I don’t think we have many armed confrontations in the pre pandemic status quo or in the future scenario. As I said earlier the violence is implied.
So now I’m just confused. Maybe you sketching out an example of what you are getting at might help.
If law says tenant must relinquish house back to the owner there is an implied threat that if he does not Sheriff will come and remove him. Even when this happens I think it almost never results in tenant and Sheriff brandishing weapons against each other.
If the law says tenant can stay in owner’s house without paying any rent, there is an implied threat that if landlord goes to his house to change the locks or remove tenants belongings or otherwise repossess, Sheriff will come and remove landlord as they would do for any other tresspasser. Even when this happens I think it almost never results in landlord and Sheriff brandishing weapons against each other.
Whoever the law says has rightful posession of the property, there is an implication that police can be called to prevent others from trespassing. If people resist police, there will be violence.
No, that’s not how it works at all. Trespass is generally a tort. Not a criminal act.
FYI: Q: if you are walking across a field, and run into a sign that says “no trespassing”, does that mean you ‘gotta’ turn around? A: in general no. If the sign says “no trespassing/keep out” the answer is yes, without previous permission from the legal occupant. Not paying rent is also a tort. Not a criminal act. Not paying rent is not trespass. It is a different tort called “unlawful detainer”. Going into a Walmart with the intention of shouting “capitalism sucks” is not trespass. Yelling “capitalism sucks” in a Walmart is not trespass. Unless Walmart has previously given you a “ban & bar letter”… in which case they are.
For trespass, the cops won’t take you to jail, because it’s not a criminal offense. As always, the cops will remove a visitor from the premises if the legal occupants so requests. As always, resisting is a separate criminal act.
OTOH, a landlord attempting a vigilante eviction is committing a home invasion robbery. That’s a felony. The cops will take the robber to jail, and if he’s convicted, it’s off to prison he goes, for at least a year.
Criminal Trespass is totally a thing, and not some rare obscure section of the law
So pretty much equal in both implied and actual violence to the current eviction process
There is a big difference between going in with a gun when they are home and changing the locks when they are at work or something. But obviously the situation you describe is an indication that a world without police supported evictions could become much more violent if it leads to things like this becoming more common.
It sounds a lot like you are saying this…
Landlords are the kinda people that when you take away their access to legal violence (evictions) they’ll just switch over to even more horrific illegal violence (home invasion robberies).
But I could be wrong. And I’d hate to inadvertently ‘strawman’ (fyi: which is an oxymoron) you, so I’ll phrase this as a question. Is the above what you mean?
If so, I got some follow up Qs…
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Most rentals are managed. Do imagine a significant number of property management companies will turn into organized crime syndicates?
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The Sheriff works cheap. For say $300-$800 they’ll get the job done… including up to bringing in the swat team, or punting to the national guard. They are operating at a loss, even of they don’t need to send a car out. Hired illegal goons are expensive. The godfather doesn’t operate at a loss. I don’t imagine that the godfather is quoting a three figure price, and I know he doesn’t offer swat team level service. I don’t believe a landlord could turn a profit without access to the taxpayer subsidized Sheriff services.
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Home invasion landlords would also need to launder their illegal profits, and that can be quite expensive by itself.
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What’s good for the geese is good for the gander. There’s more residents than landlords, and they gotta actual reason to want to even things out. I ain’t shedding no tears for a landlord, who stole money for years, to all of a sudden have “his” residents do the home invasion robbery thingee unto him… unless the landlord pays the residents “rent” every month.
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Landlords are lazy fucks. They can’t even be bothered to get off their ass and fix a screen door for $2000 a month. What makes you imagine that they are going to go all Mad Max Beyond Zillow on “their” residents all of a sudden? They’d miss Dr.Phil for goodness sake.
I am saying that some property owners will attempt constructive eviction if there is no legal alternative. I doubt they are just going to keep a property incuring a tax obligation, maintenance obligation, legal liability, etc. while not having possession of the property and not getting any revenue basically forever.
I do not think many will resort to violence, just like few tenants today resort to illegal violence in an attempt to avoid eviction. But it happens today as your post shows and it would happen more often in a scenario where the alternatives were less attractive.
This has nothing to do with the character of landlords in general. Any sufficiently large group of people (landlords, tenants, cops, baseball players, bakers, candlestick makers) will have some portion of decent people, some assholes, some criminals. The ones who are already capable of violent criminal acts would be more likely to commit them in this post pandemic status quo world that you are proposing.
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I am very skeptical of this claim in and of itself. OK, I think it’s bullshit, flat out. But even if it were true, it wouldn’t be a large enough increase to make A<=B unless it was an incredibly large increase.
