A mechanism or tactic · 1900 · Housing
The landlord
A named individual with access to your home, your deposits and your address, met in person, repeatedly, under stress.
A parasocial relationship with somebody who holds a key and a legal claim. Section 07 exists because the feeling and the power are inversely related, which is the definition of the problem.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.
Where it sits
1900 1900-1949 · 1900 1949
Provenance · 3 source record(s)
- unverifiedStates the relationship in the terms this entry has been arguing for: tenant and landlord are 'not merely equal parties to a contract, nor are they atomised market actors. They are tied together in a relationship which is both a social relationship and a power relationship' (quoted at p. 139 in McKee & Harris below). A social relationship and a power relationship in the same clause is the whole problem, and it is in the abstract of record for the subject. Publisher returns 403 to an unauthenticated request; volume, issue and pages confirmed against Crossref.Byrne, M., & McArdle, R. (2020). Secure occupancy, power and the landlord-tenant relation: a qualitative exploration of the Irish private rental sector. Housing Studies, 37(1), 124-142. ↗
- unverifiedDocuments the mechanism this entry asserts. Renter interviews: tenants praised landlords who communicated well and were responsive, and yet, on further probing, 'some tenants simply did not want to raise legitimate issues or escalate complaints where issues remained unaddressed because of the risk of damaging the relationship with their landlord' - which the authors note persisted even where the relationship was described positively. The 'imagined alternative' of a negative relationship in the next tenancy was the powerful driver for accepting the status quo. A tenant staying silent to protect a relationship with someone who holds the keys and the deposit is a one-sided attachment, described here entirely in the language of housing policy. Publisher returns 403.McKee, K., & Harris, J. (2023). The role of landlords in shaping private renters' uneven experiences of home: towards a relational approach. International Journal of Housing Policy, 25(1), 101-118. ↗
- unverifiedFrames the gap this entry sits in: while interest in private rental housing has grown, 'few studies have addressed the tenant/landlord relationship as lived' - as a relationship rather than a contract. Examines narratives of risk and the repertoires of risk mitigation that renters build. Publisher returns 403; bibliographic record confirmed against Crossref.Soaita, A. M. (2024). The social vibe of the tenant/landlord relationship in a 'tenant market': the case of Romania. Housing Studies, 40(11), 2428-2449. ↗
Connected · 2 out, 1 in
It sits in