Nosmo King
Gold Member
You must practice at being wrong. You're so good at it.Section Eight provides that the rentals are decent, safe and sanitary. The Housing quality Standards (HQS) are quite broadly written and easily complied with. Section Eight pays off like an ATM every month for you landlords. Never late, never a bounced check. Section Eight provides an annual inspection of your properties. Do you inspect your rentals regularly?Section 8. Don't get me started. I had an inspection one year and they found some things. We fixed them, at great cost. The tenant was no better off because we had grates over the tiny openings in the crawlspace. But OK.
The next year they came back with another laundry list of things that were fine the previous year and hadn't changed at all.
Section 8 drives up costs for landlords and limits choice for tenants. That is one program that can be easily cut.
Section 8 provides standards that are cavalier and capricious and subject to whatever the hell the inspector thinks they ought to be. The last inspection cost about $2500 to be "easily complied with." On a $430 apartment you can do the math. Actually you probably can't. The next year came back with another $3k list of repairs.
I do not inspect my properties annually. But my tenants inspect it daily. And when they have a problem they call me. Shockingly I have never had a tenant injured or killed in 17 years of being a landlord with up to 15 units under management. All this despite not having Section 8 inspections.
Dump the whole fucking useless gov't program, give people vouchers and let them live where they want.
Please point out which of the HQS standards you find cavalier and capricious. Here they are:Notice - HUD. Yhe standards are written to be easily complied with in units from Maine to Hawaii.
You must have had a real dump to require $3,000 in repairs! Was it a roof? A foundation?
It certainly wasn't handrails (required on every flight of steps,interior or exterior with four or more risers. It could have been lead based paint, but without government standards, people could still get sick from their home and you would not hold any liability! Goody!
And it's been my professional experience that tenants don't call their landlords with conditional issues quickly or often enough. Some tenants are intimidated. Others attempt a half assed repair on their own exacerbating the problem. An annual inspection both ensures decent, safe housing and a quality check on the investment of the landlord.
Further, it's also been my professional experience that the landlords most resistant to safety and environmental renovations to their properties are, by in large, slum lords. just sayin'
Oh, by the way, I'm also a certified engineer in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New Jersey. I've got some math skills.