Harrisburg, Landlord Law Problem.

Harrisburg, Landlord Law Problem. The problem with Harrisburg's new landlord law is not just the absent landlords. The heart of the problem is bad tenants. While landlords can be absent, the biggest problem in Harrisburg is finding tenants willing to live in the city and also being the type of people that can pay the rent and not get arrested more than once. That is a plane hard fact. While the idea of the law is in the best interests of the city, what it will eventually wind up doing is making it impossible to rent in the city of Harrisburg to anyone.

Ask anyone who's ever rented in Harrisburg, the problem is not getting the people in the home and getting the deposit with first months rent.  The problem is getting the second months rent...or the third or the fourth..... The real problem is that everyone looks great during the interview and great during the house showing. Even If you remain politically correct and dot your “I”’s and cross your “T’s”  and fashion the perfect lease, you can still wind up with tenants that don't have what it takes to even take their own trash to the curb. All of these things can be corrected with decent responsive landlords however there is no way to screen a bad tenant until he is already taken possession of the home.

The way the law reads now if tenants get police called to your property once it is literally the landlord's obligation to get rid of them after one police call because two calls will take away his or her license. Ok, so let's say the good landlord gets the call he finds out that there is an altercation at one of his rentals, the next morning he has to begin eviction proceedings which take upwards to three months to complete in the worst case. Now let's assume that all leases in the Harrisburg area are all of a sudden overnight amended to include the fact that if one police call happens at one property, the rental lease is void and all the people in all the properties will be evicted.  Good times.  well thought out. Let's also assume the family is already having problems because the police were called. Now they're getting evicted. Imagine what it takes to get them out of that house do you think that the police are not going to be called again? Of course they are. Then the landlord is  going to lose his license anyway because the people living there can't keep it together while being evicted. Not fair.

While this law intends to keep the housing in Harrisburg attended, the best amendment to the law would be to make the landlord responsible for getting the tenants evicted after two police calls, not making the landlord unable to rent in the city after one violation.

Harrisburg does have a rental problem. It has absentee landlords who don't pay the price.  It also has bad renters who really don't need to be living there. To say that the whole reason the law has been enacted is just to keep the police from doing their jobs more than twice a year at the same location is absolutely ridiculous.  That is their job. Sometimes families do have problems.  Does it mean that they need to be evicted from their homes?  I can tell you I've gotten more than two parking tickets for street cleaning that never happened.  It's along the same lines.  Just because you don't feel like doing street cleaning because it's raining doesn't mean you can still write the ticket.

Lets make landlords accountable for the tenants they rent to.  That is the idea anyway, as warped as it is now.  The law is trying to promote something which cannot be done until the tenant has moved in. No matter how good you're screening processes is, the plain fact of the matter is that despite the crime and everything else that goes on right now in the city, people that are still willing to still rent in the city of Harrisburg are not the people there to have the best credit scores. Every applicant has to be judged on site.  Do they look like they are going to be able to pay the rent? Are they going to take care of the house?  Are they going to have the police called?  It's hard to tell.  Until it happens you will not know.

Another problem are the laws protecting renters. If they don't believe they can be evicted, do you think they care about your renters licence?  Anyone who has had to evict a tenant knows how hard it is to do. What the law should do is make it easy for renters in Harrisburg to evict tenants. That would be justice.  Then the landlord only has to step up and evict them. The real problem here is having to find new tenants that in itself is punishment enough something none of us want to do.