They refuse to make repairs, frequently raise the rent, and would frequently do a "no fault eviction" when they want to raise the rent higher than what they're likely to wring out of you. I had a landlord who engaged in illegal harassment to try to get me out of the apartment after a no-fault eviction where I didn't leave (due to being too ill to) because he didn't want to get a court order to make me leave (but if I left without him having gotten a court order, I'd have been deemed as having chosen to make myself homeless, so I'd be ineligible for a lot of homelessness support).

There were tenants rights laws before this, but it was disconcertingly common to see landlords blatantly violating them and tenants struggling to defend their rights