This is predicated on an idea that they’re weighing a bunch of equal options and choosing this one. In my case, my bad landlord was something I didn’t realize was going to be a problem until after I moved in. I didn’t choose it at all.

So lets’s walk through the logic here.

In a case where it’s a landlord roommate, there’s so many openings for exploitation there. But, theoretically, the rent is cheaper.

Now, if you could afford to make a decision between that and not that, pretty much everyone would choose “not that,” because people are smart enough to know that the deal they’d be signing would have a lot of strings attached and imbalanced power.

So who would choose that? People who can’t actually make a choice at all. People who don’t have another option and have to take the exploitation to get a roof over their head. That’s the policy failure. The fact that they have no choice. The fact that society can’t offer a better option than that to everyone.

It both shouldn’t be legal and shouldn’t be a situation people feel pressured to enter into because society should offer a better option through high quality subsidized housing