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Comment by the_only_law | Hacker News Reader

Maybe someone can help me understand this.

If I were to refuse to pay my rent. My landlord would post an eviction notice and if I refused to comply, I would likely be arrested or forcibly removed.

Why can’t the landlord “evict” twitter? Does the process look significantly different for commercial real estate? Does twitter provide value to the landlord in some form other than rent? Maybe they’re afraid of bad PR?

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Having run a small business for some years, refusal to pay an uncontested debt is (very unfortunately) a routine part of business and negotiation. It's a very ugly part, but creates a bit of a prisoner's dilemma where you wonder if you're the only sucker paying debts on time and in full.

It would probably cost a lot more to evict Twitter and find a new commercial tenant than it does to compel them to pay rent.

The reason this wouldn’t apply to you is that residential real estate vacancies are usually easy to fill, especially nowadays.

> The reason this wouldn’t apply to you

That remains to be established. People often have no idea what renter protections are like. If he's in California, he might find that he can't be evicted without the landlord going through a multi-year process.

Take years, or even a year, is very much hyperbole, even for SF. Particularly when dealing with non-paying tenants. This may have been different during eviction moratoriums at the height of the pandemic.

The eviction moratorium is still active in SF, Oakland and Berkeley.

It's just another instance of the old saying about banks. If you owe your landlord $1000, you have a problem. If you owe your landlord $10,000,000...

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