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California will pay off all past due rent

104 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

s1artibartfast 5y ago
I hope there is an unemployment/income test for individuals receiving this benefit, and a means test for the companies receiving it. There is no reason for individuals who were employed throughout covid to receive this. Same for multinational rental companies who operated in the green throughout the pandemic. I don't think my sliver of hope in public policy could handle it otherwise. Meanwhile, most of the fully employed people I know with student debt are skipping payments in anticipation of federal loan forgiveness
- lilyball 5y ago
  No. Means tests only exclude those who need it. The fact that some people will get money who didn't truly need it doesn't harm anyone, and it's far better for some people to get a benefit they don't need than for people who need it to be excluded. And besides, means testing costs money to execute, and often raises the cost above what it would be if they simply didn't means test.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Please don't start posts with "No." I find it undermines constructive discussion and attempts to find common understanding. It is not hard to show a 2020 tax filing and demonstrate income, or lack theof, and should be a reasonable request before giving someone 10s of thousands of taxpayer dollars. What do you think would be an appropriate level of scrutiny? Should anyone be able to apply with no fact checking whatsoever?
desine 5y ago
I live in California. I got laid off in December of 2019, right before the pandemic. I got a small gig that held me over for a bit, but fell behind on rent. A few months ago I got a new job and caught up on rent. If I had taken care of some other past due bills first, I would be essentially getting a few thousand extra dollars for being irresponsible. I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated we shut down the economy for so long. I’m frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID. I want to help the less fortunate. Plenty need it, including friends of mine. But somehow I feel slighted by this. Some of my neighbors in my building were posting rent strike signs on the walls. I never supported that. I don’t like this, and I don’t like that I don’t like it. A 0% loan for the renters would make me happier, but that wouldn’t solve all the issues. I’m already looking to leave the state. I don’t like where my tax money has been going or the regulations that have been pushed here. I was born and raised in California and it saddens me how it’s changed recently.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  > I’m frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID. You can be frustrated without making up claims. Infection and death rates were not exaggerated. Death rates were higher initially due to the ramp up in proper treatment. Infection rates were subject to selection bias which skewed the denominator early on in the pandemic.
  - desine 5y ago
    I’m not making up claims I’m repeating what doctors and nurses have come out and said - they were told to mark deaths as COVID related if the patient had a positive test result, even when cause of death was not specifically COVID related. Many “whistleblowers” (a bit of a stretch since it is not fraud or illegal) have spoken out on this. The CDC changed the policy of an asymptomatic patient’s positive PCR test counting as a a “case” in January of this year. Now, symptoms or multiple positive tests are required. This is hard fact not some spurious claim.
    - dntrkv 5y ago
      We can go back and forth about what constitutes a "COVID death," but if you look at excess mortality for 2020/2021 you will see that if anything, we are under-counting COVID deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm I'm not sure what you're trying to say about the false positive PCR tests in asymptomatic patients, but false positives in PCR tests are rare and would barely impact the numerator.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      > they were told to mark deaths as COVID related if the patient had a positive test result, even when cause of death was not specifically COVID related What's "specifically Covid related"? If a cancer patient catches Covid and takes a turn for the worse, it's fair to call Covid the cause of death. Did a sudden surge of people with asymptomatic Covid die in car crashes and cause LA to run out of crematoria capacity in January and February? The unbiased way to look at it is excess deaths, since Covid was the only new major cause of death last year. Going by that, about 40k people died of Covid in California in 2020, or about 0.1% of the state's population.[1] The actual number is probably higher than that because flu deaths are way down in 2020 due to Covid countermeasures. And California had about 5k flu deaths in 2019.[2] 1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/27/40000-excess-deaths-in-2020-and-other-things-we-learned-from-california-death-data/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/27/40000-excess-deaths-i... 2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mortality/flu_pneumonia.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mort...
jude- 5y ago
I sense a lot of resentment coming from people who managed to pay rent. My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone who was at risk of getting evicted now won't be? Would you rather make large swaths of the population homeless, especially those who couldn't work during the pandemic? If so, then what do you think those large swaths of now-homeless people -- who now have a very good reason to be very angry at basically everything, and now have a lot less to lose by acting on that anger -- are going to do next? If you follow this line of thinking to its conclusion, you'll come to the same conclusion that politicians of all stable countries realized a long time ago: society is a lot more stable, and a lot less violent-class-revolution-y, when everyone has affordable housing and basic needs met. By seeing to it they everyone is housed, dear resentful renter, you are saving yourself.
- grahamburger 5y ago
  I can definitely see how someone who sacrificed to pay rent throughout the pandemic, maybe using up some of their retirement funds or defaulting on car loans in the process, would be frustrated to learn now that they could have just not paid rent instead and been fine. They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless. (I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't live in California, don't rent, don't own rental property.)
  - jude- 5y ago
