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>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 morat
by 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 agoThere'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 agoHow 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 agoProbably a lot, I'd guess half could've paid one way or another, highly depends on the area though
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- jnwatson 5y agoIndeed. That's why we have a civil court system though.
- xhkkffbf 5y agoSmall? A friend who has about 5 houses told me that all 5 were behind or paying only a fraction of the rent. Including the woman who worked for Google as the local rep selling schools on using GSuite. She was making $150k when she filled out the lease paperwork. Google didn't have layoffs but somehow she couldn't write the full check. Go figure. But he still owed money to the bank and the utility company and ...
- matsemann 5y agoIt's hard to have too much sympathy for a person owning 5 houses while others are struggling having roof over their heads, though.
- Chris2048 5y agoThe person is a landlord, they are providing housing.
- matsemann 5y agoHow? By buying a house someone else could have bought and actually lived in, thus increasing the prices for everyone? How does buying and renting a house provide something not already there?
- sevenf0ur 5y agoNot everyone is wealthy enough or wants to move into an area and buy a house. Landlords make this possible. They also keep up with all the maintenance that any homeowner is familiar with. Houses are in a constant state of decay.
- MereInterest 5y agoExcept that landlords make a profit. The rent is higher than the mortgage+expenses. The landlord assumes risk of depreciation, but the response to the 2008 financial crisis showed that risk to be minimal. That extra profit is an incentive for landlords to buy more, which pushes up the price of houses overall, whether being bought to live in, or bought to rent out
- prostoalex 5y ago> Then those tenants will effectively swap houses with someone else who's behind, wiping the rental debt clean. Won't evictions surface in credit history or background checks?
- jaywalk 5y agoNot if they're not formally evicted, which is what the OP specified in the sentence right before the one you quoted.
- j_walter 5y agoThere are many large cities that are blocking or restricting credit checks of renters now...so in some cases landlords will be helpless. https://portlandrentalhomes.com/portlands-rental-screening-criteria-faces-big-changes/ https://portlandrentalhomes.com/portlands-rental-screening-c...
- abfan1127 5y agorental costs will reflect a higher risk of doing business.
- whatshisface 5y agoGreat, then the honest tenants have to subsidize everyone else...
- TeMPOraL 5y agoGiven this is a pandemic-induced issue, replace "honest" with "lucky" - but otherwise yeah, it seems so. The ways risk is being distributed in society is a fascinating topic.
- whatshisface 5y agoIt's really lucky+honest, because people lucky enough to afford it don't have to pay.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoThe landlord could still go after the unpaid rent through the debt collection processes. That may still show up on a credit/background check.
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- david38 5y agoThat’s not the same as getting paid. That’s like saying you have the right to go after 10x more money than someone can pay off in a year. So you’re going to take 10 years to collect? This is essentially a forced loan. Really what should have happened is the tenant gets a pause. If there are payments on the building by the landlord, those are paused as well. If it’s a small landlord who say, owns a single house, he gets federal money. This decreases as the size grows, but always enough money must be paid so that the property can be maintained. We don’t want to be creating slums.
- jnwatson 5y agoIf a landlord nulls out the rental debt, that's completely on them. I would be quite wary renting to a person that missed 6-12 months of rent on their previous lease. These debts are going to be chasing folks for a long time.
- root_axis 5y agoWell if the landlord doesn't pursue the debt as the OP stipulates, you wouldn't really know about the missed rent.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoLandlords call previous landlords for references. To my knowledge, there is nothing against the law in sharing missed or late rent payment information with a new landlord.
- root_axis 5y agoThis isn't very common because it's easy for tenants to lie and provide fake references or say they were living with a parent or relative, it's typically a waste of time for the landlord. Most landlords simply rely on official records like credit and background checks, proof of income etc.
