10 ms·

Millions of Americans could face eviction as housing protection expires in June

54 points by prostoalex 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
"Why would you be paying your rent, put that money in Bitcoin!" Saw several people advising others that way in the last year. I think it may have been good advice for the individuals involved, but that it was suggests our society has fucked up somewhere.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I knew society was whack when I saw girls with college degrees becoming OnlyFans models and selling foot fetish photos... to make a middle-class living because their college degree doesn't pay their bills. Where did society go wrong
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    It's a job like any other, and much less demeaning than working in advertising, but college degree being useless on the job market is a big problem everywhere in the West. At this point I'm not sure if it's an issue with the degrees, or mismatched expectations. That is, should a degree be a ticket to a middle-class life, or should we just stop telling young people that it is?
    - gruez 5y ago
      >but college degree being useless on the job market is a big problem everywhere in the West. define "useless". College graduates still have better prospects than non-college graduates, on average. Maybe we shouldn't treat all college degrees the same? ie. computer science degree compared to an art degree
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      The point is ....the fact that girls are doing this means .. there aren't many tickets to middle class life available anymore outside of doing extreme shit. STEM is a ticket, for now, and for people who have the disposition. But as outsourcing and automation become more prevalent that will start to be less of an pathway. As people south of the border took over the trades, we'll see remote workers taking over the tech industry, AI take over driving, etc. Etc. And that should be fine but the fact is, the gains of this efficiency aren't shared by society, they're only shared by the rich. The rest of society loses their way to the middle class and has to send foot fetish pics to survive.
offtop5 5y ago
>they can’t afford to house people for free or shoulder the country’s massive rental arrears, which could be as high as $70 billion. I think the eviction moratorium wasn't thought out very well. You can't just stop evictions while not compensating landlords, and not developing clear plans for what happens when the moratorium ends. No one is going to catch up on their rent of their behind. What I suspect will largely happen is many landlords will forgo a formal eviction as long as the tenants decide to leave voluntarily. Then those tenants will effectively swap houses with someone else who's behind, wiping the rental debt clean. You only understand this if you've gone through an eviction, but the vast majority of the time the landlord just want you to leave. If you vacate before you actually get to court you can often avoid having the eviction on your record.
- homero 5y ago
  There's a small amount of tenants that had the money but just stopped paying for a year. Those landlords are beyond mad.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    How small? With the federal benefits above and beyond unemployment...there was no reason that such a large portion of people should have been not paying rent. A friend who runs a property management company laid off 60% of his workforce (mostly maintenance guys) because 74% of his tenants stopped paying completely since last April.
    - homero 5y ago
      Probably a lot, I'd guess half could've paid one way or another, highly depends on the area though
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - jnwatson 5y ago
    Indeed. That's why we have a civil court system though.
pb77 5y ago
Some of these landlords also have mortgage on rental property, one of my friend had a rental property, i think he was netting $100 a month. The rest went for mortgage, property tax, maintenance and property management person. He sold it in 2014. I don't think he could have absorbed 12 month + of non rent payment and pay all those expenses out of his pocket.
- Willson50 5y ago
  They also end up with a house at the end of that mortgage.
  - ms512 5y ago
    While that is also true, the parent post was pointing out that the landlord has a cash flow issue without rent coming in. If they can't pay the mortgage without a renter paying, they may have the property repossessed by the bank.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    They end up with a 30 year old house that has been rented. There is a lot of cost in the upkeep of a rented house. When purchasing a house with the intent of renting it there are rules in place to play by when calculating the risk and return...but when the government completely rewrites the rules on the fly and basically forces you to rent for free for >1 year then its a problem.
    - smileysteve 5y ago
      Fortunately, the owner also gets to expense the upkeep (that's a 30+% discount on future cashflows) and depreciate the improvements over a 27 year life, meaning that they have a capital loss even if the house appreciates in value. Oh, and they also got to forego mortgage payments during the pandemic and also potentially write off the less than market rent that they were unable to evict during. (for 30+% off of the missed rent)
      - 5y ago
nickthemagicman 5y ago
They literally forbade the landlord from collecting the rent for over a year! But the big mortgage companies were allowed to continue to collect mortgages! And the governments are still allowed to collect property taxes! I don't make any money from my rental unit it just helps cover property tax insurance and my mortgage. But I've been shouldering all of that and my tenant has been living for free for over eight months. How is that remotely fair?