    > They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless. That sounds like a pretty privileged take on their parts. If they were wealthy enough to survive a global pandemic that upended the global economy without anyone's help, that speaks pretty well for them. But not everyone was so fortunate, and that's what this program addresses. I see no cause for resentment here, anymore than I see cause for resentment against poor people on Medicaid while the more-fortunate pay for health insurance. Like, sure -- we could do something "radical" (by US standards) and make Medicaid available to everyone, but if the choice is between having health insurance only for those who can afford it (and sucks to be you if you can't), and having a Medicaid tax to pay for health coverage for those who can't afford insurance, I'd much rather take the latter.
unanswered 5y ago
I wonder how many people in the governor's office mysteriously stopped paying their rent, and when? You'd be crazy, absolutely bonkers to pay rent now until it's clear what the covered dates are.
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  You must have low income to qualify.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Can you share a source? I haven't seen this and it would make me feel a lot better.
    - SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
      https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html#renter https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html#renter The landlord also has to agree to waive 20%.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate I feel a little torn: renters who may have lost their jobs, being able to get their heads above water seems to be a good thing. Bailing out the landlords seems to me to be less of a good thing. In a world that seems increasingly to tilt in favor of the fortunate (those owning the land) and offers little to the unfortunate (the renters) my desire for justice wants the scale to tip the other direction at least once in a while. Am I a bad person?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  I do find the rush to make landlords whole a little strange. Isn’t the concept here that you’re making a speculative investment and the risk is what justifies the profit?
  - dmitrygr 5y ago
    Yes but as a landlord I am supposed to be able to remove a non-paying tenant. They took away that ability, so now landlord HAD TO provide free housing to someone while still making mortgage payments.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      Or default on the mortgage. You’re not proving housing, you’re preventing people from having housing unless they pay you. When housing wasn’t a speculative investment it was far cheaper and far fewer people were forced to rent to make someone else money for no labour.
      - dmitrygr 5y ago
        So you've never heard of duplexes? Default -> homeless
      - _-david-_ 5y ago
        Some landlords rent out a room in their own house they live in. If they stopped renting there would be no additional housing available.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I don’t understand California’s finances at all. Only a year ago they declared a budget crisis with a $54 billion deficit. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-budget-crisis-gavin-newsom-face-mask-threaten-funds/#app https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-budget-crisis-gavin-... Now they have a $75 billion budget surplus, 1/3 of which came from emergency federal funds: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-budget-surplus-over-75b-including-26b-from-biden-stimulus/ar-BB1gAhoe https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-budget-su... I suppose paying off past-due rent is fair to landlords who were required to house tenants rent-free and it could be argued that it’s coming from the federal COVID funds, but that’s still a huge chunk of budget to spend.
- encoderer 5y ago
  There are a lot of very wealthy people in California who paid a lot more capital gains tax in 2020 than people predicted.
  - hackeraccount 5y ago
    From what I understand California has a very progressive tax system and as a consequence revenues vary by a lot. If wealthy Californians have a good year the coffers bulge but when they don't ... everything dries up. Not necessarily a problem if the State spent like that but they tend to spend like every year will be a fat year. Go figure.
- bgorman 5y ago
  California got bailed out by the IPO mania of 2020
  - DevKoala 5y ago
    It’s almost as if the system balanced itself out.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Not surprising when the purchasing power of USD is continuously lowered to ensure debts are repaid. Nominally, everything is fine.
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
Better link: https://apnews.com/article/california-health-coronavirus-pandemic-business-government-and-politics-4a9a08ffb93e80e90bae9e649378bfbc https://apnews.com/article/california-health-coronavirus-pan...
godshatter 5y ago
Initiatives like these always tend to hurt the most responsible people more than the rest. The landlords are fine. The people who maybe could have paid their rent on time but didn't want to reduce spending in other areas to compensate for it end up okay. It's the people who paid their rent first and on time then reduced spending in other areas that are the ones getting the short end of the stick. This only applies to people that could actually switch things around like this, though.
- georgeplusplus 5y ago
  This can be extrapolated to the handling of the corona virus itself. How are the states that made the hard decision to keep their economy going vs locking it down supposed to feel when in the end states like California who had one of the strictest lockdowns that even drove Elon out of the state ended up getting a bailout anyway..the right thing apparently doesn’t matter when you have access to unlimited fiat money. Lessened learned from the guy who paid and went to work like a sucker
- lilyball 5y ago
  Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off. The people who haven't paid their rent have done so by and large because they couldn't afford it, not because they just chose not to. Paying off their rent helps those people, the people who couldn't afford to pay it themselves, and ensures they don't lose their housing as a result. It certainly is true that landlords benefit from this package as they get their money, as opposed to an alternative like forcing all rent debts to be forgiven. But "landlords benefit" isn't a harm. Perhaps a more equitable solution would have been to determine the median rent across the state and then give that amount of money to all renters. But that has a lot of difficulties, such as how do you handle folks who rented only for part of this time (including those who had to stop renting due to job loss). And what about folks who own their homes and are dealing with mortgages; paying off rent is likely to be more accepted by non-renters than a plan where non-renters get money and renters don't. Of course, the plan could be extended to people with mortgages too. Or heck, just give this money to every person over 18 (or 21?) in the state. This would presumably significantly expand the costs involved in the plan though, but it would certainly be the most equitable.
