7 ms·

I'm all for providing a social safety net in exactly the way the US doesn't. Housing (aka shelter) is a key part of that but the way the US does this is complet

by cletus 5y ago

I'm all for providing a social safety net in exactly the way the US doesn't. Housing (aka shelter) is a key part of that but the way the US does this is completely backwards. The government saying you can't evict someone is basically telling people they don't have to pay rent anymore regardless of need. Rent control is the same way: you can't raise the rent regardless of need. So these programs don't really help people in need: they help market incumbents. This is the government foisting welfare onto the private sector rather than doing it properly. If the government didn't want people evicted due to pandemic circumstances, what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. The Internet is full of stories of people who just stopped paying rent because they didn't have to anymore as well as taking government checks intended for the landlord and just cashing them, which is a whole other issue. But some people justify this because, you know, "f*ck landlords", which always struck me as incredibly backward: the only reason there exist apartments and houses to rent is because someone has provided the capital to build them and rent them to you. Now you can argue maybe the government should do that. I can respect that. But no rentals at all? So the only way to have somewhere to live is to buy a house? Really? How is that practical and not a recipe for massive homelessness? As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate but none of those issues invalidates the need for a rental market to exist.

tehwebguy 5y ago
You aren’t wrong about many of the details but leave out the massive landlord relief programs and the fact that landlords are still free to sue for unpaid rent. But yes, there is no doubt that the way this went down is making the moat (between labor and capital, middle class and upper, small business and massive conglomerate, etc) bigger and bigger.
adolph 5y ago
It is odd that there was an eviction moratorium but not a tax moratorium.
- notch656a 5y ago
  .gov is licking its lips at the increased property taxes they'll get after massively inflating asset prices by printing wheelbarrows of new cash.
japhyr 5y ago
There are certainly some people saying "f landlords" with little justification. But there are also a good number of people saying that because they have lived in run-down housing that's detrimental to their health. Slumlords are a thing. I live in a small town right now, and there are absentee landlords here; I lived in a big city and absentee landlords are everywhere. For all the people who have paid rent in a home where the water doesn't work, the heat doesn't work, the insulation is failed or absent, mold is unabated... "f landlords" is a pretty appropriate response. There's no easy solution when we've built up such a strong culture of individualism, that's effectively focused on avoiding collective responsibility for individuals who are struggling.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Sounds like a great example of binary thinking leading people to erroneous conclusions. There are simple solutions to slumlords: reporting them and enforcing the habitability laws that are already on the books.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate” As usual this probably won’t get addressed because most lawmakers are part of the groups that benefit from this state.
arberx 5y ago
> what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. Nothing is ever this efficent at scale. The point of the program was to stop people (and families) from going homeless during a health and economic crisis. The easiest and arguably best solution is a blanket ban. This is similar to the PPP program. No one checked the credibility of businesses applications until after the money was sent out (the emergency warrants this).
alxjrvs 5y ago
Typically, eliminating the concept of "landlord" would come hand-in-hand with eliminating the idea of real estate being privately "owned". None of these ideas are particularly popular amongst land-owners.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > None of these ideas are particularly popular amongst land-owners. Or non-landowners. Turns out, the state isn't particularly interested in constructing nice housing, or doing so in adequate numbers. So people end up living in communal spaces while sitting on a decade-long waitlist for something to open up.
- blululu 5y ago
  Hyper-capitalist Singapore provides public housing to about 80% of citizens. It’s a pretty functional system. You can have landlords and private land owners but they need to provide more value than a default. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Steltek 5y ago
Don't forget government outlawing denser housing, promoting expensive single family sprawl which then requires a car (amortized TCO $10k a year) and requisite local taxes to cover the inefficient infrastructure. "Drive until you can buy" then drive some more. Enjoy the wear and tear on your mandatory vehicle.
3pt14159 5y ago
