From Socius:
Against the backdrop of an acute rental affordability crisis and a resurgent tenant’s rights movement, rental industry groups have frequently argued that tenant protection laws disproportionately harm “mom-and-pop” landlords and, by extension, the disadvantaged tenants they serve. The authors leverage a changing regulatory environment in Seattle to provide a rare empirical interrogation of these claims. This analysis of a novel set of consumer data linked with parcel records provides no evidence that tenant protection laws drove “mom-and-pop” landlords out of the rental market. Moreover, an analysis of a survey of almost 4,000 Seattle landlords suggests that “mom-and-pop” landlords use management practices that are largely similar to those used by landlords with larger rental portfolios. These findings run counter to pervasive political narratives regarding the detrimental effects of tenant protection regulations on the small-scale rental sector and bring needed attention to the repercussions of claims-making for stratification in the housing context.