pasabagi 5y ago
This is crazy. Everybody expects to lose money in natural catastrophes - except, for some reason, if you're in the least productive and most predatory sector of our economy (the landlord), you're entitled to a bailout, for what purpose exactly? What's the human harm that happens if some banks repossess a few over-leveraged rental properties? Compared to the millions who have lost jobs, school years, their health, etc in the pandemic? Making landlords whole should be the last thing anybody is spending money on.
- ar_lan 5y ago
  A few notes: An active problem in the US' form of capitalism is we don't let businesses die naturally. I think landlords fall under this - if they can't find renters for the prices they are charging, then their business is functionally failing, and it should be allowed to simply die. This is economically healthy at a more macro-level and invites better management practices and reduces people over-leveraging. In this case, people were still renting, however, and functionally for free. Landlords got screwed due to government intervention - the moratorium on evictions forced landlord's hands - it was the state saying "your business structure must be forced to fail" here, which is pretty ridiculously unfair of the state. Making the landlords whole seems entirely correct given their over-stepping measures earlier last year.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Here’s an honest question: where do you draw the line? Government intervention constantly creates winners and losers. New laws are passed, businesses lose licenses, or maybe some other government action causes the business to lose money. At what point do we say “ok you get money because the government destroyed your business” and “too bad for you”? I think I read somewhere that this specific issue is a legal one, but generally speaking I’m not sure why government action here is so different than other actions. Restaurants for example that we’re doing just fine went under. Why isn’t the government making them whole? This probably was an easier one to solve too. You could have just said something like “everyone freeze”. No mortgage for the landlord or interest for one year. Tenants don’t have to pay rent for one year. And then you resume payments. You could argue the bank loses out but I’d say you’re just extending the loan a year so they’re not really taking a loss in the long term either. At least this would have been a better and more just solution.
DevKoala 5y ago
This is good news for many. I have a friend who rented a floor on his duplex and he was incredibly helpful during the pandemic with the family that rented from him; he definitely deserves this.
starik36 5y ago
Well, don't I feel stupid paying rent on time for this past year as everyone around just stopped all together.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  If it helps, there isn't enough money to pay everyone's rent and it looks like they're just going to pay low income people's rent. Or, they could not pay anyone's rent and see if anyone really gets evicted. It's not like there were a ton of people waiting to rent those apartments
- jude- 5y ago
  Wouldn't not paying rent (regardless of the reason) cause your credit score to decline, and make it harder for you to rent in the future? Also, would you rather deal with the large amount of homelessness that would result in landlords having to mass-evict everyone who couldn't pay?
WalterBright 5y ago
This is a giant slap in the face to every renter who scrimped and sacrificed to pay their rent.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  And forgiving student loans is a slap in the face to any middle class family that had to scrimp and sacrifice for over a decade. Paying off somebody's loans is always a slap to somebody's face.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Uplifting someone else who needs it doesn’t slap my face. I paid off all my student loans myself, but I’m still for loan forgiveness and free, subsidized education. We’ve got to get past this zero-sum “he wins therefore I lose” mentality.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The (federal) government can print money. States can issue debt. There is no reason governments cannot give the same amount of cash to everyone, thereby not punishing those who played it safe. The constant bailing out of only those who take risks is just socialization of risk and privatization of profit, I.e. corruption.
      - jude- 5y ago
        You aren't being punished if someone else's life circumstances improve. Also, do you really think that the average American who has been saddled with the average amount of student loan debt would really be in a superior financial position if their debts were lifted tomorrow? The debt itself was preventing them from doing other economically productive things (like buying more goods and services, investing money, buying a house) that generate tax revenue. I wouldn't be surprised if forgiving all student debts turns out to be the economically favorable thing to do in the long run.
gotoeleven 5y ago
If you think of the california government as a natural disaster then things make a lot more sense.
skilesare 5y ago
We left California last year because our rent was too high for risky times. This fucking sucks. We could have stayed and Saved a ton of our kid’s and our heartbreak and our landlord(a great guy) could have been made whole. Wtf?
- oluwie 5y ago
  There were laws in place that protected you from being evicted if you couldn't pay your rent. You could have stayed if you really wanted to.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Those laws did not happen immediately, nor was it clear what would happen if they did not pay their rent. Skilesare made the sensible move by presuming they would have a ton of unaffordable debt if they had stayed and ended up with a bill for all of the unpaid rent. However, as US governments are prone to do, the decision is made to punish those who were prudent and made sacrifices, and to assist those who took risks. Which might be okay if the government was giving the cash to everyone, as that would not punish those who made sacrifices.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    They liked their landlord; maybe they didn't want to (effectively) steal tens of thousands of dollars from him.
