Canada

This article is bullshit. There have always been good landlords and bad landlords, good tenants and bad tenants. Renting is supposed to be mutually beneficial and it usually is, but sometimes it isn't and that's why we have laws and a tribunal: to protect both parties to the rental agreement.

Recent media stories about landlords and tenants are driven by two things: a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE housing shortage and a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE backlog at the landlord-tenant board. The housing shortage certainly favors the landlord, and the backlog at the LTB favors the tenant.

If the LTB is there to arbitrate all kinds of disputes in a fair manner, why does the backlog at the LTB favour the tenant? Well, the nuclear option for landlords is eviction, which they cannot do without the LTB. Whereas the nuclear option for tenants is not paying the rent, which is grounds for an eviction the landlord cannot obtain. That means the tenant can live rent-free for one to two years, if they do not mind being evicted in the end. And if the tenant is poor, it hardly matters that the LTB eventually orders the tenant to pay back-rent they do not have.

So, why have some recent stories been about the tenants-from-hell? Because it is the flip side of the large number of other stories about house prices and rents becoming unreasonable. There are news stories everyday about high house prices, high rents, low rental availability, increasing population, and the collective burden all of this places on younger generations. There are thousands of articles about this, and the media needs grist for the mill, so naturally they want to cover a different angle. Nobody cares about faceless corporate landlords, so they run stories about landlords or tenants with a human face. We, the public, lap up these human interest stories because we are programmed by evolution to find human drama at the individual amd small group level engaging. Thus, ragebait draws clicks.

And that is ehat this article is as well. It does nothing but push an oppressor-oppressed narrative to make people mad. It's ragebait masquerading as media analysis. The fact is that renting is as old as civilization itself and will always be with us. It is necessary because many people cannot or do not want to own a home. In a balanced market with a reasonable arbitration mechanism, the interests of landlords and tenants are also approximately balanced. But right now we have neither a balanced market nor a reasonable arbitration mechanism. In this context, stories about rapacious landlords and scumbag tenants are just stories about the range of human nature when the rules of fair conduct are not enforced. We can't change human nature, but we can shape the market and the dispute resolution mechanism.