Being a small-time landlord is unreasonably risky due to tenant friendly laws and backed up courts.

Similarly, I've found renting from small-time landlords to be a worse experience. They tend to do things that a large corporation would eventually face lawsuits over - discrimination, demanding more money up front, keeping deposits, poor upkeep of units, etc.

So I'm not even sure I want to encourage small time landlording anyway.

Some things maybe really are better managed by big, lawsuit-averse, emotionless companies.

edit: wonder if there is a phased laser "radar" where it spams a bunch of uniform dots and if some of them don't come back then there's something there

probably wouldn't work, scattering

the other one would be LEO cameras that are scanning the ground for a black dorito

maybe captures aerial disturbance/lines in the sky density change

The biggest they have is the GBU-57A/B [1] and that will work until 60 meters reinforced concrete. Iran has the facilities under more than 80 to 100 meters and its granite.

Even an upgraded GBU-57A/B that it seems exist, wont be good enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordow_Fuel_Enrichment_Plant

Where is your evidence of this "big problem"?

No state allows what you describe. This being some sort of widespread problem is a myth that's been running around for decades after Pacific Heights which was part of Hollywood cashing in on white fright in the late 80's early 90's.

For example, in super-liberal Massachusetts: if you are one day late with your rent, the landlord can start eviction proceedings. The tenant is given time to find legal assistance and respond - shockingly, you can't just slap an eviction notice on the door and bounce someone onto the street. You have to prove to a judge that your tenant isn't doing what they should be doing, or is doing things they shouldn't be. Shockingly, your tenant has a right to defend themselves. Do people abuse the process? Sure, some do. They get away with it at most once, because...there's a record of it all in housing court and eviction proceedings are pretty much a deathblow with any landlord doing their homework.

> the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.*

...which is why landlords screen tenants for employment/income and renting history, search for records under their name in housing court, and google them to see if they have any arrests in the news, etc. Come on.

> Especially for the edge cases (really bad owners and renters)

Bad landlord far outweight bad tenants in this housing market. Whereas one tenant might make one landlord's life difficult, one bad landlord can make hundreds if not thousands of people's lives miserable and dangerous. Daniel Ohebshalom is a great example:

https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/news/017-24/nyc-s-infamous-wors...

That press release is the culmination of something like a decade of housing rights advocates trying to get the city to do something about him. And what did he do? Soon as he go out of jail, he started harassing his tenants:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/01/us-news/nycs-worst-landlord-in...

This isn't some anecdote.

    Barry Singer, with an average of 1,804 open HPD violations across seven buildings

    Alfred Thompson, with an average of 1,285 open HPD violations across 15 buildings

    Karen Geer, with an average of 1,193 open HPD violations across seven buildings

    Melanie Martin, with an average of 1,132 open HPD violations across four buildings

    Claudette Henry, with an average of 1,130 open HPD violations across 15 buildings

That list is a "hundred" of the top violators and it's likely the list of landlords with more than a dozen violations is probably more like "thousand" range or higher.

In my city, landlords are infamous for charging all sorts of illegal fees and also stealing people's security deposits under the guise of made-up cleaning and repair expenses; the courts have repeatedly ruled normal cleaning and simple repair (like fixing picture hangar hooks) is not valid reason for using someone's security deposit - it's part of the cost of doing business.

You can take them to housing court - and maybe eventually get your money back - but in the meantime you're definitely not getting your lease renewed so you're left needing to find a new place...without a reference, which pretty much tanks your chances of finding another apartment because the market is so tight.

In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing.

I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it should be a no-brainer, so I'll bring up and ask why not? And there are basically two reasons:

- There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights, and the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.

- They don't need the money. If you can afford a home in the area, you're already pretty well off. Even though adding a rental could be pretty lucrative, there's just not enough motivation to go through with it.

To me it has little to do with incumbent politicians and everything to do with the incumbent middle class. I'm all for removing red tape and restrictions, but we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things.

This is just wrong. Contests happen mostly between top 2 candidates even if there there are more in the list. I'm taking from experience of other countries in the world not usa. By that logic, of anyone who votes anything other than those 2 most popular, is like voting the whoever wins.

Canadian tariffs on American imports pre-Trump.