Roba2015 5y ago
I told the tenants to leave 2 months in advance but the last month didn’t pay and I had to pay from my own expenses to cover the mortgage
Roba2015 5y ago
I had to pay mortgage the last month from my own expenses because tenants refused to pay since it was their last month and I’m wondering if there’s a way to get my money back?
aiisahik 5y ago
This is very anti-progressive and economically idiotic. If landlords can't handle owning without rent, there is a very simple solution: SELL. All housing is very inflated right now so it is highly unlikely that their equity is under water. The result of this action is to prop up asset prices and continue to make housing unaffordable for everyone in CA. The only way housing becomes more affordable in CA is to reduce the price of housing - aka reduce asset prices. This doesn't help.
aaomidi 5y ago
A better solution would've been to average out how much rent is per month. For people who owed their landlords, that money just gets given to the landlords as an amount to bail them out. For example, $1250/month. Landlords would legally be required to accept that as payment for any debt owed by their tenants. Everyone else who was able to continue paying rent gets $1250 * {however many months the government is covering}. Landlords included.
Simulacra 5y ago
What kind of fraud protections might there be? Let's say a renter only pays in cash. They agree with the landlord to lie and say they have not paid rent for the past x months. Landlord collects money and splits with tennent.
hourislate 5y ago
This reminds me of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". This sets such a dangerous precedent. Next time something like this happens no one is going to pay rent. If they don't compensate the people who made incredible sacrifices to pay their rent (selling everything they had, borrowing from family and friends, using every last penny of savings), it will be a tragic.
- humbleMouse 5y ago
  This is my takeaway from the pandemic. Next time, move into luxury penthouse, and free party for 18 months.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Maybe next time private security forces give beatdowns to tenants who don't pay their rent and you're thrown into quarantine camps along with all the other homeless squatters. You couldn't predict what happened this time; don't expect to fair any better next time. Much like everyone who was expecting a repeat of housing prices from 2008 sat around for a decade watching the opposite happen.
- counternotions 5y ago
  This begins a downward spiral of optimizing for the lowest common denominator.
deleted 5y ago
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dvdhnt 5y ago
It would be wonderful if every person or family had a suitable home before we allowed surplus housing to be used as a commodity. However, we don't live in that world, at least not yet. And while I am generally anti-rent-seeking, if we do not bail out landlords (whether or not they should be in their position not withstanding) then those homes will bought up by corporations and investment firms which absolutely should not own them. Corporations foreclose at a much higher rate than individual landlords (look up "cash for keys") because they have the resources to do so. If we don't bail out landlords then we're looking at an acceleration of Corporate Feudalism. Therefore, and it is tough for me to say, bailout landlords, then use tax credits to reward those who paid their rent on time, even if they were employed throughout the pandemic. Why? It is infinitely better to allow citizens to build their bank accounts rather than corporations and/or a generally ineffective government.
ummonk 5y ago
A similar thing happened with the Obamacare subsidy payback waiver. Those who underestimated their income and we’re overpaid in subsidies ended up able to keep it all.
sonthonax 5y ago
A lot of people are rightly complaining in this thread about how unfair this is to those who sacrificed to make good their obligation to pay rent. However the fair option, where everyone is paid would have an even greater distorting economic effect: because a huge amount of this money will just go into paying mortgages, little will go into circulation; and ends up being really a bail out for banks (while also probably saving the really poor from another pointless bankruptcy). If $20k was just given to everyone, it’d have a massive inflationary effect. I personally don’t like either solution: landlords should have taken a haircut. But it’s really hard to force landlords to take haircuts because the housing market is so incredibly illiquid; selling a house is a difficult transaction, once you’ve found a buyer you then need surveyors, who can delay the process long enough to cause the deal to fall through and the cycle to start over (and in LA the whole grandfathered housing tax creates even more perverse incentives). This way housing ends up being a bit of a unique asset class because selling up when faced with cash flow issues almost never makes economic sense. This ends up being a bit of a viscous cycle because it makes individual housing transactions extremely volatile. It’s somewhat perverse that there aren’t real market makers in the domestic housing market. It would be fantastic if there was some state market maker providing a buyer of last resort, that would have the economies of scale to make it work. It would allow the housing market to actually function as a market. In this case, if a landlord was having cash flow problems, they would be able to immediately liquidate. They’d take their haircut at a fair price that way. Right now, distressed property is a microeconomic quagmire.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  "It’s somewhat perverse that there aren’t real market makers in the domestic housing market." Zillow and OpenDoor are making headways into this. See "iBuyers"
  - sonthonax 5y ago
    Well, I hope that catches on and realtors loose out as brokers.
- risk000 5y ago
  >If $20k was just given to everyone, it’d have a massive inflationary effect. Forgive me if I ask - on what basis do you know this? The quantity theory of money and the theory of Ricardian equivalence are most likely wrong[0]. What else remains to be said? https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_money-and-banking-v2.0/s23-03-the-policy-failure-of-the-mode.html https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_money-and-banking-v2.0/s...
Justin_K 5y ago
Just Newsom buying more votes.

