URLTA in Operation: An Introduction

The following articles examine the impact of legislation modeled after the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA) in Portland, Oregon, and Cleveland, Ohio. Their conclusion is that the legislation has been only marginally effective, benefiting primarily middle‐income tenants in the suburbs or in the cities' better neighborhoods, while largely failing in the aim of helping the inner‐city poor and upgrading the quality of slum housing. The general lesson is an old one: law reform attempts at rearranging basic social‐legal relationships often fail to achieve their intended effects, particularly when their effectuation is left to the initiative or ingenuity of those individual private parties who are least likely to possess or display these traits.