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Clearly some landlords are getting hurt due to some tenants taking unethical advantage of the situation. But I think we need to wait to draw broad conclusions u
by daniel-thompson 6y ago
Clearly some landlords are getting hurt due to some tenants taking unethical advantage of the situation. But I think we need to wait to draw broad conclusions until this can be systematically analyzed at the macro level, rather than doing so from the one-off anecdotes in the article.
- testfoobar 6y agoLandlords are part of the financial system. Deciding landlords must take the loss on rent so that their tenants can be safe is sensible health and social policy during the acute uncertain phase of the pandemic last year. That uncertainty is now gone. If the government wants to house people in rental properties indefinitely, then the government can pay to do so at the prevailing market rates.
- mjfl 6y agoWhy should landlords take the loss on rent and not who they pay mortgage to?
- mauvehaus 6y agoSunk cost. They'll lose their equity stake in the property (as well as future income) if the bank forecloses on the property because the landlords aren't making mortgage payments. Do the banks want to be in the situation of being landlords (even temporarily) of a huge number of tenants who are not or cannot pay rent? Doubtful. Does that mean they're a little less likely to foreclose on a rental property when there are lots of small landlords in this situation? Probably. Would I want to gamble a rental property on a banks reluctance to foreclose owing to the widespread nature of the problem? Absolutely not.
- nerdponx 6y agoSo cancel mortgages as well as rent, for landlords with below some threshold of total property value. Too-big-to-fail banks eat some temporary losses, small landlords don't lose their shirts, and rent still gets effectively canceled.
- a_t48 6y agoIt honestly blows my mind that we didn't do this. It would have still been a mess, but at least in my mind a more manageable mess with less total harm.
- mjfl 6y agoI was thinking more from an ethical, policy point of view than from the strategic point of view for the landlord.
- harry8 6y agoWhich of those two groups (landlords vs banks & debt holding funds) pays the most to lobbyists and campaign contributions to all parties? Sorry to be cynical but how can we not be so until it's properly cleaned up?
- tablespoon 6y ago> Landlords are part of the financial system. Deciding landlords must take the loss on rent so that their tenants can be safe is sensible health and social policy during the acute uncertain phase of the pandemic last year. That uncertainty is now gone. I thought the eviction moratoriums were more to avoid adding a giant homelessness crisis on top of the already-existing pandemic crisis. It was a secondary benefit that they would also help those people socially distance to help control the pandemic. Ideally the government would have stepped in with effective programs to support existing financial relationships to avoid disruption (e.g. paying employers to keep employees on the payroll, which I think Germany did), but some people strongly believe we shouldn't have nice things like that.
- tryptophan 6y agoRights are rights. I don't want to be "systematically analyzed" to determine if wrongs done to me are "acceptable". That sort of thought is a path that leads straight to tyranny.