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submitted 8 months ago by MECHAGIC@lemmy.world to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 197 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

this shit (what the landlord did) should be illegal and prosecutable?

imagine renting farmland out to a farmer, waiting for them to plant and grow crops right up till before harvest, then try to pull a switch and up the rent because “🤓☝️the land is worth more now.”

like no shit the plants on the property add value. value that came directly from the tenant in hundreds of hours of labor and materials!!??!!

good on this tenant for getting the W on the situation. im sure for countless poor others the opposite has been true :(

[-] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's not a great argument at all. Assuming a rent agreement with say a 1-year term, there's a huge difference between trying to change rent in the middle of the contract period (obviously violates the contract unless it has specific provisions for this, which is also unlikely in most places) and asking for higher rent to renew for another term (which Occam's razor says presumably is happening here). A farmer renting farmland would never be leasing for less time than it will take their crops to grow, as that would obviously be an insane risk.

The better point here is on improving the property. Some rental contracts I've seen have terms where if the tenant spends money improving the property they get some kickback (part of it can be reduced from rent, e.g.). If you're improving property someone else owns for free and expect not to be taken advantage of, then I don't know what to tell you except that you're a sucker.

If there are takeaways from this post, it's either that 1) more jurisdictions should include stuff about this as part of their legal protections for tenants, or 2) don't be a sucker and give your landlord money for free.

Edit: if I wasn't clear, my point was that imo there should be better policies around tenants improving the homes they live in to begin with (because obviously nothing here was illegal)

[-] Vorticity@lemmy.world 52 points 8 months ago

How is this different from a tenant taking their patio furniture with the? "It's worth more with the patio furniture". "The new tenants are expecting the nice patio furniture to be there!"

Plants cost money and effort and, in many cases, can be successfully transplanted to a new location. It seems to me that the tenant simply took their property with them when they left.

[-] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago

There's a fundamental difference between furniture and an improvement to the underlying property itself. For example, if you repaint a fence, you can't take the paint with you, and the value of the paint itself was far lower than the labor cost to apply it to the fence.

[-] Vorticity@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

And where does a plant fall in this? You can certainly take plants with you, unlike the paint from a fence.

[-] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago

Surely there's a breakpoint with plants though, right? You could transport a few plants, but probably not a whole garden, or a flower bed, or a tree old enough to have deep roots, etc

[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

dawg it was an example 🙄

i am well aware of the flaws in my example, but am using the common factors (plants and labor) to illustrate a point.

if you’re absolutely insistent on a more watertight example, say it’s renting out land for a new christmas tree farm, whose crop takes 6-10 years to reach maturity. landlord pulls the rug out at year 5, essentially robbing the tenant of their property. (edit: someone else compared it to patio furniture, which is honestly just as good a model.)

every one of my criticisms still applies. u don’t need to do this “that’s not a great argument” schtick no one benefits from that lol

[-] b000rg@midwest.social 3 points 8 months ago

The patio furniture seems a more apt example since the tenant probably isn't expecting a return from their likely decorative garden plants. Whether it's more heinous to do to a commercial renter or residential is another interesting question though.

[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 8 points 8 months ago

it’s more heinous to do it to the residential tenant, because residents lack the legal protections afforded to commercial tenants.

if it were equal we wouldn’t be having this conversation but as it stands housing is still treated as though it were a luxury commodity rather than a human necessity.

[-] pup_atlas@pawb.social 17 points 8 months ago

People who improve a property for free are not “suckers”, they are tenants improving their own home because it’s their home, and it brings them joy. We need to fundamentally stop treating real estate as though it is an investment, it shouldn’t be. People should not have to live everyday life as if their home isn’t theres, because that is an insane expectation, and really negatively affects mental health. People deserve to have a space that is just theirs, even if they don’t outright own it, it is a form of cruelty to disallow people from improving their own space, either explicitly, or implicitly through the financial system.

Regardless of how the system currently works, we need to stop accepting this bullshit from landlords. They bitch and moan all day about the “risk” they take on, and the work they do, but ultimately, this is that risk and that work. I’m sure this’ll garner lots of “that’s just how things work” comments, and frankly, I do not care. Landlords do not deserve my, or frankly anyone else’s sympathy. They are leveraging their capital to ransom out a vital resource for survival at the cost of everyone else in society.

[-] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago

My point wasn't that the status quo is good or right. There's a fundamental problem if the person most motivated to improve the property - the tenant actually living there - isn't the one who the system rewards for doing so.

Pretending the system we have today is different than it is is just denying reality, and isn't an effective way to realize change. The reality that we live in is that by improving your own home while renting, you're a sucker who is being taken advantage of by the system.

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 89 points 8 months ago

Can't believe how heavily propagandized we must be to have people blaming the friend instead of the landlord

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 20 points 8 months ago

I think he was perfectly justified in removing the plants, but should have done so before he wound up screwing the innocent new tenants who probably can't break the contract unless it specifically includes the plants. By delaying, he's basically handing the landlord a check from the new people.

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 8 months ago

Ehhh I don't really care about this. Landlords are categorically exploitative leeches, so this pales in comparison to the day-to-day activities of the landlord.

Besides, he should remove the plants whenever it was convenient for him. I'm not going to dictate the "should'ves" in this situation. They're his damn plants.

My husband had plants at the last house we rented, and we basically had to wait until the weather was right and we were just about ready to relocate before he removed and replanted them.

[-] King_Bob_IV@startrek.website 8 points 8 months ago

Why remove the plants until you have a new home to move them to?

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 85 points 8 months ago

Won't someone think of the landlords.

I hope the "/s" is superfluous here, but:

/s

[-] citrusface@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago

Fucking landlord apologist get fukt

[-] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Wow I can't believe you would say that. Landlords are the lowest of low, anyone defending them is right with them!!

I feel the same about my own /s lol

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 61 points 8 months ago

in my uni house, the landlord once barrelled in without notice (highly illegal!!) to give us a rug, a new coffee table, and a bunch of crappy canvas wall art.

After we decided to sign for another year, following a few viewings, the landlord barrelled in without notice again to take it all back lmao.

[-] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 28 points 8 months ago

Had a landlord POUNDING on all 3 of our doors (one at a time, not at once) one time when I was taking care of my sick mother. He didn't try the key, else he'd have probably gotten a size 14 boot up his asshole. Some of the shit landlords think they can get away with...

[-] crazyminner@lemmy.ml 34 points 8 months ago

Probably should have done it before the viewings so that you're not screwing over the renters.

[-] Vorticity@lemmy.world 94 points 8 months ago

How is this different from a tenant taking their patio furniture with the? "It's worth more with the patio furniture". "The new tenants are expecting the nice patio furniture to be there!"

Plants cost money and effort and, in many cases, can be successfully transplanted to a new location. It seems to me that the tenant simply took their property with them when they left.

[-] MudSkipperKisser@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago

No idea the laws or standard practices in OP’s location but a general rule of thumb where I am is if you flipped the house upside down anything that falls to the ground goes and everything else stays-meaning anything that’s attached/affixed to the property stays (or at least should be specifically referenced in a contract as included or excluded with the rent/sale). Plants that have been planted into the ground could be reasonably expected to stay from the new renter’s perspective, they have no way of knowing that was an improvement made by the current tenant and not the landlord/owner. The landlord messed up by not having this discussion explicitly with the current tenant and just assuming they were leaving the plants. I think it would be reasonable for the new tenant to require the landlord to plant a new garden to match the old, especially if it was specifically advertised that way