A System Model for Landlord & Tenant Law

This essay portrays the author’s view of landlord and tenant law in Wisconsin as a system, replete with identifiable component parts that constitute the system, and a lubricant keeping the parts moving together as smoothly as possible. The main system components begin with Wisconsin’s law on Landlord and Tenant matters found in §704 of the Wisconsin Statutes, followed closely by its law on Residential Rental Practices found in Chapter 134 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code, and finally encompasses any number of local municipal codes of which one, Chapter 32, Landlord and Tenant, of the Madison General Ordinances, is portrayed as an example. Working in and around these primary components are several entities that have evolved in this state that don’t merely enforce the law, they educate landlords and tenants in their duties and responsibilities, search for evolving exigencies requiring system modification, mediate solutions to everyday problems and, in doing so, promote the end state verbalized in the Madison General Ordinances as “a matter of public welfare,” which the author interprets as safe,decent, affordable housing for Wisconsin’s tenant population. By this standard, the system output is not a rental, not a unit, not a dwelling, not a premises, but a home. The author designed this portrayal of Wisconsin’s landlord and tenant system model to serve as a platform for continued research and exploration, any improvement of local conditions possible, and the development of even more useful models by every interested reader, whether serving in their legal profession or without, wherever they are situated.