Jonathan ChevilleGood points. If enough people feel like rental practices are truly immoral, elitist, and wrong they will use their voting power to change the laws like they did in 1968.
Percy NikoraIt is also about educating the renters as to why some of these are necessary (pet deposit, minimum income requirements, etc). Some of these could be lifted if there were no skips, everyone paid rent on time and did not cause any damage (we just got a unit back with about $15-20K in damage). Of-course landlords need to distinguish between necessary business steps to mitigate risk vs greed.
Meera DaneI agree with a great deal of this. I also agree that education is incredibly important. Historically speaking, landlords can be tyrants. [laugh] Rent control isn't unreasonable except as it hampers development, but you could say that about almost all unregulated capitalism. [shrug] A modest profit isn't a bad thing, but yes, profiteering off limited resources is -- and it goes for apartments as much as it does any other product.