The most common way that rental owners shunt costs onto others is the Business Model of the Absentee Slumlord is far more egregious. The absentee owner (one who does not live on the property) of a rental can simply defer maintenance, taking equity out of a deteriorating building in the form of rental payments, while insulating themselves from the complaints of renters. The appalling conditions of Firetrap Rentals cannot be appreciated until seen firsthand.

Owners of single family residences, on the other hand, cannot take their equity out of the building in which they live until they sell it, and may not realize that their equity is being diminished by the deteriorating rentals around them. Deteriorating rentals also become increasingly dangerous, also, due to lack of maintenance, but this may not be recognized as more than an eyesore problem, until there is a fire.

Single family homes in a neighborhood with a large number of Firetrap Rentals may not understand that their investment in a home is being siphoned into the pocket of Absentee Slumlords. Local government may not realize that the city’s stock of housing – some of it beautiful, historical legacy houses chopped up into apartments – is being lost to Slumlords who allow a building to deteriorate, then bulldoze and build ugly apartment buildings.

In a tight market, the least wealthy renters must take what they can get, with an unspoken understanding that they must accept substandard housing without complaint, or find themselves with no place to live at all. It is easy to intimidate renters who cannot afford an attorney and are not committed to winning a legal battle. For frustrated renters, it is easier to simply move to another rental.

The Business Model of the Absentee Slumlord is most likely to be found where there is a tight market with high turnover of transient renters: university students and migrant labor. These transient renters are not likely to organize themselves on their own behalf. They may not see themselves as members of the local community and believe that enduring the Firetrap is just a temporary ordeal.

The exploitive Business Model described here is what necessitates rental inspection and licensing. Without accountability, slumlords can thrive at the expense of others.

It baffles me why such a great country refuses to offer a way to those less fortunate than those who can afford over priced hotels and actually own a big nice house, but it’s a system geared towards those inheriting a financiall fit family background istead of those looking to climb up a career ladder after college or tech school as employment opportunities also severely lack in similiar fashion to how affordable rooms just aren’t on offer though a few really horrible cheap rooms in bad neighborhoods are possible in most cities.

This leaves millions of good Americans living in fear on the edge up to their eyeballs in credit paycheck to paycheck when we could be prospering far better if greed didn’t administer America’s country system centering around money to the point if no longer makes any sense to millions of us so many have given up by trying to go to prison or staying wherever they can stay put.

The lack of affordable rooms and housing is economic oppression through limiting social mobility where you can’t go try a new city out or travel unless staying in your car or knocking off to go hide at night as to prevent arrest for sleeping in public or in your car. Yes, it’s illegal in many parts to sleep in your car and in public places. Walmart has been allowing RV’s, truckers, and others to overnight in their lots which is highly thoughtful of the corporation as this is a serious gap causing millions of people to fail or even have a chance at establishing a way to a sustainable meaninful life. It’s horrible how America does it compared to all the other Western countries. Even the over crowded far East offers super cheap rooms to their people and foreigners alike, but nice places are available too if you have money.

I’d be happy if I could go to a place like Atlanta or another nice city with culture, the arts, and more possibilities rather than being stuck at a brothers in a poor underclassed black city in the South full of crime, scavengers, theifs, liers, filth, blight, wild drivers, shootings, and the lowest crap scum of Earth. This is character of so many of our cities yet it once was a nice middle class place where people enjoyed and lived meanfulife lives. There is one old downtown motel used as a rooming house, but not enough rooms and it’s butt ugly and so dangerous the black guys are scared to come in and out at night. It’s really bad if the black people are scared too.

Regardless of the class, race, and nationality, access to minimalist basic housing to simply sleep and secure belongings should be a human right; not a priveledge. Why the home of the free actually offer freedom to it’s people through offering affordable rooms and other short term transitional housing???

A friend of mine lived in a Quad that nipped this right in the bud. Every single kitchen cupboard came with a padlock!

He also lived in one of the coolest Quads I’d ever seen. Each unit was like a mid-size studio apartment, with a big walk-in closet, and a private bathroom attached to it with a toilet, sink, mirror, and bathtub/shower.

He and his quad-mates only shared the kitchen. And it was a huge kitchen, too — big enough for 2 full-size stoves with ovens, plus all those (padlocked) cupboards.

More Quad-complexes have been built during this new millenium, and they are more “luxurious,” higher priced, and include balconies.

Speaking of Ohio colleges, we Oberlin grads had similar experiences, though I was a decade later.

The current U.S. housing market is surprisingly constrained and homogenous compared with our own past and with housing markets in other parts of the world, as commenters are pointing out. In my next post, I’ll describe a fascinating and extreme example of short-term housing in Japan called “capsule hotels.”

The high price of housing and the prevalence of homelessness in the Unites States are both related to our oddly circumscribed housing choices.

My next piece will talk about aPodments specifically. And I plan to discuss parking requirements at some length later in the series.

I do not share your view about SEPA and design review, however. I regard the requirements for extra scrutiny of congregate housing as a classic example of the discrimination against inexpensive units that plagues the Northwest.