5 ms·

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 thi

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?
        mindslight 5y ago
        It's not just quibbling. Government spending spending on social programs is the exact same taking/dilution that occurs when the Federal Reserve gives a bunch of new money to the banks by declaring that interest rates shall be lower. The former receives intense scrutiny, while the latter is politically uncontested. Furthermore, government spending at least creates direct price inflation, whereas finance industry infusion mainly causes asset inflation and thus doesn't trigger the Fed's criteria to ever slow down.
        tastyfreeze 5y ago
        If the government spent within its means of collected revenue on social programs there is no dilution only local price increases where funds are distributed due to increased demand of goods. To say that Federal Reserve (a private entity) actions are politically uncontested is dishonest. There have been plenty of voices against the Fed in the minority. Kennedy tried to end the Fed and there have been numerous congressional proposals to audit the Fed. None have ever achieved a majority.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > To say that Federal Reserve (a private entity The Federal Reserve (whether you mean the Board of Governors, the system, or any of the individual federal reserve banks) isn't a private entity. (The Board of Governors is a federal agency; the rest are weird hybrids.)
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      One major political party campaigns around delivering tax cuts and minimizing collections, and this can result in economic distortions. A relevant example is that the last big tax cuts package in 2017 created lots of 'opportunity zones' which exempted people from paying capital gains on many real estate transactions. This was ostensibly to encourage investment in poor neighborhoods, but I live on the edge of one such opportunity zone and I can assure you it was already a red hot real estate market before that tax cut. Everyone in this area gets junk mail from real estate agents on an almost daily basis because property prices have risen stratospherically and those agents get a 3% cut of any transaction they handle.
- 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.

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?
      - mindslight 5y ago
        It's not just quibbling. Government spending spending on social programs is the exact same taking/dilution that occurs when the Federal Reserve gives a bunch of new money to the banks by declaring that interest rates shall be lower. The former receives intense scrutiny, while the latter is politically uncontested. Furthermore, government spending at least creates direct price inflation, whereas finance industry infusion mainly causes asset inflation and thus doesn't trigger the Fed's criteria to ever slow down.
        tastyfreeze 5y ago
        If the government spent within its means of collected revenue on social programs there is no dilution only local price increases where funds are distributed due to increased demand of goods. To say that Federal Reserve (a private entity) actions are politically uncontested is dishonest. There have been plenty of voices against the Fed in the minority. Kennedy tried to end the Fed and there have been numerous congressional proposals to audit the Fed. None have ever achieved a majority.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > To say that Federal Reserve (a private entity The Federal Reserve (whether you mean the Board of Governors, the system, or any of the individual federal reserve banks) isn't a private entity. (The Board of Governors is a federal agency; the rest are weird hybrids.)
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    One major political party campaigns around delivering tax cuts and minimizing collections, and this can result in economic distortions. A relevant example is that the last big tax cuts package in 2017 created lots of 'opportunity zones' which exempted people from paying capital gains on many real estate transactions. This was ostensibly to encourage investment in poor neighborhoods, but I live on the edge of one such opportunity zone and I can assure you it was already a red hot real estate market before that tax cut. Everyone in this area gets junk mail from real estate agents on an almost daily basis because property prices have risen stratospherically and those agents get a 3% cut of any transaction they handle.
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.