>There are some places more renter-friendly than others, but
>even in very rural areas they usually have some sort of
>legislation on how quickly a landlord can raise your rent and
>under what circumstances they can boot you. Here in NYC we
>have it pretty good. I think it takes an act of god to get
>booted out of an apartment here, volcanic eruption, raining
>frogs...something like that.

Having rented in a number of different states, I'd say for all practical purposes you should assume that pro-renter / rent-control laws don't exist anywhere but NYC. It does in places, but in my experience it's on just such a different order of magnitude that it's not even useful to compare the two.

Granted, one of my big frames of reference is living in San Francisco in the dot.com era -- a lot of families who thought something would stop their rent from doubling very quickly found out that, in practice, not so much.