- maxehmookau 5y ago
  > I don't make any money from my rental unit it just helps cover property tax insurance and my mortgage. It may not be fair, but it's the definition of a bad investment. Unless you're housing someone at cost out of the kindness of your own heart, in which case, that's awesome.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    I don't think you know what the heck you're talking about. It's not a bad investment to cover the thousands of dollars that are required annually to maintain a house including property tax and insurance for the house simply existing. And now the government is telling me I can't collect the income they require me to give them.
    - maxehmookau 5y ago
      Then I don't understand. You said you don't make any money from your investment. So it's a bad investment, regardless of COVID, right? What am I missing? The government is telling you that as a provider of homes to people, you cannot make them homeless during a global pandemic. This seems entirely reasonable and recalibrates the idea that properties are primarily homes, where people live, and not investments.
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        >>The government is telling you that as a provider of homes to people, you cannot make them homeless during a global pandemic The government didn't tell the mortgage companies that. And the govt didn't stop collecting taxes. Call me crazy but expecting the landlord to care while the govt and mortgage companies don't have to care... thats not fair.
splithalf 5y ago
Not soon enough. Rents are up 20% in California. People moving into the state need those apartments and are very willing to pay.
- nradov 5y ago
  California population is declining. More people are moving out than moving in. Check the pricing and availability for a one-way U-Haul rental from California to Texas.
- stevehawk 5y ago
  OTOH, rent is down 20% in San Francisco. Basically at a 5 year low right now. https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca
Simulacra 5y ago
On the one hand I see news stories about how jobs are having trouble finding employees. On the other I see people in danger of being evicted. Something doesn't add up here. If there are jobs, why are people avoiding those jobs?
- buf 5y ago
  In Oklahoma unemployment is higher than some wages
  - marak830 5y ago
    Why are the wages that low?!?
- valine 5y ago
  Probably because those jobs don't pay enough to cover the cost of living.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kaesar14 5y ago
  Those jobs suck and pay 9 bucks an hour.
- brobdingnagians 5y ago
  From the article: "Around 15% of adult renters are not current on their housing payments" I take this as a sign that something is very, very wrong with the economy. Anytime there are literally millions of people in a country at danger of immediate eviction at the same time, there are probably a lot more problems in the economy than just that. A moratorium on evictions is a band-aid on a gunshot wound. It simply masks the real problem until the patient collapses. There are signs of financial bubbles, large unemployment, small businesses closing, even entire industries struggling. This isn't just another boom-bust cycle, but there is something larger at play.
- stevehawk 5y ago
newaccount2021 5y ago
they will all be bailed out, or Democrats will be slaughtered
britch 5y ago
> the $45 billion in rental assistance allocated by Congress to address the crisis. That funding is unprecedented: Renters were given just $1.5 billion during the Great Recession That $1.5 Billion is over a trillion in 2021 dollars. $45 Billion seems like very little in comparison.
- the_jeremy 5y ago
  The Great Recession was in 2008. That's $1.86 Billion in today's dollars.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  This is either a really good joke about inflation or a total misread of _rec_ession, as the other comment points out. Much funnier as the former!
valine 5y ago
Personal anecdote so take this as you will. I've recently been apartment hunting in Minnesota trying to move closer to work. Almost every property owner I've talked to has mentioned evictions and how they'll have apartments free to rent in just over a month. I had never encountered a property owner who openly talked about evicting tenants but in the past week I've encountered three. That to say I fully believe we are about to see lots of messy evictions in the US.
aww_dang 5y ago
Mortgage forbearance expiry dates will follow. While tenants might be able to move on after this debacle, I wonder how banks will handle unpaid back mortgage? Will they simply move the due dates into the future?
_-david-_ 5y ago
A lot of people here are talking about the merits of the eviction moratorium but the most surprising thing to me is that it was created by the CDC. How on earth does the CDC have such power? If any government agency is going to do something like this it seems like it should be the Department of Housing and Urban Development or a similar agency.
- underseacables 5y ago
  IMHO it’s like with any government agency, department, or proclamation: the authority is in the acquiescence of the people. If someone sued and challenged in court, it would be interesting to see who would come out on top. Ultimately a lot of what government has pushed and forced and cajoled everyone through these past 6-12 months is mostly untested overreaches of power. The scary part for me is that once government pushes a boundary, it rarely returns to before. By not fighting back on the mandates and such, the government essentially pushed until the citizenry gave up. Now that claimed land, if you will, is the new normal for government power.

