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- Apr 14, 2006
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About 30 years ago, when I was in law school, we had what they called the clinical program, through which second year and older law students could appear in court and gain practical experience under the supervision of practicing attorneys. For example, I worked with battered women to get restraining orders against their abusers. It was all volunteer work; there were no fees to the clients.
One of the available programs was called the Landlord/Tenant Clinic, which entailed Yale Law Students representing poor tenants in New Haven during the eviction process. Essentially, what they did was throw up every and any possible defense to keep the tenants in their apartments for as long as possible and finally negotiate the terms of their departure with the landlord, which often consisted of effectively paying the tenants to move out.
Toward the end of my first year, someone working in the Landlord/Tenant Clinic gave a presentation to members of my class to convince us of the need to sign up for it the next year. I recall the student explaining what they did and thinking to myself that it sounded like an unfair burden to the landlords if the tenant was clearly not paying rent and there was nothing wrong with the apartment. So I asked about it. She justified it by pointing out that affordable housing was a great and pressing need, and, besides, they were just "giving the slumlords what they deserve."
That conversation struck with me, and two years later, as part of a mandatory independent study program, I decided to follow up on the issue. I teamed up with two classmates and we split the project up. We picked the worst of the New Haven slum areas, which consisted of nearly identical triple-decker buildings that had been built in the late 19th or early 20th century to house workers in the factories that once flourished there. We found out who owned every building in that neighborhood and how many other buildings they owned. We tried to determine a pro forma financial statement for a typical landlord, based on estimates of market rents in the neighborhood, financing costs, repair and maintenance, vacancy rates, etc. By looking through the court files, we made an estimate of both the delays and the extra legal costs imposed in cases that involved the landlord/tenant clinic versus those that did not. Finally, we interviewed a large number of landlords about their experiences as well as to confirm our estimates. (All of this was much harder in the days before the internet).
What we found was that the majority of the buildings were still owned by one person who lived in the first floor and rented out the upper two floors. Those owners typically did not own any other property. There was, however, a gradual but growing tendency by a few landlords to acquire additional buildings in the neighborhood. We found that the participation of the landlord/tenant clinic almost always resulted in a delay of several months in any eviction process and cost the landlords several thousand dollars in legal fees. We found that these months of lost rent, coupled with the increased legal costs, often resulted in negative cash flow for the individual landlords. Through our interviews, we learned that, eventually, after repeated run ins with non-paying tenants represented by the landlord/tenant clinic, a growing number of the landlords were giving up and selling their property to the multi-property operators (i.e. - the real slumlords), who could afford to take on the clinic in court.
From all this, we concluded that the landlord/tenant clinic was, in fact, creating the very monster they purported to be fighting. We admitted that the lack of affordable housing was a pressing social need, but suggested that they might better direct their energies toward obtaining government funding for that housing rather than laying that burden on individual private landlords. Our suggestion was not well received.
One of the available programs was called the Landlord/Tenant Clinic, which entailed Yale Law Students representing poor tenants in New Haven during the eviction process. Essentially, what they did was throw up every and any possible defense to keep the tenants in their apartments for as long as possible and finally negotiate the terms of their departure with the landlord, which often consisted of effectively paying the tenants to move out.
Toward the end of my first year, someone working in the Landlord/Tenant Clinic gave a presentation to members of my class to convince us of the need to sign up for it the next year. I recall the student explaining what they did and thinking to myself that it sounded like an unfair burden to the landlords if the tenant was clearly not paying rent and there was nothing wrong with the apartment. So I asked about it. She justified it by pointing out that affordable housing was a great and pressing need, and, besides, they were just "giving the slumlords what they deserve."
That conversation struck with me, and two years later, as part of a mandatory independent study program, I decided to follow up on the issue. I teamed up with two classmates and we split the project up. We picked the worst of the New Haven slum areas, which consisted of nearly identical triple-decker buildings that had been built in the late 19th or early 20th century to house workers in the factories that once flourished there. We found out who owned every building in that neighborhood and how many other buildings they owned. We tried to determine a pro forma financial statement for a typical landlord, based on estimates of market rents in the neighborhood, financing costs, repair and maintenance, vacancy rates, etc. By looking through the court files, we made an estimate of both the delays and the extra legal costs imposed in cases that involved the landlord/tenant clinic versus those that did not. Finally, we interviewed a large number of landlords about their experiences as well as to confirm our estimates. (All of this was much harder in the days before the internet).
What we found was that the majority of the buildings were still owned by one person who lived in the first floor and rented out the upper two floors. Those owners typically did not own any other property. There was, however, a gradual but growing tendency by a few landlords to acquire additional buildings in the neighborhood. We found that the participation of the landlord/tenant clinic almost always resulted in a delay of several months in any eviction process and cost the landlords several thousand dollars in legal fees. We found that these months of lost rent, coupled with the increased legal costs, often resulted in negative cash flow for the individual landlords. Through our interviews, we learned that, eventually, after repeated run ins with non-paying tenants represented by the landlord/tenant clinic, a growing number of the landlords were giving up and selling their property to the multi-property operators (i.e. - the real slumlords), who could afford to take on the clinic in court.
From all this, we concluded that the landlord/tenant clinic was, in fact, creating the very monster they purported to be fighting. We admitted that the lack of affordable housing was a pressing social need, but suggested that they might better direct their energies toward obtaining government funding for that housing rather than laying that burden on individual private landlords. Our suggestion was not well received.
