Expanding Tenants’ “Rights”

Progressives in Washington State are applauding recently passed laws giving tenants expanded “rights.” The laws include greater restrictions on the ability of landlords to evict tenants, the right to counsel during evictions, and a requirement that landlords offer a “reasonable” payment plan for tenants who are behind on their rent. Despite the rhetoric of Progressives, these laws aren’t about expanding so-called tenants’ rights. These laws are about violating the rights of property owners.

The Declaration of Independence states that all individuals are endowed with certain rights, namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights, like all rights, pertain to freedom of action. These rights, like all rights, sanction an individual’s freedom to act as he thinks best in the pursuit of values, so long as he respects the freedom of others to do the same.

Laws expanding tenants’ “rights” allow renters to act as they choose, but this is accomplished by limiting the freedom of landlords to act as they choose. Which means, the “rights” of tenants can only be protected by violating the actual rights of landlords. However, there is no such thing as the right to violate rights.

This perversion of rights is founded on the collectivist premise that rights pertain to groups, rather than individuals. According to collectivism, the individual is subordinate to the alleged interests of the group. This is precisely what tenants’ “rights” laws accomplish—they force landlords to sacrifice their interests for the alleged interests of tenants.

Tenants far outnumber landlords. Thus, they have more political influence when collectivist premises are accepted. As Ayn Rand notes,

The notion of “collective rights” (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that “rights” belong to some men, but not to others—that some men have the “right” to dispose of others in any manner they please—and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

There are no such things as tenants’ rights, nor are there landlord rights. There are only individual rights and they apply to all individuals equally, including tenants and landlords.