Housing advocates frequently talk about the imbalance of power between landlords and renters. Their solution is to use brute force to provide a more “equitable” balance. This policy is founded on the premise that individuals should experience the same results, regardless of their actions or character.
As an example, a growing number of jurisdictions are making it illegal for landlords to consider criminal convictions, past evictions, and/or credit scores when screening tenants. According to housing advocates, a convicted criminal should receive the same consideration as someone who has no record. An individual with past evictions should be treated the same as an individual with a clean rental history. An individual with a credit score of 600 should not be treated differently than an individual with a credit score of 780.
Criminal convictions, past evictions, and credit scores tell landlords certain things about an applicant. While they don’t tell the full story, they do provide indications about an individual’s character. Housing advocates want to prohibit landlords from considering an applicant’s character. They want those with a history of poor decisions to receive the same consideration and treatment as those with a history of better decision making.
In a free market, a trade a consensual action. Each party is free to accept or reject the terms and conditions requested by the other parties. In a free market, tenants and landlords have equal power—the power to choose with whom to trade and on what terms. Housing advocates regard this freedom of choice as an imbalance of power.
Advocates want to prevent landlords from setting terms and conditions that tenants don’t like. They want the terms of rental agreements to be skewed in favor of tenants, regardless of the landlord’s desires. Indeed, they want to impose those terms upon landlords by making it illegal to reject those terms.
Housing advocates are not interested in mutually beneficial trades. Instead, they want to, as one advocate put it, bring landlords to heel. They want landlords to be subservient and satisfy the demands of tenants, and they want to use the coercive power of government to accomplish that goal.
No balance is being sought. The proposals put forth by housing advocates are little different than the thuggish tactics of street gangs. The only difference is that housing advocates seek to codify their thuggery into law.