ב''ה,
I know the landlording side of things can suck too, but we should at least try. Conventional liability for property damage if the tenant wrecks the appliances should cover most situations and not be too much hardship.
Used properly, a mechanical dishwasher wastes less water, saves time for everyone, and at least provides steam sanitization of utensils. I've been hustled out into the hotel living game in an area where people are literally pitching tents and renting bag space in tool sheds, so I'll say it – this was USA, and if you're providing long term living space, we owe ourselves this bit of automated luxury communism as we owe ourselves working plumbing. Sharing one per floor or building is better than nothing, and the machinery is basically self-sterilizing.
Similarly, in anything less than a condo where for better or worse you're paying for notional ownership of your walls, laundry facilities should be required and regularly inspected as with restaurant facilities for a normal standard of cleanliness, at cost of utilities. We all have bad days, being a crustpunk can be fun for a while, but if we're going to have industry capable of supporting rents in this country, the ability to clean yourself up should not be an optional investment.
Yeah, I'm saying we should legislate ourselves a standard of living because we don't get one otherwise. Figure out what situations deserve the option to waive these essentials and which don't, and force it to at least appear as a credit against rent; these often foreign slumdog millionaire landlords running the show otherwise don't even know that people need a pot to piss in, and the trend for affordable state subsidized housing to share one sink and toilet among multiple units is ridiculous even if we also need to start building with apartment-wide shower pans to prevent one unit's disaster becoming another's (though “wet room” construction as in other countries seems to have solved that).
Yeah, this is a bit wishful under current conditions, because current conditions are a massive regression into serfdom. Your parents wouldn't have put up with this shit knowing the costs of at least living in the mid 20th century were so marginal. Yeah, sharing more resources is better for efficiency and the environment, but these are things that should be getting recycled properly when they're no longer useful, and in the meantime everyone should at least be allowed a hope of health and hygiene.
Stuff happens, but I'm here praying I don't have to fish another turd out of the coin laundry where I'm at just to show up presentable to work another day. If we need cheaper, more efficient, more maintainable and more compact versions of these appliances, as already exist anyway, let's at least have an incentive for that so we have the option of living like people when society requires.