54 points by prostoalex 5y ago

"Why would you be paying your rent, put that money in Bitcoin!" Saw several people advising others that way in the last year. I think it may have been good advice for the individuals involved, but that it was suggests our society has fucked up somewhere.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
I knew society was whack when I saw girls with college degrees becoming OnlyFans models and selling foot fetish photos... to make a middle-class living because their college degree doesn't pay their bills. Where did society go wrong
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  It's a job like any other, and much less demeaning than working in advertising, but college degree being useless on the job market is a big problem everywhere in the West. At this point I'm not sure if it's an issue with the degrees, or mismatched expectations. That is, should a degree be a ticket to a middle-class life, or should we just stop telling young people that it is?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >but college degree being useless on the job market is a big problem everywhere in the West. define "useless". College graduates still have better prospects than non-college graduates, on average. Maybe we shouldn't treat all college degrees the same? ie. computer science degree compared to an art degree
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    The point is ....the fact that girls are doing this means .. there aren't many tickets to middle class life available anymore outside of doing extreme shit. STEM is a ticket, for now, and for people who have the disposition. But as outsourcing and automation become more prevalent that will start to be less of an pathway. As people south of the border took over the trades, we'll see remote workers taking over the tech industry, AI take over driving, etc. Etc. And that should be fine but the fact is, the gains of this efficiency aren't shared by society, they're only shared by the rich. The rest of society loses their way to the middle class and has to send foot fetish pics to survive.

offtop5 5y ago

>they can’t afford to house people for free or shoulder the country’s massive rental arrears, which could be as high as $70 billion. I think the eviction moratorium wasn't thought out very well. You can't just stop evictions while not compensating landlords, and not developing clear plans for what happens when the moratorium ends. No one is going to catch up on their rent of their behind. What I suspect will largely happen is many landlords will forgo a formal eviction as long as the tenants decide to leave voluntarily. Then those tenants will effectively swap houses with someone else who's behind, wiping the rental debt clean. You only understand this if you've gone through an eviction, but the vast majority of the time the landlord just want you to leave. If you vacate before you actually get to court you can often avoid having the eviction on your record.

homero 5y ago
There's a small amount of tenants that had the money but just stopped paying for a year. Those landlords are beyond mad.
- j_walter 5y ago
  How small? With the federal benefits above and beyond unemployment...there was no reason that such a large portion of people should have been not paying rent. A friend who runs a property management company laid off 60% of his workforce (mostly maintenance guys) because 74% of his tenants stopped paying completely since last April.
  - homero 5y ago
    Probably a lot, I'd guess half could've paid one way or another, highly depends on the area though
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jnwatson 5y ago
  Indeed. That's why we have a civil court system though.

pb77 5y ago

Some of these landlords also have mortgage on rental property, one of my friend had a rental property, i think he was netting $100 a month. The rest went for mortgage, property tax, maintenance and property management person. He sold it in 2014. I don't think he could have absorbed 12 month + of non rent payment and pay all those expenses out of his pocket.

Willson50 5y ago
They also end up with a house at the end of that mortgage.
- ms512 5y ago
  While that is also true, the parent post was pointing out that the landlord has a cash flow issue without rent coming in. If they can't pay the mortgage without a renter paying, they may have the property repossessed by the bank.
- j_walter 5y ago
  They end up with a 30 year old house that has been rented. There is a lot of cost in the upkeep of a rented house. When purchasing a house with the intent of renting it there are rules in place to play by when calculating the risk and return...but when the government completely rewrites the rules on the fly and basically forces you to rent for free for >1 year then its a problem.
  - smileysteve 5y ago
    Fortunately, the owner also gets to expense the upkeep (that's a 30+% discount on future cashflows) and depreciate the improvements over a 27 year life, meaning that they have a capital loss even if the house appreciates in value. Oh, and they also got to forego mortgage payments during the pandemic and also potentially write off the less than market rent that they were unable to evict during. (for 30+% off of the missed rent)
    - 5y ago

nickthemagicman 5y ago

They literally forbade the landlord from collecting the rent for over a year! But the big mortgage companies were allowed to continue to collect mortgages! And the governments are still allowed to collect property taxes! I don't make any money from my rental unit it just helps cover property tax insurance and my mortgage. But I've been shouldering all of that and my tenant has been living for free for over eight months. How is that remotely fair?

