Anyone can testify anything, but I don’t see how “having been a landlord” gives you any particular authority to say whether tenants commonly feel that landlords have power over them. (You might be able to say that your tenants didn’t obviously-to-you feel that. If you knew them closely enough to be sure of being right, then that itself makes you a very non-typical landlord.)
I would not want to claim that anything nontrivial is true of all tenants or of all landlords. But the tenants I know who have said much to me about their experience of tenancy do in fact appear to feel that their landlords have power over them—but there’s a selection effect here: you’re more likely to be talking to other people about your relations with your landlord if something’s gone wrong somehow.
Having been a landlord, I can testify that this is not in fact the case.
Anyone can testify anything, but I don’t see how “having been a landlord” gives you any particular authority to say whether tenants commonly feel that landlords have power over them. (You might be able to say that your tenants didn’t obviously-to-you feel that. If you knew them closely enough to be sure of being right, then that itself makes you a very non-typical landlord.)
I would not want to claim that anything nontrivial is true of all tenants or of all landlords. But the tenants I know who have said much to me about their experience of tenancy do in fact appear to feel that their landlords have power over them—but there’s a selection effect here: you’re more likely to be talking to other people about your relations with your landlord if something’s gone wrong somehow.
You mean they easily disregarded your rules and things like that?
Yes, rules like that they have to actually pay the rent with checks that don’t bounce.