The Paletz Law Blog

Landlords Should Not Be Collateral Damage 

June 2nd, 2025 | By: Matthew I. Paletz, Esq.

In an article published by the Legal News in May, The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) released a new research brief entitled, “Beyond Eviction: Landlords as Essential Partners in Housing Stability.” The article’s premise was to give evidence that “eviction proceedings rarely result in landlords recovering all rent owed.” The implication is landlords should be deterred from eviction and seek alternative resolution. 

Paletz Law believes that although landlords should definitely be encouraged to work with their tenants to find an amicable result, forgoing their legal remedies is potentially financially perilous.  

As a property owner, you know that when a tenant stops paying – you have to deal with mounting mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, management and maintenance costs that don’t take a break. “Mom-and-pop” landlords suffer the greatest hardship and have the highest inability to subsidize a tenant’s housing indefinitely while waiting for elongated legal assistance programs to potentially work, if at all. 

Time is Money 

Admittedly, the eviction process is imperfect, but it still provides a clear legal framework, even if the timeline is subject to court staffing shortfalls and backlogs. Alternative programs create even more delays during which landlords continue facing financial instability. Navigating a rental assistance bureaucracy can take many months with no payment guarantee. Many landlords operate on narrow margins; for a few, this extended timeline could mean the difference between solvency and foreclosure. Neither of which help the tenant.

The Reality of Assistance Programs 

Government rental assistance programs are notoriously underfunded, slow, and administratively cumbersome. Even if they are available, these programs often cover only a partial amount of money owed and load both parties with a ton of paperwork that tenants and landlords alike struggle with completion of the process. 

Some Alternatives to Legal Proceedings are Not Cost Effective 

While the LSC article does suggest a tenant’s legal aid representation “streamlines” the eviction process – this is simply historically inaccurate. Tenant advocates wrongfully equate representation with having an impact on housing stability. The glaring fallacy with this is the overwhelming majority of non-payment of rent cases have no contestable issue. Therefore, efforts that prolong this, not only do not prevent eviction, they serve to lengthen the process thus driving up costs on the housing provider and ultimately other tenants who have to also help subsidize this.

The Consequences to Available Rental Housing 

The LSC brief also patently ignores how so-called eviction-prevention efforts ultimately harm the rental market as a whole. When this process becomes more difficult and costly, landlords could potentially compensate by:

• Requiring stricter credit requirements (subject to fair housing laws such as Source of Income in Michigan) 
• Raising rents on other tenants to cover potential losses
• Leaving the rental market entirely, reducing the available housing supply

The Bottom Line: This LSC brief honestly reads like tenant advocacy disguised as research, looking at a landlord’s potential financial losses as necessary collateral damage. The truth is landlords do desire to work with their tenants to provide stable housing opportunities.  However, when they are denied their legal remedies and forced to wade through all sorts of programs designed to frustrate the process they have to bear the additional costs and sometimes without hope of recovery.