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US states brace for ‘avalanche’ of evictions as federal moratorium ends

104 points by headShrinker 5y ago

slownews45 5y ago
The US always seems to make simple things far FAR more complicated than needed. They've created this giant eviction logjam that's making a mess of a lot of things. Don't want folks evicted? Give poor folks money so they can pay their rent or move to a cheaper place and pay rent etc etc. As it is, folks are trapped in their one location, can't look for work elsewhere etc. Landlords are screwed etc. Courts are going to be jammed up. And now there is going to be a huge and complicated bureaucracy, filled with fraud to try to get money to landlords etc.
- nostromo 5y ago
  The US government likes to give out benefits without paying for them. Want people to have healthcare? Make employers pay for it! Want people to stay housed during a pandemic? Make landlords pay for it! Want affordable housing? Make residential developers pay for it! Turns out it's a lot easier to spend other people's money than it is to spend your own.
  - Steltek 5y ago
    But that's what you get when one party uses extremist methods to prevent the US .gov from spending any money. And then the failure of government to achieve efficient action only further reinforces the extremist philosophy. It's really not hard to see the connection.
    - tastyfreeze 5y ago
      We have no money to spend! How is it extremist to prevent more spending when we are borrowing to even cover the existing budget?
      - jschwartzi 5y ago
        We didn’t have any trouble borrowing absurd amounts of money in the past to fight wars and build border walls. WWII was paid for in large part with US government debt. Debt can be a useful tool for getting out of a bad situation. The only difference I see here is that we’re unwilling to borrow to make life easier for the 95% of people who live tenuously within the bounds of ordinary life. And when we stop helping them everyone suffers.
      - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
        That same group is the first in line to shower their states with pork and a disproportionate share of tax revenue.
      - bryanlarsen 5y ago
        The federal government has full control over its own money supply. It has an infinite supply of money, constrained only by inflation. It can, and regularly does, borrow money from itself. Budget surpluses are extremely harmful -- they shrink the money supply, forcing industry into deficit.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        There is plenty of money if you raise taxes so that you can afford do most of your borrowing during crises like this one to actually fund the necessary mandates.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        We aren't really borrowing. The debt will never be "paid back" as it's not really debt, it is a dilution of value. The more dollars we create and spend, the less each dollar is worth.
        tastyfreeze 5y ago
        Whether it is borrowing or dilution is a petty point to quibble about. The government already consumes 42% of what the people create. The questions are: Are you OK with you and your descendants being made more poor by government dilution? How much of your earnings are you comfortable forking over to government under threat of force?
  - pitaj 5y ago
    > Want affordable housing? Make residential developers pay for it! Simply letting developers build housing would do wonders for affordability.
    - novok 5y ago
      The people who make these rules literally do not believe in supply and demand. It's fucking mind boggling.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Because the alternative (the government fulfills the actual healthcare or housing) would be considered Socialism, which apparently is a really bad thing (according to all the corporate owned opinion).
  - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
    Even when the government is spending tax dollars, they are still spending other people's money.
- mcast 5y ago
  Good thing the American people got their $600 stimulus to help pay for those last few months of rent! /s
- Guest42 5y ago
  The article mentioned how difficult it is for minimum wage workers to find rentals. I wish it had also included the percentages of workers making minimum wage or less over the last 10 years. A common counter argument is that people should simply make more but I’d like to see the amounts of those opportunities relative to the people who need them. Also, given today’s rental background checking, I’d claim that the landlords would simply charge more.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    Because you can't evict folks landlords are setting totally ridiculous standards to rent from them or not renting. It's seen as better than getting stuck with someone not paying who you can't evict. What happened is landords renting to well off people did fine - white collar workers actually did OK during COVID, and folks with money by and large kept paying. Landlords on lower end got screwed by and large (this includes more immigrant / minority landords). Then if you had some property managers etc on payroll you got all sorts of bailout money - so rich got richer. One group that actually I think was happy was section 8 landlords because section 8 kept paying - so good on them.