104 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

I hope there is an unemployment/income test for individuals receiving this benefit, and a means test for the companies receiving it. There is no reason for individuals who were employed throughout covid to receive this. Same for multinational rental companies who operated in the green throughout the pandemic. I don't think my sliver of hope in public policy could handle it otherwise. Meanwhile, most of the fully employed people I know with student debt are skipping payments in anticipation of federal loan forgiveness

lilyball 5y ago
No. Means tests only exclude those who need it. The fact that some people will get money who didn't truly need it doesn't harm anyone, and it's far better for some people to get a benefit they don't need than for people who need it to be excluded. And besides, means testing costs money to execute, and often raises the cost above what it would be if they simply didn't means test.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Please don't start posts with "No." I find it undermines constructive discussion and attempts to find common understanding. It is not hard to show a 2020 tax filing and demonstrate income, or lack theof, and should be a reasonable request before giving someone 10s of thousands of taxpayer dollars. What do you think would be an appropriate level of scrutiny? Should anyone be able to apply with no fact checking whatsoever?

desine 5y ago

I live in California. I got laid off in December of 2019, right before the pandemic. I got a small gig that held me over for a bit, but fell behind on rent. A few months ago I got a new job and caught up on rent. If I had taken care of some other past due bills first, I would be essentially getting a few thousand extra dollars for being irresponsible. I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated we shut down the economy for so long. I’m frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID. I want to help the less fortunate. Plenty need it, including friends of mine. But somehow I feel slighted by this. Some of my neighbors in my building were posting rent strike signs on the walls. I never supported that. I don’t like this, and I don’t like that I don’t like it. A 0% loan for the renters would make me happier, but that wouldn’t solve all the issues. I’m already looking to leave the state. I don’t like where my tax money has been going or the regulations that have been pushed here. I was born and raised in California and it saddens me how it’s changed recently.

dntrkv 5y ago
> I’m frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID. You can be frustrated without making up claims. Infection and death rates were not exaggerated. Death rates were higher initially due to the ramp up in proper treatment. Infection rates were subject to selection bias which skewed the denominator early on in the pandemic.
- desine 5y ago
  I’m not making up claims I’m repeating what doctors and nurses have come out and said - they were told to mark deaths as COVID related if the patient had a positive test result, even when cause of death was not specifically COVID related. Many “whistleblowers” (a bit of a stretch since it is not fraud or illegal) have spoken out on this. The CDC changed the policy of an asymptomatic patient’s positive PCR test counting as a a “case” in January of this year. Now, symptoms or multiple positive tests are required. This is hard fact not some spurious claim.
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    We can go back and forth about what constitutes a "COVID death," but if you look at excess mortality for 2020/2021 you will see that if anything, we are under-counting COVID deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm I'm not sure what you're trying to say about the false positive PCR tests in asymptomatic patients, but false positives in PCR tests are rare and would barely impact the numerator.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    > they were told to mark deaths as COVID related if the patient had a positive test result, even when cause of death was not specifically COVID related What's "specifically Covid related"? If a cancer patient catches Covid and takes a turn for the worse, it's fair to call Covid the cause of death. Did a sudden surge of people with asymptomatic Covid die in car crashes and cause LA to run out of crematoria capacity in January and February? The unbiased way to look at it is excess deaths, since Covid was the only new major cause of death last year. Going by that, about 40k people died of Covid in California in 2020, or about 0.1% of the state's population.[1] The actual number is probably higher than that because flu deaths are way down in 2020 due to Covid countermeasures. And California had about 5k flu deaths in 2019.[2] 1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/27/40000-excess-deaths-in-2020-and-other-things-we-learned-from-california-death-data/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/27/40000-excess-deaths-i... 2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mortality/flu_pneumonia.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mort...

jude- 5y ago

I sense a lot of resentment coming from people who managed to pay rent. My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone who was at risk of getting evicted now won't be? Would you rather make large swaths of the population homeless, especially those who couldn't work during the pandemic? If so, then what do you think those large swaths of now-homeless people -- who now have a very good reason to be very angry at basically everything, and now have a lot less to lose by acting on that anger -- are going to do next? If you follow this line of thinking to its conclusion, you'll come to the same conclusion that politicians of all stable countries realized a long time ago: society is a lot more stable, and a lot less violent-class-revolution-y, when everyone has affordable housing and basic needs met. By seeing to it they everyone is housed, dear resentful renter, you are saving yourself.

grahamburger 5y ago
I can definitely see how someone who sacrificed to pay rent throughout the pandemic, maybe using up some of their retirement funds or defaulting on car loans in the process, would be frustrated to learn now that they could have just not paid rent instead and been fine. They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless. (I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't live in California, don't rent, don't own rental property.)
- jude- 5y ago
  > They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless. That sounds like a pretty privileged take on their parts. If they were wealthy enough to survive a global pandemic that upended the global economy without anyone's help, that speaks pretty well for them. But not everyone was so fortunate, and that's what this program addresses. I see no cause for resentment here, anymore than I see cause for resentment against poor people on Medicaid while the more-fortunate pay for health insurance. Like, sure -- we could do something "radical" (by US standards) and make Medicaid available to everyone, but if the choice is between having health insurance only for those who can afford it (and sucks to be you if you can't), and having a Medicaid tax to pay for health coverage for those who can't afford insurance, I'd much rather take the latter.

