Let tenants decide what work needs to be done

Landlords are known to renovate too much and also not enough (both are true):

On one hand, they often neglect important repairs while charging ever-higher rents.
On the other hand, they often spend good money on renovations that tenants don't want or need.

Examples of the problem

File:Hallway renovation - replacing carpet with tiles.png

Tenants didn't ask for this renovation - and who knows how much it costs? It's being done on every floor of the building. Tenants are having to pay for it through increased rents. Meanwhile, more important work might be neglected.

Unnecessary renovations

Replacing things that aren't broken.

Ripping out carpets and floors just because they're "old" and the landlord wants a new aesthetic
Replacing kitchen interiors just because they have some stains
Getting rid of furnishings that were perfectly usable

A wasteful vicious cycleWhy landlords do thisCaveats

Tenants move in. They use the kitchen. The kitchen gets dirty and stained from normal use. A few years later, the tenants move out. The landlord sees the stains and thinks "ewwwww! I'll never be able to find high-paying tenants with a kitchen that looks like that!". So the landlord spends money to replace the kitchen interior. The landlord might even bill the old tenants for the "damages" (or otherwise, raise the rent for the next tenant). Then the next tenant moves in, and the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of potential tenants who would have been perfectly fine with the old kitchen interior. Cooking is way easier when you don't have to constantly worry about staining brand new stuff anyway.

P.S. More than just the kitchen, this same story happens for stains & scratches on the floors, bathtub, etc.

Landlords may be motivated to do these things as an "investment" in hopes to attract a richer crowd of tenants - meanwhile, existing tenants are made to pay for it. This happens especially in "high demand" locations or when a city just doesn't have enough housing overall. If we create new walkable neighborhoods, it might take the pressure off a bit.

Of course there may be some buildings with richer tenants who want these renovations. But most of us just want an affordable place to live. That's why the tenants should help decide what work needs to be done.
Maybe not all landlords behave in the ways described on this page. But enough of them do, that it needs to be talked about.

Neglected work

Fixing things that are broken.

Solution: Democratize the decision-making process

This section is still being planned. Join the discussion

The idea

For larger buildings / cases where the landlord owns multiple units:

Tenants can meet and discuss:
- What work the building needs
- What work the building doesn't need
- Simple math: How much money any of those things would realistically cost - per month, if split between all the tenants discussion I should phrase this better. I'm NOT saying that every repair should raise rents. Some of those repairs should be ALREADY covered by the current rent. The point is that we should be able to see where our rent money is going, and how the costs would change if the landlord changed its budget.
Tenants pick apart the landlord's existing budget, see what could be added or cut.
Tenants vote and/or reach some consensus.

How it could be implemented

Policy:
- Large landlords should be forced to reveal their budgets to the public, for tenants to see.
  - Tenants should be able to see, ahead of time, any work the landlord is planning.
- Tenants deserve the legal right to hold a meeting in some common part of the building, without the landlord saying "you're not allowed to be here".
- When tenant unions reach a well-formed consensus, it should be legally binding for landlords to follow discussion Of course this would require some sort of feasibility check, to filter out impossible demands. But such a filter has to be done fairly, so that it doesn't shut down good ideas from tenants. Need more discussion on how this could work - what should the rules of feasibility look like?
Tenant unions / collective bargaining
Simple way to start, maybe:
- Just get together with neighbors to talk.
  - No need to plan anything official. No need to wait for policy changes. We can start now in our communities, probably.
- This wiki could also serve as a discussion platform, maybe even on local level, maybe even individual buildings.
  - Ideas can be re-used, so that people don't have to reinvent the wheel for every case.

Discussions still needed for this page

What about smaller-scale landlords? How should it work in that case?
How to make sure that tenant meetings don't become too long, tedious, bureaucratic and unnecessarily labor-intensive?
How can I get the ball rolling, to meet with other tenants in my building?

Next steps / actions to take✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿

This section has not been filled in yet.