- cableshaft 5y agoThe pandemic made the situation a little different than usual. Many people got laid off for no fault of their own last year and couldn't find new work also from no fault of their own, the cities were just shut down for a while. The US government decided they didn't want these people to just go homeless en masse (at least not in the middle of a pandemic) and thus put the eviction moratorium in place, thus showing that they recognize we were in an extraordinary situation. Don't know about you, but I can't blame people for choosing not to go homeless when the government explicitly said you don't have to go homeless even if you can't pay your rent. So I wouldn't negatively judge ability to pay rent in this case if I were a landlord. Granted, I might prefer someone who didn't get behind on payments if I had two otherwise equal applicants, but I wouldn't assume they're just not going to pay rent this time as well.
- dataflow 5y agoWhat viable solution would you have proposed? Keeping in mind any political constraints you would be facing in implementing it.
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- GordonS 5y agoI'm not the OP, but three things spring to mind: 1. Pause mortgage capital payments, so the landlord only needs to pay the interest - it might help somewhat 2. Or instead of (1), pause mortgage payments altogether (a "payment holiday") so there will be no negative consequences of the landlord not paying the mortgage for this time. For extra points, also freeze the accrual of interest. 3. Pay the landlords some fraction of their lost income, e.g. 50%, so they can afford to pay their mortgage lender, and won't end up getting their property taken by the bank (which would ultimately result in the tenants being evicted)
- dataflow 5y agoI thought mortgage relief (especially for the pandemic) was already a thing? https://www.consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus/mortgage-and-housing-assistance/help-for-homeowners/learn-about-forbearance/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus/mortgage-and-hou...
- TuringNYC 5y agoOnly for GSE mortgages, and they just paused payments, didnt eliminate them (unlike rent which is essentially eliminated / uncollectible). Also, property taxes can be substantial and often higher than the mortgage depending on your area, and that wasn't addressed.
- rcpt 5y ago> You can't just stop evictions while not compensating landlords Plenty of businesses were forced to close.
- vorpalhex 5y agoWhen landlords close, their tenants end up back on the streets. The goal of the program was to prevent that.
- matsemann 5y agoOr maybe landlords are forced to sell. What value are they really providing?
- wongarsu 5y agoThe value they are providing is mostly that they put in the capital to buy and operate a house, and allow others to use the house with much less hassle, less capital investment and more flexibility
- j_walter 5y agoSeriously? Not everyone is meant to be home owners.
- topspin 5y ago"Or maybe landlords are forced to sell." To whom? You know what the answer usually is? Property management firms. You know, the ones that have the resources to pursue tenants for back rent in court and efficiently line up evictions.
- swiley 5y agoEven in the more landlord friendly states eviction is such a long process that most landlords start it the moment a tenant is late on their rent.
- spamizbad 5y ago> I think the eviction moratorium wasn't thought out very well. You can't just stop evictions while not compensating landlords Sounds like something that's impossible to administer. How would you prevent widespread fraud - landlord's claiming their tenants aren't paying rent when in fact they are? The US really doesn't have the bureaucratic infrastructure to handle such matters - or at least couldn't spin one up on short notice.
- vorpalhex 5y agoThe same way you crack down on other forms of fraud? Ask for proof, bank statements, etc.
- spamizbad 5y agoYou're asking them to show proof of a null, which is tricky. For example, a landlord could tell their tenants to make the check out to their spouse, deposit rent checks into their account, then turn around to the government with their usual tenant bank account and say "They're stiffing me on rent!" The government doesn't have perfect information.
- derekp7 5y agoThe government would still go after the tenant to potentially pay back the money that the gov fronted to the landlord (or a portion of it based on means testing). Then the tenant would have incentive to provide proof to the gov that those checks were written out. And the landlord then gets thrown into federal prison for government fraud.
- root_axis 5y agoThey could catch you retroactively when you report the rental income. Of course you could simply not report the income and hope you don't get audited but at that point you're now also guilty of tax fraud with the intent to conceal your wire fraud, and tax fraud is the type of thing the IRS can sniff out even years after the fact. There will be no plausible deniability possible since the unreported income will correspond to the defrauded payments, it'll be an open and shut case.