unanswered 5y ago

I wonder how many people in the governor's office mysteriously stopped paying their rent, and when? You'd be crazy, absolutely bonkers to pay rent now until it's clear what the covered dates are.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
You must have low income to qualify.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Can you share a source? I haven't seen this and it would make me feel a lot better.
  - SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
    https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html#renter https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html#renter The landlord also has to agree to waive 20%.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate I feel a little torn: renters who may have lost their jobs, being able to get their heads above water seems to be a good thing. Bailing out the landlords seems to me to be less of a good thing. In a world that seems increasingly to tilt in favor of the fortunate (those owning the land) and offers little to the unfortunate (the renters) my desire for justice wants the scale to tip the other direction at least once in a while. Am I a bad person?

emodendroket 5y ago
I do find the rush to make landlords whole a little strange. Isn’t the concept here that you’re making a speculative investment and the risk is what justifies the profit?
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  Yes but as a landlord I am supposed to be able to remove a non-paying tenant. They took away that ability, so now landlord HAD TO provide free housing to someone while still making mortgage payments.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Or default on the mortgage. You’re not proving housing, you’re preventing people from having housing unless they pay you. When housing wasn’t a speculative investment it was far cheaper and far fewer people were forced to rent to make someone else money for no labour.
    - dmitrygr 5y ago
      So you've never heard of duplexes? Default -> homeless
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Some landlords rent out a room in their own house they live in. If they stopped renting there would be no additional housing available.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I don’t understand California’s finances at all. Only a year ago they declared a budget crisis with a $54 billion deficit. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-budget-crisis-gavin-newsom-face-mask-threaten-funds/#app https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-budget-crisis-gavin-... Now they have a $75 billion budget surplus, 1/3 of which came from emergency federal funds: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-budget-surplus-over-75b-including-26b-from-biden-stimulus/ar-BB1gAhoe https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-budget-su... I suppose paying off past-due rent is fair to landlords who were required to house tenants rent-free and it could be argued that it’s coming from the federal COVID funds, but that’s still a huge chunk of budget to spend.

encoderer 5y ago
There are a lot of very wealthy people in California who paid a lot more capital gains tax in 2020 than people predicted.
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  From what I understand California has a very progressive tax system and as a consequence revenues vary by a lot. If wealthy Californians have a good year the coffers bulge but when they don't ... everything dries up. Not necessarily a problem if the State spent like that but they tend to spend like every year will be a fat year. Go figure.
bgorman 5y ago
California got bailed out by the IPO mania of 2020
- DevKoala 5y ago
  It’s almost as if the system balanced itself out.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Not surprising when the purchasing power of USD is continuously lowered to ensure debts are repaid. Nominally, everything is fine.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago

Better link: https://apnews.com/article/california-health-coronavirus-pandemic-business-government-and-politics-4a9a08ffb93e80e90bae9e649378bfbc https://apnews.com/article/california-health-coronavirus-pan...

godshatter 5y ago

Initiatives like these always tend to hurt the most responsible people more than the rest. The landlords are fine. The people who maybe could have paid their rent on time but didn't want to reduce spending in other areas to compensate for it end up okay. It's the people who paid their rent first and on time then reduced spending in other areas that are the ones getting the short end of the stick. This only applies to people that could actually switch things around like this, though.

georgeplusplus 5y ago
This can be extrapolated to the handling of the corona virus itself. How are the states that made the hard decision to keep their economy going vs locking it down supposed to feel when in the end states like California who had one of the strictest lockdowns that even drove Elon out of the state ended up getting a bailout anyway..the right thing apparently doesn’t matter when you have access to unlimited fiat money. Lessened learned from the guy who paid and went to work like a sucker
lilyball 5y ago
Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off. The people who haven't paid their rent have done so by and large because they couldn't afford it, not because they just chose not to. Paying off their rent helps those people, the people who couldn't afford to pay it themselves, and ensures they don't lose their housing as a result. It certainly is true that landlords benefit from this package as they get their money, as opposed to an alternative like forcing all rent debts to be forgiven. But "landlords benefit" isn't a harm. Perhaps a more equitable solution would have been to determine the median rent across the state and then give that amount of money to all renters. But that has a lot of difficulties, such as how do you handle folks who rented only for part of this time (including those who had to stop renting due to job loss). And what about folks who own their homes and are dealing with mortgages; paying off rent is likely to be more accepted by non-renters than a plan where non-renters get money and renters don't. Of course, the plan could be extended to people with mortgages too. Or heck, just give this money to every person over 18 (or 21?) in the state. This would presumably significantly expand the costs involved in the plan though, but it would certainly be the most equitable.