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    It's oddly hard to get these statistics. The federal minimum wage doesn't apply to many states*. 18 states have no minimum wage or have it set as the federal (only $7.25). Georgia and Wyoming set it LOWER than the federal (only $5.15). Some states are a little over in the $8 range. Both federal and states have different minimums for tipped workers. For example, the federal minimum for tipped workers is $2.13. In NY state it is $8.35. It's $9.35/hr in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester county. And it's $10/hr for tipped workers in NYC. So "what is minimum wage and how many people make it?" is an annoyingly complex question. One interesting stat is that about 28% of the US workforce makes under $15 an hour. *EDIT: I meant this as some states have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum wage, so they don't show up in stats like "how many Americans make the federal minimum wage". Sorry for the poor original phrasing.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
- alistairSH 5y ago
  A financially hobbled working class is a feature, not a bug.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  You're suggestions might make sense if US politics was optimized to help poor people, or people most in need - or if this is what Americans in general care about. It's not.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    But why make folks already dealing with a lot of complexity in their lives go through long court processes, do lots of paperwork etc. Poor folks have to be in a database somewhere - give them money and get out of the way?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      It's not that simple. A lot of those poor folks in your database won't have a bank account, or won't have stable contact information, or will have other financial priorities with the money. I'm generally a huge fan of cash grant based welfare, but if you're trying to do immediate emergency relief to ensure people don't get evicted during a pandemic, it's not up to the task.
      - jschwartzi 5y ago
        Yeah it’s impossible to get any government aid without a permanent address that is not General Delivery at a post office. Housing is not just about keeping a roof over your head. For people who are already reliant on welfare and unemployment it’s the difference between being on the dole and losing everything.
  - akmarinov 5y ago
    Best we can do is cut taxes on the rich and hope it trickles down.
    - aaron-santos 5y ago
      We are incredibly creative and ingenious people. That's not "the best we can do". Why hope that a solution being discussed over on hundred years ago[1] will spontaneously start working? Identify who stands to benefit from those solutions, how it divides the the populace, and find a better solution. Self-defeatism is a mind killer. [1] William Jennings Bryan described the concept using the metaphor of a "leak" in his Cross of Gold speech
- vsareto 5y ago
  >Don't want folks evicted? Give poor folks money so they can pay their rent or move to a cheaper place and pay rent etc etc. They are literally doing that: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-state-local-and-tribal-governments/emergency-rental-assistance-program https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistan...
- kube-system 5y ago
  This is because of a separation of powers. The executive branch can do things now but they do not have the power of the purse: thus the eviction moratorium. Emergency rental assistance money has to come from Congress which is inherently slower.
- johncessna 5y ago
  As it relates to evictions due to non-payment, i think this is overstated. There are plenty of programs specific to Covid alone, there was the federal money, expanded and extended unemployment, and programs to pay back rent. The NY one, for example, comes with a condition you can't evict due to non-payment for a year. That's all on top of 'the usual' government assistance, HUD, HEAP, etc. Some tenants leveraged these programs and they won't be evicted. The ones who saw this as 'free money' and an opportunity to 'fuck those evil landlords' will be.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  This is just a random comment with no substance but provocating a wide spectrum of responses with no coherent discussion.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
People thought voting for Biden was gonna stop this. Fools.
- somenewaccount1 5y ago
  No, people thought it would suck slightly less under Biden. They were correct. Only Trump supporters live in a delusional world where the president can possibly solve all your problems.
- vsareto 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jul/29/covid-vaccine-mandate-federal-employees-joe-biden-us-politics-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jul/29/covid-v...
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    failed in the house - womp womp, they dont' actually give a crap
analyte123 5y ago
Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply (why rent out a home or build units if the government can force you to let people live in it for free for well over a year) and by raising the bar for tenant selection (someone with poor credit or unconventional life history is a far greater risk if it will take months on end to get them out for not paying). I'm not a homeowner or a landlord, so I'm not exactly talking my book here.
- omegaworks 5y ago
  > Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply Restrictive zoning and bespoke, political hurdles against development do far more to restrict supply. I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Say we make it easier to evict and change nothing else: one family is evicted so another can take the unit. I don't see how that improves anything if the goal is to get both families housed. All it seems to do is enable landlords to play arbitrage and charge the highest possible price.
  - kristjansson 5y ago
    Not OP, but literally the next clause in the sentence you quoted articulates how OP thinks barriers to eviction restrict supply
  - filoleg 5y ago
    > I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Well, look at what's happening in Vancouver (and a few other places, but Vancouver is just the most obvious example), and it will easily explain your confusion. When it becomes too costly and problematic to deal with renting out your property to someone else, people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty[0]. It got bad enough, Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. 0. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-empty-homes-in-vancouver-hits-record-high-1.4175999 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-em...
nostromo 5y ago
It still seems crazy to me that the CDC has the authority to interfere with contracts between citizens regarding tenancy. The right way to deal with this issue is via the lawmaking process. If they want to extend the moratorium, they can do it at anytime, they just have to go through the process.
- Retric 5y ago
  CDC has extreme powers to do things like indefinitely detain an infectious person or even do large scale quarantines. The tenancy issue is surprisingly mild by comparison.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    As earlier commenters here pointed out, the supreme court disagrees, and suggests the CDC won't be allowed to do this again. Others as well, including the sixth circuit. From https://reason.com/2021/07/26/federal-appeals-court-sneaks-in-one-final-ruling-against-the-cdcs-expiring-eviction-moratorium/ https://reason.com/2021/07/26/federal-appeals-court-sneaks-i...: > "The Sixth Circuit's ruling represents the sixth time a lower court has struck down the CDC's moratorium, with most decisions similarly criticizing the near-limitless powers the agency was trying to claim for itself."
    - Retric 5y ago
      “Three other federal courts have ruled in favor of the CDC's eviction moratorium, including a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling in June. That same month, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up an emergency petition to hear a challenge to the moratorium, although a majority of five justices did indicate that they considered the policy illegal.” It’s less clear cut than your suggesting. The Supreme Court left the memorandum in place 5-4 while saying they would reject continuing it without congressional involvement. So, it looks like the CDC could do this on the next pandemic, just not for this one.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
post_break 5y ago
I just don't understand how the government postponed evictions without paying landlords. Can you just tell people they don't have to work while forcing companies to pay employees? Etc it's just bizarre. I feel for the people who needed these protections, but also recognize the people on the other side of the coin who have mortgages, utilities, etc.
- Cshelton 5y ago
  It's much worse than you realize. Most of these rentals are cash flows that pay the debt service on a loan. Which most of the time is securitized. Those securities are packaged up (sound familiar...?) and sold to investors. Who are these investors you ask? Mostly institutional investors who are responsible for.. your retirement, pensions, etc. So it's not the "rich landlord" that doesn't get his rent money, it's your next door neighbor who is a retired teacher living off the teachers pension.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    How are school districts going to escape their contractual obligations to unions? By going into bankruptcy? Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts?
    - kamaal 5y ago
      >>Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts? Pensions are either from taxes(Now who is going to pay that on properties where people stay for free?), or from profits made in investments in larger economy. Where do the profits come from? People who borrow money to run businesses(which now have no profits, and are running on losses because people stay for free). Read that all in reverse. The effects will be felt all over the economy.
- r00fus 5y ago
  We funded the military to the tune of $800B but can't be bothered to keep people from falling into poverty due to inability to work (tenants) or bankruptcy (landlords). Most other nations had much stronger safety nets than a few one-time payments of a few hundred dollars. Quite a set of priorities are on display here.
duxup 5y ago
I wonder how this plays out. Say I'm renting out some units and folks are many months behind... but they can pay for this month, and they are working and so on? Is it worth my time to evict them and get 0? or work something out? I'm sure plenty of places would go for eviction but we'll see.
- betterunix2 5y ago
  The nature of the current economic recovery incentivizes evictions, as there has been a very strong split between winners and losers (often through no fault of the losers -- reopening has not been evenly distributed across industries). Someone who is not making rent right now is likely to be on the losing ride of the reopening, and any landlord would prefer to get one of the winners as a tenant. Not saying this is a great thing for a society, but without some form of tenant protection that is probably what landlords will do.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  You already don't have the money they are behind so that is essentially a sunk cost. If they are paying now, I'd try to work out that they pay something extra towards the delinquency. If they can't, they can't. If you evict, that's probably another few months of process time minimum and they'll probably stop paying again once you serve notice. Owning rental property is an investment, not a guaranteed income. There is investment risk. This is one of the times that the risk became reality. Bottom line (I say this as a small-time landlord) if they are back to making payments I'd let them finish their lease. At renewal time both parties can decide if they want to continue. Write off any losses; it was a bad year and nobody is really at fault.
  - duxup 5y ago
    Yeah I suspect many, specifically small, landlords as long as they think the person can pay now... just not worth pushing people out.
  - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    Just remember this if in the future it's revealed people are letting their homes sit empty instead of renting them out. (when waiting for the right time to sell or any other reason) Renting is often risky even in good years, one bad tenant can't lose years of profit simply by not paying rent and leaving. If they don't trash the place, it'll need emptied before the next tenant moves in (cost). Then it's possible they do trash the place. And then it's possible they get mad and truly destroy the place (run the pipes). Generally people in these situations don't have money, so good luck getting it back in court. And there's countless stories before covid of people who knew how to play the game in certain areas and delay evictions for months. Now on top of all those normal risks, you have to worry about the government handing out a year of free rent and not allowing you to evict someone. Unless I find a renter who is literally a family friend, I don't believe I'd ever rent out a property I own.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
In times like these you can see that some things are just fundamentally wrong with our economic system. On the one hand upper incomes have done extremely well during COVID with stock market and housing going up like crazy. And on the other hand you have a lot of lower income people lose jobs and now also places to live through no fault of their own. 2008 with it a bailouts has already taught me that the upper class will twist the rules to their advantage and COVID repeats the same thing. Reminds me a little of 2003. The big defense companies had posters in the metro touting their patriotism while taking in record profits, paying 30 million dollar CEO paychecks and receiving big tax cuts. And that while in Iraq low paid soldiers were injured and dying for an ill conceived war. I guess the old saying to never let a good crisis go to waste is very true.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  To be fair, it's not quite as clear cut as that, either. There are people in the upper incomes with a $500,000 mortgage and suddenly no jobs to pay it.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    Sure. Some people with upper incomes got hit hard but from what I know the vast majority are low income.
austincheney 5y ago
I wonder if anybody used this eviction moratorium as an excuse to stop paying rent and instead save to become a home owner.
mrfusion 5y ago
I never can tell when the media is exaggerating anymore.
cletus 5y ago
All over the Internet you'll see these predictions of doom and gloom as the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures ends. I honestly just don't buy it. For one you have a certain number of actors who haven't paid their rent or mortgage simply because they haven't had to. This doesn't erase previous obligations but such people may be willing to walk away for other reasons or may attempt to negotiate with the owner or bank for a lower overall payment because that's better than the alternative. For another, people still have to live somewhere. If anything you'll see the effect of this as a lowering of rents, which have otherwise soared. Residential landlords are generally less willing than commercial property owners to keep property vacant for extended periods to maintain the illusion of "market rate". Lastly, unemployment is low and there's a lot of upward pressure on wages. This is not the environment where lots of people suddenly go homeless. This isn't the Great Depression. This isn't even 2008. There are a lot of people who missed out on the spike in housing prices who are now rationalizing that result as this being a bubble about to burst. Also, people who haven't been through this before have unrealistic views of the likelihood of actual doom and gloom scenarios. It happens less often than you think. If nothing else, governments have shown themselves more willing to intervene (for better or for worse) to stave off negative outcomes. This just isn't a big deal.
- aksss 5y ago
  All while there is a continuing incentive for news organizations and elements of governments to keep people in a near-constant state of worry and uncertainty about something/anything.
ransom1538 5y ago
If you have tenants that are not paying: approach them. Explain to them (not in writing) that you can no longer make payments due to lack of rent - and the bank could foreclose and seize the home. Offer to pay them 2X monthly rent cash to sign a contract to leave the place clean in 30 days plus free rent. Have a lawyer draw up paperwork (~$500/2hrs) and explain you and the tenant agreed to the terms. Once the place is vacant sell the property or re-rent with short term rentals.
- kyleee 5y ago
  How do you enforce if they still don't leave after 30 days?
  - ransom1538 5y ago
    They wont get the money - and you are in the same position. So you lost nothing. It wont work all the time. But it is hard for tenants to resist all that cash.
foolzcrow 5y ago
Never forget lockdowns did not have to happen. The politicians have no answers except tyranny. Maybe its time to do a great reset on them.

104 points by headShrinker 5y ago

The US always seems to make simple things far FAR more complicated than needed. They've created this giant eviction logjam that's making a mess of a lot of things. Don't want folks evicted? Give poor folks money so they can pay their rent or move to a cheaper place and pay rent etc etc. As it is, folks are trapped in their one location, can't look for work elsewhere etc. Landlords are screwed etc. Courts are going to be jammed up. And now there is going to be a huge and complicated bureaucracy, filled with fraud to try to get money to landlords etc.

nostromo 5y ago
The US government likes to give out benefits without paying for them. Want people to have healthcare? Make employers pay for it! Want people to stay housed during a pandemic? Make landlords pay for it! Want affordable housing? Make residential developers pay for it! Turns out it's a lot easier to spend other people's money than it is to spend your own.
- Steltek 5y ago
  But that's what you get when one party uses extremist methods to prevent the US .gov from spending any money. And then the failure of government to achieve efficient action only further reinforces the extremist philosophy. It's really not hard to see the connection.
  - tastyfreeze 5y ago
    We have no money to spend! How is it extremist to prevent more spending when we are borrowing to even cover the existing budget?
    - jschwartzi 5y ago
      We didn’t have any trouble borrowing absurd amounts of money in the past to fight wars and build border walls. WWII was paid for in large part with US government debt. Debt can be a useful tool for getting out of a bad situation. The only difference I see here is that we’re unwilling to borrow to make life easier for the 95% of people who live tenuously within the bounds of ordinary life. And when we stop helping them everyone suffers.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      That same group is the first in line to shower their states with pork and a disproportionate share of tax revenue.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      The federal government has full control over its own money supply. It has an infinite supply of money, constrained only by inflation. It can, and regularly does, borrow money from itself. Budget surpluses are extremely harmful -- they shrink the money supply, forcing industry into deficit.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      There is plenty of money if you raise taxes so that you can afford do most of your borrowing during crises like this one to actually fund the necessary mandates.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      We aren't really borrowing. The debt will never be "paid back" as it's not really debt, it is a dilution of value. The more dollars we create and spend, the less each dollar is worth.
      - tastyfreeze 5y ago
        Whether it is borrowing or dilution is a petty point to quibble about. The government already consumes 42% of what the people create. The questions are: Are you OK with you and your descendants being made more poor by government dilution? How much of your earnings are you comfortable forking over to government under threat of force?
- pitaj 5y ago
  > Want affordable housing? Make residential developers pay for it! Simply letting developers build housing would do wonders for affordability.
  - novok 5y ago
    The people who make these rules literally do not believe in supply and demand. It's fucking mind boggling.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Because the alternative (the government fulfills the actual healthcare or housing) would be considered Socialism, which apparently is a really bad thing (according to all the corporate owned opinion).
- x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  Even when the government is spending tax dollars, they are still spending other people's money.
mcast 5y ago
Good thing the American people got their $600 stimulus to help pay for those last few months of rent! /s
Guest42 5y ago
The article mentioned how difficult it is for minimum wage workers to find rentals. I wish it had also included the percentages of workers making minimum wage or less over the last 10 years. A common counter argument is that people should simply make more but I’d like to see the amounts of those opportunities relative to the people who need them. Also, given today’s rental background checking, I’d claim that the landlords would simply charge more.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Because you can't evict folks landlords are setting totally ridiculous standards to rent from them or not renting. It's seen as better than getting stuck with someone not paying who you can't evict. What happened is landords renting to well off people did fine - white collar workers actually did OK during COVID, and folks with money by and large kept paying. Landlords on lower end got screwed by and large (this includes more immigrant / minority landords). Then if you had some property managers etc on payroll you got all sorts of bailout money - so rich got richer. One group that actually I think was happy was section 8 landlords because section 8 kept paying - so good on them.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  It's oddly hard to get these statistics. The federal minimum wage doesn't apply to many states*. 18 states have no minimum wage or have it set as the federal (only $7.25). Georgia and Wyoming set it LOWER than the federal (only $5.15). Some states are a little over in the $8 range. Both federal and states have different minimums for tipped workers. For example, the federal minimum for tipped workers is $2.13. In NY state it is $8.35. It's $9.35/hr in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester county. And it's $10/hr for tipped workers in NYC. So "what is minimum wage and how many people make it?" is an annoyingly complex question. One interesting stat is that about 28% of the US workforce makes under $15 an hour. *EDIT: I meant this as some states have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum wage, so they don't show up in stats like "how many Americans make the federal minimum wage". Sorry for the poor original phrasing.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
alistairSH 5y ago
A financially hobbled working class is a feature, not a bug.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
You're suggestions might make sense if US politics was optimized to help poor people, or people most in need - or if this is what Americans in general care about. It's not.
- slownews45 5y ago
  But why make folks already dealing with a lot of complexity in their lives go through long court processes, do lots of paperwork etc. Poor folks have to be in a database somewhere - give them money and get out of the way?
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    It's not that simple. A lot of those poor folks in your database won't have a bank account, or won't have stable contact information, or will have other financial priorities with the money. I'm generally a huge fan of cash grant based welfare, but if you're trying to do immediate emergency relief to ensure people don't get evicted during a pandemic, it's not up to the task.
    - jschwartzi 5y ago
      Yeah it’s impossible to get any government aid without a permanent address that is not General Delivery at a post office. Housing is not just about keeping a roof over your head. For people who are already reliant on welfare and unemployment it’s the difference between being on the dole and losing everything.
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Best we can do is cut taxes on the rich and hope it trickles down.
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    We are incredibly creative and ingenious people. That's not "the best we can do". Why hope that a solution being discussed over on hundred years ago[1] will spontaneously start working? Identify who stands to benefit from those solutions, how it divides the the populace, and find a better solution. Self-defeatism is a mind killer. [1] William Jennings Bryan described the concept using the metaphor of a "leak" in his Cross of Gold speech
vsareto 5y ago
>Don't want folks evicted? Give poor folks money so they can pay their rent or move to a cheaper place and pay rent etc etc. They are literally doing that: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-state-local-and-tribal-governments/emergency-rental-assistance-program https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistan...
kube-system 5y ago
This is because of a separation of powers. The executive branch can do things now but they do not have the power of the purse: thus the eviction moratorium. Emergency rental assistance money has to come from Congress which is inherently slower.
johncessna 5y ago
As it relates to evictions due to non-payment, i think this is overstated. There are plenty of programs specific to Covid alone, there was the federal money, expanded and extended unemployment, and programs to pay back rent. The NY one, for example, comes with a condition you can't evict due to non-payment for a year. That's all on top of 'the usual' government assistance, HUD, HEAP, etc. Some tenants leveraged these programs and they won't be evicted. The ones who saw this as 'free money' and an opportunity to 'fuck those evil landlords' will be.
systemvoltage 5y ago
This is just a random comment with no substance but provocating a wide spectrum of responses with no coherent discussion.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

People thought voting for Biden was gonna stop this. Fools.

somenewaccount1 5y ago
No, people thought it would suck slightly less under Biden. They were correct. Only Trump supporters live in a delusional world where the president can possibly solve all your problems.
vsareto 5y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jul/29/covid-vaccine-mandate-federal-employees-joe-biden-us-politics-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jul/29/covid-v...
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  failed in the house - womp womp, they dont' actually give a crap

analyte123 5y ago

Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply (why rent out a home or build units if the government can force you to let people live in it for free for well over a year) and by raising the bar for tenant selection (someone with poor credit or unconventional life history is a far greater risk if it will take months on end to get them out for not paying). I'm not a homeowner or a landlord, so I'm not exactly talking my book here.

omegaworks 5y ago
> Making it harder to evict drives up rents and worsens the housing crisis by restricting supply Restrictive zoning and bespoke, political hurdles against development do far more to restrict supply. I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Say we make it easier to evict and change nothing else: one family is evicted so another can take the unit. I don't see how that improves anything if the goal is to get both families housed. All it seems to do is enable landlords to play arbitrage and charge the highest possible price.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  Not OP, but literally the next clause in the sentence you quoted articulates how OP thinks barriers to eviction restrict supply
- filoleg 5y ago
  > I'm not understanding how housing that is in use can be considered supply available for others. Well, look at what's happening in Vancouver (and a few other places, but Vancouver is just the most obvious example), and it will easily explain your confusion. When it becomes too costly and problematic to deal with renting out your property to someone else, people who bought it as an investment will just hold onto it and let it sit empty[0]. It got bad enough, Vancouver ended up introducing a vacant property tax. 0. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-empty-homes-in-vancouver-hits-record-high-1.4175999 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/number-of-em...

nostromo 5y ago

It still seems crazy to me that the CDC has the authority to interfere with contracts between citizens regarding tenancy. The right way to deal with this issue is via the lawmaking process. If they want to extend the moratorium, they can do it at anytime, they just have to go through the process.

Retric 5y ago
CDC has extreme powers to do things like indefinitely detain an infectious person or even do large scale quarantines. The tenancy issue is surprisingly mild by comparison.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  As earlier commenters here pointed out, the supreme court disagrees, and suggests the CDC won't be allowed to do this again. Others as well, including the sixth circuit. From https://reason.com/2021/07/26/federal-appeals-court-sneaks-in-one-final-ruling-against-the-cdcs-expiring-eviction-moratorium/ https://reason.com/2021/07/26/federal-appeals-court-sneaks-i...: > "The Sixth Circuit's ruling represents the sixth time a lower court has struck down the CDC's moratorium, with most decisions similarly criticizing the near-limitless powers the agency was trying to claim for itself."
  - Retric 5y ago
    “Three other federal courts have ruled in favor of the CDC's eviction moratorium, including a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling in June. That same month, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up an emergency petition to hear a challenge to the moratorium, although a majority of five justices did indicate that they considered the policy illegal.” It’s less clear cut than your suggesting. The Supreme Court left the memorandum in place 5-4 while saying they would reject continuing it without congressional involvement. So, it looks like the CDC could do this on the next pandemic, just not for this one.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago

post_break 5y ago

I just don't understand how the government postponed evictions without paying landlords. Can you just tell people they don't have to work while forcing companies to pay employees? Etc it's just bizarre. I feel for the people who needed these protections, but also recognize the people on the other side of the coin who have mortgages, utilities, etc.

Cshelton 5y ago
It's much worse than you realize. Most of these rentals are cash flows that pay the debt service on a loan. Which most of the time is securitized. Those securities are packaged up (sound familiar...?) and sold to investors. Who are these investors you ask? Mostly institutional investors who are responsible for.. your retirement, pensions, etc. So it's not the "rich landlord" that doesn't get his rent money, it's your next door neighbor who is a retired teacher living off the teachers pension.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  How are school districts going to escape their contractual obligations to unions? By going into bankruptcy? Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts?
  - kamaal 5y ago
    >>Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts? Pensions are either from taxes(Now who is going to pay that on properties where people stay for free?), or from profits made in investments in larger economy. Where do the profits come from? People who borrow money to run businesses(which now have no profits, and are running on losses because people stay for free). Read that all in reverse. The effects will be felt all over the economy.
r00fus 5y ago
We funded the military to the tune of $800B but can't be bothered to keep people from falling into poverty due to inability to work (tenants) or bankruptcy (landlords). Most other nations had much stronger safety nets than a few one-time payments of a few hundred dollars. Quite a set of priorities are on display here.

duxup 5y ago

I wonder how this plays out. Say I'm renting out some units and folks are many months behind... but they can pay for this month, and they are working and so on? Is it worth my time to evict them and get 0? or work something out? I'm sure plenty of places would go for eviction but we'll see.