In 2016 there were 2.3 million evictions in the US. In 2016 there were 0.3 million robberies. If the landlords were substituting 1:1 here, that would mean that robberies would increase from 0.3m to 2.6m… an increase of 867%
Bottom line:
I don’t find the ‘argument’ that there’d be any increase in landlord perpetrated home invasion robberies at all persuasive. I find the ‘argument’ that there’d be any significant increase in landlord perpetrated home invasion robberies implausible, to say the least. I find the ‘argument’ that there’d be an 867% increase in robberies over all, and that landlords would thereby become the largest criminal gang in the history of history… to be preposterous.
Leftism isn’t about competing over who loves guillotines more.
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I never said there would be a replacement. How many of the 2.3 million evictions in the US involved actual violent confrontation rather than just a police presence?
If you are considering the pre-pandemic eviction process with the police presence protecting the right of property owners to reposses their property as violence then why is it not violence that police will prevent landlords from trespassing on property their tenants posess?
The tenants do not own the property. If they stop paying rent they are no longer ahering to the terms of the contract they signed to gain possession of the property. It is also a form of implied violence for the police to prevent repossession by the owner.
The cases that are actually involving violent confrontation in either case are few and far between, it is not guaranteed that cancelling eviction will lead to an overall decrease in violence for society.
The only way there’s no implied violence is if no one can monopolize property. Landlord can’t evict, but can move in and squat. Don’t steal this…I’m working on sitcom pitch here.
Basically, all private property rights or exclusive use rights are based on implied violence enforcing those rights. The idea that shifting the right of possession of real estate from the owner to the tenant involves some net reduction in violence doesn’t make sense. It just changes who is the beneficiary of the implied violence.
Accepting this premise (I don’t know enough to comment), wouldn’t this shift be a net good for society?
Thing is though “implied violence” just isn’t exactly the right term. When the landlord is a publicly traded corporation that owns thousands of apartment buildings they just aren’t going to get into anything close to those physical confrontations. When renters are evicted and the cops come to throw them out, there’s an actual coercive physical act that happens and it happens a lot and the threat of violence is immediate.
I don’t thin Sabo ever said there’s be zero violence or no implied violence one way or the other, just that one way would have less - and it would.
Violence is hurting people/animals or breaking things. It’s a term of description. It’s not a part of the “good”, or the “bad”, or the “strawberry”, or any of that other “moralistic” gibberish. Instead it’s like being wet. If you are wet, you’re wet… it doesn’t matter how you happened to became wet.
Yeah, that’s what cops do. Except they aren’t ‘implied’, they are overt. They’re an overt threat of violence to murderers, rapists, thieves, embezzlers, snake oil salesmen, snuff film producers, tweekers, dudes selling single cigs… and robbers, including home invasion robbers.
What’s your point here again?
Only people who it would be good for are deadbeats who never ever move. Because if you move then you’ll be blacklisted forever as no landlord in his right mind would rent to someone who has a habit of not paying rent.
It could very easily make it harder for poor people to rent, as landlords would be very wary to rent to someone who has a good chance of not paying and then staying in their apartment forever. You think it’s hard for someone with a 600 credit score to rent these days? Wait until sabo fixes things. So it’s not even clear that homelessness would decrease.
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I gotta be honest Ked you lost me there.
I think Keeed makes a good point there.
This is what I call the “rubber band” effect.
At one point ITT, we had established that immediate and credible threat of violence was of interest too. That’s how the FBI counts robberies. Every time a robber sticks a gun in a victims back, and says “your money or your life”, the FBI goes ++ on their count of robberies committed. Every time that threat is carried out, the FBI does a ++ on their count of murders committed during robberies.
It’s the same with legal violence. Every time a landlord makes their credible and immediate threat of violence, typically by nailing said overt threat to the victim’s door, a ++ happens to the count of evictions. Every time the sheriffs show up with the swat team… well that makes a ++ happen to a different count altogether.
Like I said, at some point ITT, we all had that all worked out… and then SNAP !!!1!..
We’re back to this gibberish…
Fool: The times the swat team goes out is a tiny fraction of evictions !
Duder: The times a victim gets killed is a tiny fraction of robberies !
Duder: What’s your point here again?
And around, and around, we go !!!1!
If we can just decide violence is not a moral good or bad just a descriptive term then we can remove it from your proposed scorecard (see post 1254) and start over on the more interesting topics I proposed 8 hours ago (see post 1262). I never really want to dive into this topic anyway for this exact reason.