pasabagi 5y ago

This is crazy. Everybody expects to lose money in natural catastrophes - except, for some reason, if you're in the least productive and most predatory sector of our economy (the landlord), you're entitled to a bailout, for what purpose exactly? What's the human harm that happens if some banks repossess a few over-leveraged rental properties? Compared to the millions who have lost jobs, school years, their health, etc in the pandemic? Making landlords whole should be the last thing anybody is spending money on.

ar_lan 5y ago
A few notes: An active problem in the US' form of capitalism is we don't let businesses die naturally. I think landlords fall under this - if they can't find renters for the prices they are charging, then their business is functionally failing, and it should be allowed to simply die. This is economically healthy at a more macro-level and invites better management practices and reduces people over-leveraging. In this case, people were still renting, however, and functionally for free. Landlords got screwed due to government intervention - the moratorium on evictions forced landlord's hands - it was the state saying "your business structure must be forced to fail" here, which is pretty ridiculously unfair of the state. Making the landlords whole seems entirely correct given their over-stepping measures earlier last year.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Here’s an honest question: where do you draw the line? Government intervention constantly creates winners and losers. New laws are passed, businesses lose licenses, or maybe some other government action causes the business to lose money. At what point do we say “ok you get money because the government destroyed your business” and “too bad for you”? I think I read somewhere that this specific issue is a legal one, but generally speaking I’m not sure why government action here is so different than other actions. Restaurants for example that we’re doing just fine went under. Why isn’t the government making them whole? This probably was an easier one to solve too. You could have just said something like “everyone freeze”. No mortgage for the landlord or interest for one year. Tenants don’t have to pay rent for one year. And then you resume payments. You could argue the bank loses out but I’d say you’re just extending the loan a year so they’re not really taking a loss in the long term either. At least this would have been a better and more just solution.

DevKoala 5y ago

This is good news for many. I have a friend who rented a floor on his duplex and he was incredibly helpful during the pandemic with the family that rented from him; he definitely deserves this.

starik36 5y ago

Well, don't I feel stupid paying rent on time for this past year as everyone around just stopped all together.

HWR_14 5y ago
If it helps, there isn't enough money to pay everyone's rent and it looks like they're just going to pay low income people's rent. Or, they could not pay anyone's rent and see if anyone really gets evicted. It's not like there were a ton of people waiting to rent those apartments
jude- 5y ago
Wouldn't not paying rent (regardless of the reason) cause your credit score to decline, and make it harder for you to rent in the future? Also, would you rather deal with the large amount of homelessness that would result in landlords having to mass-evict everyone who couldn't pay?

WalterBright 5y ago

This is a giant slap in the face to every renter who scrimped and sacrificed to pay their rent.

threatofrain 5y ago
And forgiving student loans is a slap in the face to any middle class family that had to scrimp and sacrifice for over a decade. Paying off somebody's loans is always a slap to somebody's face.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Uplifting someone else who needs it doesn’t slap my face. I paid off all my student loans myself, but I’m still for loan forgiveness and free, subsidized education. We’ve got to get past this zero-sum “he wins therefore I lose” mentality.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The (federal) government can print money. States can issue debt. There is no reason governments cannot give the same amount of cash to everyone, thereby not punishing those who played it safe. The constant bailing out of only those who take risks is just socialization of risk and privatization of profit, I.e. corruption.
    - jude- 5y ago
      You aren't being punished if someone else's life circumstances improve. Also, do you really think that the average American who has been saddled with the average amount of student loan debt would really be in a superior financial position if their debts were lifted tomorrow? The debt itself was preventing them from doing other economically productive things (like buying more goods and services, investing money, buying a house) that generate tax revenue. I wouldn't be surprised if forgiving all student debts turns out to be the economically favorable thing to do in the long run.

gotoeleven 5y ago

If you think of the california government as a natural disaster then things make a lot more sense.

skilesare 5y ago

We left California last year because our rent was too high for risky times. This fucking sucks. We could have stayed and Saved a ton of our kid’s and our heartbreak and our landlord(a great guy) could have been made whole. Wtf?

oluwie 5y ago
There were laws in place that protected you from being evicted if you couldn't pay your rent. You could have stayed if you really wanted to.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Those laws did not happen immediately, nor was it clear what would happen if they did not pay their rent. Skilesare made the sensible move by presuming they would have a ton of unaffordable debt if they had stayed and ended up with a bill for all of the unpaid rent. However, as US governments are prone to do, the decision is made to punish those who were prudent and made sacrifices, and to assist those who took risks. Which might be okay if the government was giving the cash to everyone, as that would not punish those who made sacrifices.
- kbelder 5y ago
  They liked their landlord; maybe they didn't want to (effectively) steal tens of thousands of dollars from him.

