It is well past time that leftists stopped reflexively demonizing landlords. From the way CraneHusband talks, you'd think that every landlord in this country looks like one of the pig-nosed, bow tie-wearing fat cats from Soviet propaganda cartoons. The truth is that the vast majority of landlords are just normal people who found themselves in possession of a relatively cheap piece of property (likely due to a relative's death), and they are trying to use that asset to modestly supplement their income.
Laws that "protect" tenants from very basic expectations-- for example, paying rent on time and not trashing the place-- are among the dumbest statutes ever passed in this country. Not only do they cause the assets to rapidly depreciate in value, but they also scare landlords away from renting out their properties. This is why in San Francisco, so many perfectly habitable buildings sit empty and unused-- the owners know that if they rent to an unscrupulous person, it will be years before they can successfully evict them.
I recall Sev and PSOL having a good laugh when I said that my family hasn't rented out my grandad's old house yet, even three years after his death. But ever since the moratorium on evictions and the rent cancellations due to the pandemic, I've been quite confident that we made the correct decision. If we'd rented the place earlier, we could now be stuck with some vagrant living in my dad's childhood home, refusing to pay any rent and smearing layers of grime across the floors and walls. We were lucky enough to not desperately need money at the time-- but the upshot is that this habitable, nice house in a very expensive city is currently empty, due in no small part to the fact that the government has failed in its obligation to protect our basic property rights.
In no other realm of the market is theft explicitly sanctioned by the government. But squatting and failure to pay rent are theft, on the same level as breaking into someone's house and stealing their things. The government's sanction of these activities has led to a total breakdown of trust in the rental market in California; landlords demand exorbitant security deposits that price people out of certain neighborhoods, and people with middling credit scores can't hope to rent anywhere close to where they work. Leftists broke the housing market in my state, and until they get their heads around how exactly their inane policies have failed, we will continue to be at the mercy of state-sponsored theft.
France often seems to have that problem, but also a somewhat related problem of banning supermarkets in town/city centres. From what I gather that has meant you only have very expensive small shops in the centre but a proliferation of shopping complexes on the edge of town which not only look horrible but make it very difficult for people on lower incomes to live without a car. I also hear that pedestrianisation in the UK has caused town centres to become moribund as people struggle to get there; again, leading to a proliferation of shopping centres on the outskirts - and not actually preserving the character of the high street.
