"
Plants cost money and effort and, in many cases, can be successfully transplanted to a new location. It seems to me that the tenant simply took their property with them when they left.
There's a fundamental difference between furniture and an improvement to the underlying property itself. For example, if you repaint a fence, you can't take the paint with you, and the value of the paint itself was far lower than the labor cost to apply it to the fence.
And where does a plant fall in this? You can certainly take plants with you, unlike the paint from a fence.
Surely there's a breakpoint with plants though, right? You could transport a few plants, but probably not a whole garden, or a flower bed, or a tree old enough to have deep roots, etc
dawg it was an example 🙄
i am well aware of the flaws in my example, but am using the common factors (plants and labor) to illustrate a point.
if you’re absolutely insistent on a more watertight example, say it’s renting out land for a new christmas tree farm, whose crop takes 6-10 years to reach maturity. landlord pulls the rug out at year 5, essentially robbing the tenant of their property. (edit: someone else compared it to patio furniture, which is honestly just as good a model.)
every one of my criticisms still applies. u don’t need to do this “that’s not a great argument” schtick no one benefits from that lol
The patio furniture seems a more apt example since the tenant probably isn't expecting a return from their likely decorative garden plants. Whether it's more heinous to do to a commercial renter or residential is another interesting question though.
it’s more heinous to do it to the residential tenant, because residents lack the legal protections afforded to commercial tenants.
if it were equal we wouldn’t be having this conversation but as it stands housing is still treated as though it were a luxury commodity rather than a human necessity.
People who improve a property for free are not “suckers”, they are tenants improving their own home because it’s their home, and it brings them joy. We need to fundamentally stop treating real estate as though it is an investment, it shouldn’t be. People should not have to live everyday life as if their home isn’t theres, because that is an insane expectation, and really negatively affects mental health. People deserve to have a space that is just theirs, even if they don’t outright own it, it is a form of cruelty to disallow people from improving their own space, either explicitly, or implicitly through the financial system.
Regardless of how the system currently works, we need to stop accepting this bullshit from landlords. They bitch and moan all day about the “risk” they take on, and the work they do, but ultimately, this is that risk and that work. I’m sure this’ll garner lots of “that’s just how things work” comments, and frankly, I do not care. Landlords do not deserve my, or frankly anyone else’s sympathy. They are leveraging their capital to ransom out a vital resource for survival at the cost of everyone else in society.
My point wasn't that the status quo is good or right. There's a fundamental problem if the person most motivated to improve the property - the tenant actually living there - isn't the one who the system rewards for doing so.
Pretending the system we have today is different than it is is just denying reality, and isn't an effective way to realize change. The reality that we live in is that by improving your own home while renting, you're a sucker who is being taken advantage of by the system.