This is a good comment. What I would add is that the system feels hopeless for a lot of people right now. The things that used to be possible for people not wanting to rent aren't an option any more. I know someone who literally lived in a hole in the ground as he slowly built his home around it. Every now and then a couple of his friends from church would come by and help him with this or that and it slowly came together. He's retired now. Built a small time, local only 1-800-GOT-JUNK style business. He's a millionaire now. I'd be surprised if he'd finished high school. At least where I live, you can't really do that these days. Property is way too expensive and well-meaning building codes make basic things essentially out of reach. I'm not talking about things like circuit breakers or child-safing banisters and railings, I'm talking about the long tail of regulations that don't really help anyone. The rich and the poor keep getting more and more disconnected and I understand the raw rage coming from the other end of the income spectrum. We need to help them.
- nomel 5y ago
  > I'm not talking about things like circuit breakers or child-safing banisters and railings For example, in California, all new homes must have solar power, with the requirement that [1]: > The solar panel system needs to be large enough to meet the annual electricity usage of the building > builders can decrease the size requirement of a system on a property by incorporating battery storage ... <and> ... by incorporating energy efficiency measures or other demand-responsive measures 1. https://news.energysage.com/an-overview-of-the-california-solar-mandate/ https://news.energysage.com/an-overview-of-the-california-so...
herlitzj 5y ago
> assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need I'm not sure you've fully thought through how complex this would be. There are 40 million rental households in the US. Even if only 1% (400,000) decided to be a part of this program and you could close every case in 1 hour (which is probably wildly low) that's 45 man-years of effort.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  So, to run with your for-instance, if we wanted to do all of that in a month, then we'd have to put 45 x 12 = 540 people on it. Nationwide. For a month, and then we're done. That doesn't seem particularly difficult. Of course, it would take three years to roll out the computer application that they would need in order to make and document the decision, but that's somewhat a separate problem...
  - herlitzj 5y ago
    Well, that's just the time necessary to action the accounts. You'd still need to hire all of those people, get them equipment and software, pay them, etc. IT, HR, management, payroll. Probably double or triple your man-hours. But on top of that, I specifically chose what are probably unrealistically low numbers. It would maybe be closer to 20-30% utilization and 8-20 hours to close a case (totally guessing here :shrug:). So maybe 730 - 2700 man-years, roughly. Plus above-mentioned overhead. Spinning up a 500 person accounting firm wouldn't be snappy.
abletonlive 5y ago
> But no rentals at all? So the only way to have somewhere to live is to buy a house? Really? How is that practical and not a recipe for massive homelessness? As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate but none of those issues invalidates the need for a rental market to exist. I suggest a ban on all SFH rentals. The reason why it seems unviable to have everybody buy a home is because there is so much demand created from people owning multiple homes and bidding up prices in the name of making a profit. If we eliminate at least SFH rentals it becomes much more viable. There are at least 16 million SFH rentals and that number is just growing. This would solve two problems at once: reduce sprawl by encouraging the building of non-SFH for profit seekers, and reduce demand for SFH which is currently being driven up by profit seekers.
- Cd00d 5y ago
  What is SFH? Google says some kind of supplement, but I'm guessing your 'H' refers to 'housing'.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Single Family Home
rhacker 5y ago
If rentals were illegal the price of buying a 1300 sq. foot home might have been 100k instead of 700k. So I stand by my belief that it's - oh there's already a name for it - rent seeking.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  That still leaves an enormous quantity of people who don't have 100k just laying around, and are not reliable enough to be loaned the sum.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Someone who can't be trusted with 100k shouldn't be entrusted to inhabit a house worth 700k. One careless action can easily cause 100k worth of damage to a house. It's probably easier to keep 100k safe than it is to keep at least 600k of value of a 700k house safe.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      Ehm, I'm not sure how that makes any sense at all. Someone who can't be trusted to repay 100k can certainly be trusted to inhabit a (insured) house worth 700k without setting it on fire. Landlords do exactly this all the time. Also, it's not about keeping the money safe, but about generating a return.
      - notch656a 5y ago
        Well if we're talking about loaning 100k for the house, you can always execute your lien holder privileges to take back the house if they don't pay. Mortgage insurance providers a like service to the mortgage provider to minimize losses. I'd much rather be in position backing mortgage on 100k house, backed by mortgage insurance, than risking someone I don't trust with that same 100k having full custody of my house worth 700k.
        JumpCrisscross 5y ago
jackson1442 5y ago
