YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Pet rent isn't about directly covering damage; it's more like buying an insurance policy that occasionally covers large pet-necessitated repairs.

Dogs are not people. Many in Seattle think their dogs are people, or even prefer dogs over people, but they are not, and they do not enjoy the same protections against discrimination.

If you have never been a landlord, I can see why you would think that "if they damage the property, they pay for it" is a reasonable rule that would work, because if your dog destroyed a door, the carpet, and the blinds, you are likely to be willing (if unhappy) to pay to fix it. If you have been a landlord, you know why this doesn't work, and you would also know why pursuing the damages in court also doesn't work.

(If you are wondering why: people do not pay. Deposits, which they also now capped in Seattle, often don't cover the damage. And suing people who have no money in order to get a judgment that you can't collect on is expensive and pointless.)

This just socializes the cost of pet damage onto everyone, which is why this is populist slop.

(Some of the other junk fees make much more sense: mandatory fees that you have to pay, that are fixed in nature, should just be in the advertised lease price. Think "common area fees" you can't opt out of.)

That said pets is likely not the driver of increased housing costa by any means.

Also I'm not sure what the new law changes. Since 2016, Seattle has banned charging extra rent for having a pet. Subsection E states: "Other than the pet damage deposit authorized by subsection 7.24.038.A, the landlord may not charge the tenant any fee for keeping a pet."

1. https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...

Not discounting the importance of supply/demand, or the damage that restrictive zoning regimes have done, but I'm not sure if this should be so strongly stated, depending on how you want to define "small differences in rental law". For example, per Wikipedia:

> In 1971, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing". In 1989, Nguyễn Cơ Thạch, then Foreign Minister of Vietnam, observed, "The Americans couldn't destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy."

Obviously banning junk rental fees is not the same as rent control, but in either case we're talking about rental law that as an unintended second-order effect is going to (to some degree or another) discourage supplying rentals by making it harder to make money renting.

So, in the interest of being charitable to the OP, I think they're including zoning laws, building regulations, and so on in what they're saying: these cities claim to view housing as a human right, yet simultaneously seemingly do everything in their power to make it incredibly hard, expensive, and risky to supply it.

I don't agree that this attitude is exclusive to big progressive cities: the right theoretically claims to love free enterprise and deregulation, but in practice they're often just as happy with overbearing government control as long as it's their guy doing it. And if anything these days the right more than the left fetishizes certain images of American life that motivate stricter regulations on development; NIMBYism cuts across the political spectrum. But it's an attitude that maybe makes better bedfellows with the left and its intrinsic distrust of markets, and maybe afflicts those left-leaning coastal cities more because they're otherwise much better places to live and thus have higher demand.

Somehow squirrel hunting is still tolerated in 21dt century!

But again, if the advertised price must be the total price, it doesn't matter if there's a mailbox access fee or not. It's no different than if they eliminate the fee but raise the price the same amount. Make the advertised price be the highest price, and say "hey, you can advertise discounts off of that".

Nobody's going to advertise you can save $5 a month by eliminating your mailbox.

A similar effect, would be no longer advertising a plan's price if you enable paperless billing and autopay. You'd have to advertise the price without, and then can offer discounts for those things.

Or movie ticket prices being required to be listed with the convenience fee included, and if a theater wants, it can advertise a discount for buying a ticket some other way. More than likely that would just kill convenience fees.

Australia just tried this by banning businesses from charging a card use surcharge.

You really reckon business aren’t going to then just wrap the cost of card service / merchant fees in to every product, thereby hurting those who pay with cash?

Hint: that’s exactly what businesses are doing. I know because I asked them.

Maybe stop voting for politicians who believe they can tax and regulate an economy to growth and productivity.

That would be amazing! Imagine no poop and no smell! And no barking!

And no subsidizing others peoples farm animals!

Funny how "pets" does not usually include rabbits, mouse, aquarium fish or snakes.

That's not to say that pets can cause tons of damage: if someone let's a cat spray inside and doesn't immediately clean it, that can cost tens of thousands if it seeps down to the underlayment. But (1) that ain't getting covered by the $50 - $100 they want to gouge people for; and (2) tenants are liable for that either way.

It isn't that every pet causes more damage as a rule, its that very frequently pets do damage that is quite expensive. Urine can require floor and subfloor replacement. I've seen dogs chew through walls, etc. Pets in common areas leaving tracks and fur, etc. I'm a dog lover, but it would be folly to pretend that owning a dog does not cause additional wear and tear on my house.

That said, damage from pets should be handled through the damage deposit. Pet rent is just another way to pad the bill.

Usually it means replacing carpets, wooden floors and bottom part of walls!

Urine contamination gets everywhere , there is no way to remove that smell!!

Urine soaking into a subfloor can easily cost more to repair than the security deposit, and recovering damages in court is hard and expensive in its own right (if the person even has money to take).

Not to mention, even when there's no apparent damage, a pet apartment can require extra cleaning to get rid of odors and dander.

It just makes sense for the landlord to price in a potential headache.

This makes an unsubstantiated assumption that everyone would rather buy and can afford to, ignoring that people have reasons to rent.

Editing to just add: I absolutely support transparent pricing for rental properties.