Roba2015 5y ago

I told the tenants to leave 2 months in advance but the last month didn’t pay and I had to pay from my own expenses to cover the mortgage

Roba2015 5y ago

I had to pay mortgage the last month from my own expenses because tenants refused to pay since it was their last month and I’m wondering if there’s a way to get my money back?

aiisahik 5y ago

This is very anti-progressive and economically idiotic. If landlords can't handle owning without rent, there is a very simple solution: SELL. All housing is very inflated right now so it is highly unlikely that their equity is under water. The result of this action is to prop up asset prices and continue to make housing unaffordable for everyone in CA. The only way housing becomes more affordable in CA is to reduce the price of housing - aka reduce asset prices. This doesn't help.

aaomidi 5y ago

A better solution would've been to average out how much rent is per month. For people who owed their landlords, that money just gets given to the landlords as an amount to bail them out. For example, $1250/month. Landlords would legally be required to accept that as payment for any debt owed by their tenants. Everyone else who was able to continue paying rent gets $1250 * {however many months the government is covering}. Landlords included.

Simulacra 5y ago

What kind of fraud protections might there be? Let's say a renter only pays in cash. They agree with the landlord to lie and say they have not paid rent for the past x months. Landlord collects money and splits with tennent.

hourislate 5y ago

This reminds me of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". This sets such a dangerous precedent. Next time something like this happens no one is going to pay rent. If they don't compensate the people who made incredible sacrifices to pay their rent (selling everything they had, borrowing from family and friends, using every last penny of savings), it will be a tragic.

humbleMouse 5y ago
This is my takeaway from the pandemic. Next time, move into luxury penthouse, and free party for 18 months.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Maybe next time private security forces give beatdowns to tenants who don't pay their rent and you're thrown into quarantine camps along with all the other homeless squatters. You couldn't predict what happened this time; don't expect to fair any better next time. Much like everyone who was expecting a repeat of housing prices from 2008 sat around for a decade watching the opposite happen.
counternotions 5y ago
This begins a downward spiral of optimizing for the lowest common denominator.

deleted 5y ago

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dvdhnt 5y ago

It would be wonderful if every person or family had a suitable home before we allowed surplus housing to be used as a commodity. However, we don't live in that world, at least not yet. And while I am generally anti-rent-seeking, if we do not bail out landlords (whether or not they should be in their position not withstanding) then those homes will bought up by corporations and investment firms which absolutely should not own them. Corporations foreclose at a much higher rate than individual landlords (look up "cash for keys") because they have the resources to do so. If we don't bail out landlords then we're looking at an acceleration of Corporate Feudalism. Therefore, and it is tough for me to say, bailout landlords, then use tax credits to reward those who paid their rent on time, even if they were employed throughout the pandemic. Why? It is infinitely better to allow citizens to build their bank accounts rather than corporations and/or a generally ineffective government.

ummonk 5y ago

A similar thing happened with the Obamacare subsidy payback waiver. Those who underestimated their income and we’re overpaid in subsidies ended up able to keep it all.

sonthonax 5y ago

A lot of people are rightly complaining in this thread about how unfair this is to those who sacrificed to make good their obligation to pay rent. However the fair option, where everyone is paid would have an even greater distorting economic effect: because a huge amount of this money will just go into paying mortgages, little will go into circulation; and ends up being really a bail out for banks (while also probably saving the really poor from another pointless bankruptcy). If $20k was just given to everyone, it’d have a massive inflationary effect. I personally don’t like either solution: landlords should have taken a haircut. But it’s really hard to force landlords to take haircuts because the housing market is so incredibly illiquid; selling a house is a difficult transaction, once you’ve found a buyer you then need surveyors, who can delay the process long enough to cause the deal to fall through and the cycle to start over (and in LA the whole grandfathered housing tax creates even more perverse incentives). This way housing ends up being a bit of a unique asset class because selling up when faced with cash flow issues almost never makes economic sense. This ends up being a bit of a viscous cycle because it makes individual housing transactions extremely volatile. It’s somewhat perverse that there aren’t real market makers in the domestic housing market. It would be fantastic if there was some state market maker providing a buyer of last resort, that would have the economies of scale to make it work. It would allow the housing market to actually function as a market. In this case, if a landlord was having cash flow problems, they would be able to immediately liquidate. They’d take their haircut at a fair price that way. Right now, distressed property is a microeconomic quagmire.

reducesuffering 5y ago
"It’s somewhat perverse that there aren’t real market makers in the domestic housing market." Zillow and OpenDoor are making headways into this. See "iBuyers"
- sonthonax 5y ago
  Well, I hope that catches on and realtors loose out as brokers.
risk000 5y ago
>If $20k was just given to everyone, it’d have a massive inflationary effect. Forgive me if I ask - on what basis do you know this? The quantity theory of money and the theory of Ricardian equivalence are most likely wrong[0]. What else remains to be said? https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_money-and-banking-v2.0/s23-03-the-policy-failure-of-the-mode.html https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_money-and-banking-v2.0/s...

Justin_K 5y ago

Just Newsom buying more votes.