I remember distinctly the first time I truly failed a tenant.
This woman was a domestic violence survivor. I thought I had done everything on my end to make sure she was set up for success. While I protected the investor with the appropriate deposit, I also had advocates in place to help her and was attempting to build up a support system. Despite this, she struggled to find a job, couldn’t find appropriate resources and quickly spiraled until there came a month that she couldn’t pay her rent.
I reached out to her personally and asked what I thought was a simple and empathetic question. “What can we do to help you pay rent?”
What she heard (due to years of abuse) was, “He was right, I can’t make it on my own. I need him. I’m dumb. I’m not worth it.”
Within 48 hours of that conversation, she let her abuser back in the house, was traumatized, incurred massive damages, lost her confidence and left the unit.
I failed this woman because of my own ignorance. Society is failing people like her every day because of their unwillingness to look beyond convenience and their own perspective to solve the housing crisis in our state and nation.
In Utah, there is a cumulative housing shortage of 44,500 units, amounting to the worst housing shortage in the nation. One in every five Utahans spends more than half of their income on housing. Because of these precarious conditions, it is more important than ever that landlords help maintain housing for all their tenants.
In the 1950s, Curt Richter conducted a now infamous study in which he placed rats in water and watched how long they would swim for their lives. The rats drowned within minutes. Richter then exposed a similar group of rats to the same conditions, but this time, just as they were losing steam, he picked them up and gave them a reprieve for a few minutes before putting them back in the water. After this kindness, the rats swam hard for days without giving up.
The tenant I mentioned earlier needed more than just lip service and checklists. Had I taken the time to get to know her as a person, to understand her story and background, I would have had a better sense of her struggles and how I could help. I could have offered her individualized support to help her trust herself to make the right decisions. Instead of unknowingly causing her to question herself, I could have given her the one thing she really needed: hope.
As landlords, we must do better. We are uniquely positioned to provide hope and support, so we can be part of the solution, instead of contributing to the housing instability problem.
Property managers need to take the time to understand mental health, identify struggling tenants and not only offer help, but have a working knowledge of available resources and the capability to connect tenants with the services they need. Laying the scaffolding to help tenants and pay rent on a month-to-month basis helps them understand and form the habits they need to continue paying their rent on time in the long term.
Perhaps the most difficult lesson for landlords to learn is that we must part with more of our time to give tenants a fair chance. Building an authentic, secure relationship with those we serve allows us to be aware of individual challenges and head off issues before they become insurmountable.
The success of our tenants builds the success of our communities. Those in a position of power of those individuals have the duty to use it as a force for good. There are enough people tearing others down. Let’s rally as an industry to build others up.
Derek Morton
Derek Morton, Cedar City, is the owner and principal broker of NetGain Property Management.