maxehmookau 5y ago
> I don't make any money from my rental unit it just helps cover property tax insurance and my mortgage. It may not be fair, but it's the definition of a bad investment. Unless you're housing someone at cost out of the kindness of your own heart, in which case, that's awesome.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I don't think you know what the heck you're talking about. It's not a bad investment to cover the thousands of dollars that are required annually to maintain a house including property tax and insurance for the house simply existing. And now the government is telling me I can't collect the income they require me to give them.
  - maxehmookau 5y ago
    Then I don't understand. You said you don't make any money from your investment. So it's a bad investment, regardless of COVID, right? What am I missing? The government is telling you that as a provider of homes to people, you cannot make them homeless during a global pandemic. This seems entirely reasonable and recalibrates the idea that properties are primarily homes, where people live, and not investments.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      >>The government is telling you that as a provider of homes to people, you cannot make them homeless during a global pandemic The government didn't tell the mortgage companies that. And the govt didn't stop collecting taxes. Call me crazy but expecting the landlord to care while the govt and mortgage companies don't have to care... thats not fair.

splithalf 5y ago

Not soon enough. Rents are up 20% in California. People moving into the state need those apartments and are very willing to pay.

nradov 5y ago
California population is declining. More people are moving out than moving in. Check the pricing and availability for a one-way U-Haul rental from California to Texas.
stevehawk 5y ago
OTOH, rent is down 20% in San Francisco. Basically at a 5 year low right now. https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca

Simulacra 5y ago

On the one hand I see news stories about how jobs are having trouble finding employees. On the other I see people in danger of being evicted. Something doesn't add up here. If there are jobs, why are people avoiding those jobs?

buf 5y ago
In Oklahoma unemployment is higher than some wages
- marak830 5y ago
  Why are the wages that low?!?
valine 5y ago
Probably because those jobs don't pay enough to cover the cost of living.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaesar14 5y ago
Those jobs suck and pay 9 bucks an hour.
brobdingnagians 5y ago
From the article: "Around 15% of adult renters are not current on their housing payments" I take this as a sign that something is very, very wrong with the economy. Anytime there are literally millions of people in a country at danger of immediate eviction at the same time, there are probably a lot more problems in the economy than just that. A moratorium on evictions is a band-aid on a gunshot wound. It simply masks the real problem until the patient collapses. There are signs of financial bubbles, large unemployment, small businesses closing, even entire industries struggling. This isn't just another boom-bust cycle, but there is something larger at play.
stevehawk 5y ago

newaccount2021 5y ago

they will all be bailed out, or Democrats will be slaughtered

britch 5y ago

> the $45 billion in rental assistance allocated by Congress to address the crisis. That funding is unprecedented: Renters were given just $1.5 billion during the Great Recession That $1.5 Billion is over a trillion in 2021 dollars. $45 Billion seems like very little in comparison.

the_jeremy 5y ago
The Great Recession was in 2008. That's $1.86 Billion in today's dollars.
kristjansson 5y ago
This is either a really good joke about inflation or a total misread of _rec_ession, as the other comment points out. Much funnier as the former!

valine 5y ago

Personal anecdote so take this as you will. I've recently been apartment hunting in Minnesota trying to move closer to work. Almost every property owner I've talked to has mentioned evictions and how they'll have apartments free to rent in just over a month. I had never encountered a property owner who openly talked about evicting tenants but in the past week I've encountered three. That to say I fully believe we are about to see lots of messy evictions in the US.

aww_dang 5y ago

Mortgage forbearance expiry dates will follow. While tenants might be able to move on after this debacle, I wonder how banks will handle unpaid back mortgage? Will they simply move the due dates into the future?

_-david-_ 5y ago

A lot of people here are talking about the merits of the eviction moratorium but the most surprising thing to me is that it was created by the CDC. How on earth does the CDC have such power? If any government agency is going to do something like this it seems like it should be the Department of Housing and Urban Development or a similar agency.

underseacables 5y ago
IMHO it’s like with any government agency, department, or proclamation: the authority is in the acquiescence of the people. If someone sued and challenged in court, it would be interesting to see who would come out on top. Ultimately a lot of what government has pushed and forced and cajoled everyone through these past 6-12 months is mostly untested overreaches of power. The scary part for me is that once government pushes a boundary, it rarely returns to before. By not fighting back on the mandates and such, the government essentially pushed until the citizenry gave up. Now that claimed land, if you will, is the new normal for government power.