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Comment by diebeforei485 | Hacker News Reader

Send people a postcard to verify their address. If they lived there recently, they probably set up forwarding - so USPS would forward the postcard to their new address, and they could still verify themselves as being a tenant during the past 12 months.

I agree with the concept and we definitely need this. The issue, generally speaking, is that there isn't much of a business model.

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Why does there need to be a business model? Can't people contribute to society for its own sake? Comments like this are implicitly hostile to that idea, and that is "The Issue" with our society, generally speaking.

Aside from server costs and dev costs (which do have to be paid by someone), a postcard-based authentication method means the platform would be spending about $0.48 per review. That has to be paid for somehow.

How is that figure calculated?

Probably the cost of a postage stamp

https://www.usps.com/business/prices.htm

Not OP, but 0.48 is the price to mail a postcard.

Thats ok, the reviewer can pay. I’d happily pay 48c to warn people about a particular past landlord.

Make it an even $1 and that pays for probably all the costs of that program assuming they don't want to turn it into a big business. It probably won't need full time dev work.

Then put up a donation button. We're not talking about millions here

Unless they get sued by an unhappy landlord

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

It's a legal target, it costs money to run and nobody very much wants to pay for the service.

It would have to be run by a very dedicated volunteer with deep pockets.

It's not the issue with society that things cost money.

Things just cost money: Be it electricity, housing, food, hosting, opportunity cost, whatever.

If you want something to be sustainable there needs to be a plan for covering the costs involved.

Life is not a fairy tale.

You're not wrong (but I dispute the fairy tale characterization you attributed to my comment).

Everyone's life priorities and capabilities are different. Occasionally over the years I have had enough disposable income and free time to work on a passion project. Since the latest inflation wave that has gone away sadly, but before that I was able to commit a few hundred a month.

Eventually, one did get a large amount of traffic, and a handful of volunteers forming a team. While it wasn't something I could monetize, it did contribute to successful job interviews, and a temp gig working for someone who was a user of the project and gave me priority over other candidates due to seen first-hand that I was fixing things when they needed to be fixed.

Keeping the costs low can be done, some are better than others at it. Low-cost IT infrastructure still exists, even in this economy. You should go into such a project expecting to not outgrow your cheap infrastructure unless you are in fact turning it into a business. Otherwise it is wasted effort (and money).

I'm with you that it's possible for some, just like the money drain "Blue Origin" is possible for JB.

But hardly everyone can afford to lose money like that.

Besides, it's not really possible to keep the costs low if you take into account the opportunity costs involved. Therefore it's not rational to expect that from others however I agree that it would be nice if those who can would just do.

> I agree with the concept and we definitely need this. The issue, generally speaking, is that there isn't much of a business model.

This is similar to one of the anti-businesses I have long considered, except I would like to perform actual, invasive background checks on landlords. A couple others:

- A service for employees to drug-test their employers.

- A neighborhood watch app to report suspected police activity in your community.

I think a business model that mirrors a brokerage could work.

Brokers are essentially a pure middleman with very little added value outside of connecting the owner with the tenant, so the audience here is definitely worth something.

> I would like to perform actual, invasive background checks on landlords.

Why would a landlord sign up for that though? A rating system or history is one thing, but what additional value would a tenant have in a landlord who passes these "invasive background checks"?

> - A service for employees to drug-test their employers.

What's the goal there? What are the incentives? Why would employers sign up to it and why would employees especially care? The system doesn't have your real or perceived injustices because there are a few evil fat-cat employers and landlords who just need to be shown the error of their ways and/or publicly shamed about their hypocrisy and driven off. It just happens as a consequence of the incentives involved.

> - A neighborhood watch app to report suspected police activity in your community.

What would be the goal? Every neighborhood group I've seen significantly features discussions about crimes and police activity. As far as I can see the most use people get out of them is being alerted to speed traps.

The goal is to satisfy someone's anti-authority fetish.

I don't know, people can have a genuine desire to improve things. I wasn't trying to call that out, just wondering what they expected might come of these ideas.

How is an employer or landlord an "authority"? Having the same standards for employers and landlords as they have for employees and tenants sounds like a great idea. We'd get rid of many hostile anti-employee and tenant practices quickly.

Employers and landlords are authorities in that they legally have rights to something a person needs: housing and income/healthcare. A landlord or employer can choose to withhold those things(maybe with some extra steps like an eviction, or a layoff, but still).

In good jurisdictions they can't legally withhold those things as evictions and layoffs are strictly regulated.

>what additional value would a tenant have in a landlord who passes these "invasive background checks"?

the question is more what disincentive would a prospective tenant have leading them to not sign up with a landlord who fails the background check. I also can't imagine there would be a system where the landlord is required to sign up.

It's hilarious that people think this is absurd and not the extremely generous compromise that it actually is. In history the penalty for being a landlord was often a sharp blade or hot lead.

As it was the penalty for being a bad tenant. Probability more often than being a bad landlord.

Yes but only one of those was ethically correct. No decent person loses sleep over wealthy rent seekers.

I am surprised that there isn't a market for more invasive checks on a lot of things, from potential dates (especially from women) to landlords to employees in sensitive positions.

A Social Credit System?

I wouldn't trust anything that background checks potential dates.

I've met folks that decide their exes are "theirs" - my sister's ex harassed her and her now husband for some years, for example. (He's still not an upstanding person, just has less harassment. They have a child together, so no getting away).

Some folks are abusive. There is no real catch for that. Some of the abusers won't do it until living together or married: Understandably, not all victims want to talk to random services about their experience. And worse yet, the date in question might not have that many exes, so they are going to know it is you.

Similar things can happen with mental illness: It might have made the relationship rocky and contributed to the end, but you also might have enough compassion to not really want to talk about this. After all, perhaps they'd do better without the baggage of your past relationship and might have found a combination of medicines/care that works for them. (I have this: I hate my ex, but I don't actually wish them suffering)

We end up with vague information on-par with a 5-point system, one that folks aren't willing to answer in some circumstances.

I was thinking more credit and fingerprint criminal checks, less so reviews.

The whole reason that employers can make you drug test or landlord can make you submit to background checks etc is that there is a power imbalance. The idea of make them do the annoying thing is great, but without the power imbalance in your favor how do you force that?

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