How do we respond when regulations intended to help vulnerable tenants end up disadvantaging them even further? Professor Meredith Greif joins us to discuss her research and new book, Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis, which explores how penalties levied against landlords can lead to stricter screening, harassment, and informal eviction of renters who may already struggle to find adequate housing. Far from proposing that we do away with tenant protections, Greif asks us to consider the trade-offs inherent in many policy decisions. Before we can come up with better solutions, we first need to grapple with these unintended (but often predictable) consequences — and recognize how our policies and regulations may be producing exactly the behaviors we say we want to discourage.

Show notes:

• Greif, M. (2018). Regulating landlords: Unintended consequences for poor tenants. City & Community, 17(3), 658-674.
• Greif, M. (2022). Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Background on the expansion of criminal nuisance laws and their disparate racial impacts in California: Dillon, L., Poston, B., & Barajas, J. (Nov 19 2020). Black and Latino renters face eviction, exclusion amid police crackdowns in California. Los Angeles Times.
• Mead, J., Hatch, M., Tighe, J. R., Pappas, M., Andrasik, K., & Bonham, E. (2017). Who is a nuisance? Criminal activity nuisance ordinances in Ohio. 
• Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. Crown.
• Our earlier episode on landlords with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden.