“The two- to four-unit stock is a foundational piece of the housing market that makes up a large part of the affordable supply in higher-cost areas,” Geoff Smith, executive director of the DePaul Institute for Housing Studies. “When you lose it, there’s not much mechanism to replace it.”
The reason there’s no mechanism to replace it is because government regulation has made it too risky to build, own, and maintain. One deadbeat tenant, one section 8 tenant that trashed the place, and the landlord of a 4-flat goes bankrupt by property taxes, court costs, attorney fees. Like insurance, the governmenrt regulation has increased the risk and therefore the risk needs to be spread- you need 12 units in a property at a minimum to do that, and even that isn’t a guarantee since it increases the chance of having multiple deadbeat tenants, which has the perverse effect of… Read more »
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
The reason there’s no mechanism to replace it is because government regulation has made it too risky to build, own, and maintain. One deadbeat tenant, one section 8 tenant that trashed the place, and the landlord of a 4-flat goes bankrupt by property taxes, court costs, attorney fees. Like insurance, the governmenrt regulation has increased the risk and therefore the risk needs to be spread- you need 12 units in a property at a minimum to do that, and even that isn’t a guarantee since it increases the chance of having multiple deadbeat tenants, which has the perverse effect of… Read more »