City Council Postpones Action on Expanded Rental Regulations

[Meddle]

With all due respect to anyone who suggested this, letting tenants deduct repairs or improvements in lieu of paying rent is a really terrible idea. It is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum. You cannot allow any alterations or repairs to property without approval of management for obvious reasons.

If properly managed, the city or county or maybe state would inspect the property based on complaints by the occupant. Any repairs would be inspected also and need to be approved. It would not be up to the landlord to accept or reject the repair however.

[Jason]

If properly managed, the city or county or maybe state would inspect the property based on complaints by the occupant. Any repairs would be inspected also and need to be approved. It would not be up to the landlord to accept or reject the repair however.

95% of the time any improvements would be contentious and ambiguous and would make relationships more toxic. Whether or not the repairs were wanted, whether or not they were done to an appropriate standard or added to the value of the property, whether the tenant spent the typical amount of time and money on the repairs, the exact monetary value of the repairs, whether or not the landlord contributed money or labor to the improvements, who is responsible for getting permits, who is responsible if improvements break buildings codes, there's just an endless number of ways that it'd get messy.

Aside from that the money spent paying government workers to process the paperwork and do all of the inspections would probably cost just as much as the actual repairs [[so the city spends $300 to verify that a tenant's wall painting work was work $150). And part of the original problem is that the city doesn't have enough people managing the paperwork and inspections of the rental properties in the first place.