the biggest problem in renting right now is the lack of tenant protections in many states. my landlord likes jerking me around and adding nonsense fees that (at my hourly rate) would literally be more cost effective to just pay instead of fighting with them. granted, this is a college landlord that is just taking advantage of college students, but I should have more recourse than “sue them eventually” when my landlord charges me a $90 late fee on my $0 balance that requires 6 office visits to resolve. the other problem with landlords is that they aren’t spending capital to build. they’re spending capital to buy. corporate landlords (say 25+ units) should not be allowed to buy existing single family dwellings imo.
dehrmann 5y ago
> This is the government foisting welfare onto the private sector rather than doing it properly. This is the key point. It's the same with rent control. It's governments dodging its responsibilities, then pushing the costs to the private sector unevenly. If you really want these programs, send the people subsidy checks. It's more fair to renters, it's more transparent, and it makes it easier to track the true cost. Don't want to send out those checks? Maybe you shouldn't volunteer landlords to subsidize your social program.
II2II 5y ago
> If the government didn't want people evicted due to pandemic circumstances, what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. The question is, did the government have the manpower to do a case-by-case assessment. One of the issues faced in Canada was getting employment insurance money out to people in a timely manner. Their approach was very much loosen the criteria and take claims at near face value until they had time to sort things out. Fortunately, the government can sort-of do that in that scenario. Unfortunately for evictions, things have to be sorted out before a person ends up homeless. As for "f*ck landlords", I never quite understood it. Then again, I've always dealt with small landlords and usually had some form of reference for them before signing the lease.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  No, the US didn't have the manpower for manual review. Further complicated by our federal system, with most social programs run at the state level. Even more complicated by a decades long effort by conservatives to make state/local programs difficult to use because everybody should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The closest we could come was the stimulus checks that went to anybody with a prior-year's income below a certain threshold (IRS has that info).
indigochill 5y ago
> what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. I theorize this is infeasible in the US at the national level because there are probably regions in the US with insufficient manpower to do this manual review (though someone might correct me on this). It's easier to throw money at the problem by giving money to those who don't need it than it is to hire and maintain headcount. I suspect this because this is far from a new problem. People have long abused welfare in the US who don't actually need it because the review process is incredibly lax (which in turn perpetuates the idea among the American right that government welfare is a waste of resources). Though aside, I'm always wary of believing stories I read on the internet that paint the political situation in a certain light even if they're allegedly from individuals. But I've personally known people in real life who bragged about abusing welfare before, so I know that's a thing (though I don't recommend you take my word for it).
- cletus 5y ago
  I don't believe it's infeasible because we already do it to a large degree. At the Federal level there is a Section 8 housing. At the state level there are various rent assistance programs. Most people are also W2 employees so their income is tied to their SSN so a lot of this can be automated by simply looking at your actual monthly income. The fact that you'd need to apply for this would also discourage some people from abusing the system. Lastly, I don't really care if the system isn't perfect and some people get assistance they don't need. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be "good enough". At an ethical level, I'd rather give people the benefit of the doubt and not make them homeless than worry about them abusing welfare some of the time. > People have long abused welfare in the US who don't actually need it I'm always skeptical of claims like this because they're used as a political tool to attack poor people for being poor. OMB's estimate [1] put this at "5.6 to 7.2%". In a country that spends a trillion dollars a year on the military, that's a literal rounding error that I don't care about at all. [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/12/30/updated-data-on-improper-payments/#:~:text=An%20improper%20payment%20is%20a,the%20relevant%20statute%20or%20regulation https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/12/30/upda....
georgeecollins 5y ago
>> The government saying you can't evict someone is basically telling people they don't have to pay rent anymore If this were true, then you would expect an explosion of evictions now that you can do it. I think that avoiding eviction is an important reason to pay rent but there are other, particularly not going into debt, not wrecking your credit score, and keeping your rental in the long term. I don't disagree that this was dumb as a blanket policy but this was also an emergency no one expected and no one knew how serious it would be in terms of health and impact on the economy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by cletus 5y ago

