How dangerous are predatory landlords? How did landlording turn into a full-time job?
In his book Evicted, Matthew Desmond argues that predatory landlords are contributing to the housing and eviction crisis in the US. They target low-income earners by charging too much in rent, neglecting repairs, and making non-binding agreements.
Continue reading to learn more about predatory landlord practices and their effects.
Predatory Landlords Prioritize Money Instead of People
Desmond says that predatory landlords are a major factor in the poverty and eviction cycle. Predatory landlords target low-income people and other vulnerable demographics, extract as much wealth as possible from them, then evict them once they start missing rent payments. Now that many people are landlords as their full-time job, these exploitative practices have become more common because professional landlords are seeking to maximize their profits.
To give some examples, predatory landlords often neglect needed repairs and maintenance because they want to spend as little money as possible. They’ll also frequently make verbal agreements with tenants who can’t pay rent, promising to accept only a portion of the rent or labor in exchange for the money they can’t pay—then, after getting what they can from the tenants, the landlords will evict them anyway.
(Shortform note: Desmond writes at length about the harm that predatory landlords can cause to low-income people, but he doesn’t discuss the ways that landlords help those same people by shouldering the costs and risks of owning property. People with low income are unlikely to be able to get mortgages to buy their own homes; furthermore, even if they could, having all of their assets tied up in a single property would leave them extremely vulnerable to market fluctuations.)
The author provides some background by explaining that the concept of a professional landlord is relatively new—in the past, most landlords were simply people who decided to make some additional money by renting out their unused property. The 2008 housing crisis accelerated the move toward professional landlording: People bought up foreclosed properties at a fraction of their value and turned them into rentals for low-income families.
(Shortform note: The trend toward professional landlording continued long after the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, the 2020s have seen a similar phenomenon of large companies and wealthy investors buying up as much property as possible and pricing many would-be homeowners out of the market in the process. This resurgence is due, at least in part, to the Covid-19 pandemic driving up demand for housing and home office space, which caused property values to rapidly increase.)
Landlords Hold All the Power
It may seem counterintuitive to target low-income people in order to make money, but Desmond explains that it works because low-income people are effectively trapped: Their only choices are to be exploited or to be homeless.
Predatory landlords take advantage of their tenants’ vulnerability by threatening them with eviction if they cause any trouble, such as arguing with the landlord or reporting code violations. The landlord might simply decide that the family is too disruptive and evict them.
Renters with higher incomes aren’t nearly as vulnerable to exploitative landlords, because they have the resources to leave and find better housing.
(Shortform note: Low-income renters aren’t the only people who are vulnerable to predatory landlords—for instance, undocumented immigrants face most, if not all, of the problems that Desmond describes. They’re especially vulnerable because, in addition to eviction, landlords can threaten undocumented people with deportation to keep them compliant.)
Finally, Desmond says that low-income renters often have little to no legal recourse against predatory landlords. Even if a renter can find a lawyer who’s willing to represent them for free, they can’t afford to take the time off from work to appear in court, so they have no opportunity to plead their case or defend themselves.
(Shortform note: Low-income people are also vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace, for the same reasons that they’re common targets for predatory landlords. A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute showed that millions of US workers were actually being paid less than minimum wage. Although that’s illegal, the workers were largely unable to fight against this wage theft because—like Desmond describes—they couldn’t afford to risk their jobs or take time off to fight their employers in court.)