betterunix2 5y ago
The nature of the current economic recovery incentivizes evictions, as there has been a very strong split between winners and losers (often through no fault of the losers -- reopening has not been evenly distributed across industries). Someone who is not making rent right now is likely to be on the losing ride of the reopening, and any landlord would prefer to get one of the winners as a tenant. Not saying this is a great thing for a society, but without some form of tenant protection that is probably what landlords will do.
throwawayboise 5y ago
You already don't have the money they are behind so that is essentially a sunk cost. If they are paying now, I'd try to work out that they pay something extra towards the delinquency. If they can't, they can't. If you evict, that's probably another few months of process time minimum and they'll probably stop paying again once you serve notice. Owning rental property is an investment, not a guaranteed income. There is investment risk. This is one of the times that the risk became reality. Bottom line (I say this as a small-time landlord) if they are back to making payments I'd let them finish their lease. At renewal time both parties can decide if they want to continue. Write off any losses; it was a bad year and nobody is really at fault.
- duxup 5y ago
  Yeah I suspect many, specifically small, landlords as long as they think the person can pay now... just not worth pushing people out.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  Just remember this if in the future it's revealed people are letting their homes sit empty instead of renting them out. (when waiting for the right time to sell or any other reason) Renting is often risky even in good years, one bad tenant can't lose years of profit simply by not paying rent and leaving. If they don't trash the place, it'll need emptied before the next tenant moves in (cost). Then it's possible they do trash the place. And then it's possible they get mad and truly destroy the place (run the pipes). Generally people in these situations don't have money, so good luck getting it back in court. And there's countless stories before covid of people who knew how to play the game in certain areas and delay evictions for months. Now on top of all those normal risks, you have to worry about the government handing out a year of free rent and not allowing you to evict someone. Unless I find a renter who is literally a family friend, I don't believe I'd ever rent out a property I own.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

In times like these you can see that some things are just fundamentally wrong with our economic system. On the one hand upper incomes have done extremely well during COVID with stock market and housing going up like crazy. And on the other hand you have a lot of lower income people lose jobs and now also places to live through no fault of their own. 2008 with it a bailouts has already taught me that the upper class will twist the rules to their advantage and COVID repeats the same thing. Reminds me a little of 2003. The big defense companies had posters in the metro touting their patriotism while taking in record profits, paying 30 million dollar CEO paychecks and receiving big tax cuts. And that while in Iraq low paid soldiers were injured and dying for an ill conceived war. I guess the old saying to never let a good crisis go to waste is very true.

RHSeeger 5y ago
To be fair, it's not quite as clear cut as that, either. There are people in the upper incomes with a $500,000 mortgage and suddenly no jobs to pay it.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  Sure. Some people with upper incomes got hit hard but from what I know the vast majority are low income.

austincheney 5y ago

I wonder if anybody used this eviction moratorium as an excuse to stop paying rent and instead save to become a home owner.

mrfusion 5y ago

I never can tell when the media is exaggerating anymore.

cletus 5y ago

All over the Internet you'll see these predictions of doom and gloom as the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures ends. I honestly just don't buy it. For one you have a certain number of actors who haven't paid their rent or mortgage simply because they haven't had to. This doesn't erase previous obligations but such people may be willing to walk away for other reasons or may attempt to negotiate with the owner or bank for a lower overall payment because that's better than the alternative. For another, people still have to live somewhere. If anything you'll see the effect of this as a lowering of rents, which have otherwise soared. Residential landlords are generally less willing than commercial property owners to keep property vacant for extended periods to maintain the illusion of "market rate". Lastly, unemployment is low and there's a lot of upward pressure on wages. This is not the environment where lots of people suddenly go homeless. This isn't the Great Depression. This isn't even 2008. There are a lot of people who missed out on the spike in housing prices who are now rationalizing that result as this being a bubble about to burst. Also, people who haven't been through this before have unrealistic views of the likelihood of actual doom and gloom scenarios. It happens less often than you think. If nothing else, governments have shown themselves more willing to intervene (for better or for worse) to stave off negative outcomes. This just isn't a big deal.

aksss 5y ago
All while there is a continuing incentive for news organizations and elements of governments to keep people in a near-constant state of worry and uncertainty about something/anything.

ransom1538 5y ago

If you have tenants that are not paying: approach them. Explain to them (not in writing) that you can no longer make payments due to lack of rent - and the bank could foreclose and seize the home. Offer to pay them 2X monthly rent cash to sign a contract to leave the place clean in 30 days plus free rent. Have a lawyer draw up paperwork (~$500/2hrs) and explain you and the tenant agreed to the terms. Once the place is vacant sell the property or re-rent with short term rentals.

kyleee 5y ago
How do you enforce if they still don't leave after 30 days?
- ransom1538 5y ago
  They wont get the money - and you are in the same position. So you lost nothing. It wont work all the time. But it is hard for tenants to resist all that cash.

foolzcrow 5y ago

Never forget lockdowns did not have to happen. The politicians have no answers except tyranny. Maybe its time to do a great reset on them.