tehwebguy 5y ago

You aren’t wrong about many of the details but leave out the massive landlord relief programs and the fact that landlords are still free to sue for unpaid rent. But yes, there is no doubt that the way this went down is making the moat (between labor and capital, middle class and upper, small business and massive conglomerate, etc) bigger and bigger.

adolph 5y ago

It is odd that there was an eviction moratorium but not a tax moratorium.

notch656a 5y ago
.gov is licking its lips at the increased property taxes they'll get after massively inflating asset prices by printing wheelbarrows of new cash.

japhyr 5y ago

There are certainly some people saying "f landlords" with little justification. But there are also a good number of people saying that because they have lived in run-down housing that's detrimental to their health. Slumlords are a thing. I live in a small town right now, and there are absentee landlords here; I lived in a big city and absentee landlords are everywhere. For all the people who have paid rent in a home where the water doesn't work, the heat doesn't work, the insulation is failed or absent, mold is unabated... "f landlords" is a pretty appropriate response. There's no easy solution when we've built up such a strong culture of individualism, that's effectively focused on avoiding collective responsibility for individuals who are struggling.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Sounds like a great example of binary thinking leading people to erroneous conclusions. There are simple solutions to slumlords: reporting them and enforcing the habitability laws that are already on the books.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

“As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate” As usual this probably won’t get addressed because most lawmakers are part of the groups that benefit from this state.

arberx 5y ago

> what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. Nothing is ever this efficent at scale. The point of the program was to stop people (and families) from going homeless during a health and economic crisis. The easiest and arguably best solution is a blanket ban. This is similar to the PPP program. No one checked the credibility of businesses applications until after the money was sent out (the emergency warrants this).

alxjrvs 5y ago

Typically, eliminating the concept of "landlord" would come hand-in-hand with eliminating the idea of real estate being privately "owned". None of these ideas are particularly popular amongst land-owners.

mywittyname 5y ago
> None of these ideas are particularly popular amongst land-owners. Or non-landowners. Turns out, the state isn't particularly interested in constructing nice housing, or doing so in adequate numbers. So people end up living in communal spaces while sitting on a decade-long waitlist for something to open up.
blululu 5y ago
Hyper-capitalist Singapore provides public housing to about 80% of citizens. It’s a pretty functional system. You can have landlords and private land owners but they need to provide more value than a default. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Steltek 5y ago

Don't forget government outlawing denser housing, promoting expensive single family sprawl which then requires a car (amortized TCO $10k a year) and requisite local taxes to cover the inefficient infrastructure. "Drive until you can buy" then drive some more. Enjoy the wear and tear on your mandatory vehicle.

3pt14159 5y ago

This is a good comment. What I would add is that the system feels hopeless for a lot of people right now. The things that used to be possible for people not wanting to rent aren't an option any more. I know someone who literally lived in a hole in the ground as he slowly built his home around it. Every now and then a couple of his friends from church would come by and help him with this or that and it slowly came together. He's retired now. Built a small time, local only 1-800-GOT-JUNK style business. He's a millionaire now. I'd be surprised if he'd finished high school. At least where I live, you can't really do that these days. Property is way too expensive and well-meaning building codes make basic things essentially out of reach. I'm not talking about things like circuit breakers or child-safing banisters and railings, I'm talking about the long tail of regulations that don't really help anyone. The rich and the poor keep getting more and more disconnected and I understand the raw rage coming from the other end of the income spectrum. We need to help them.

nomel 5y ago
> I'm not talking about things like circuit breakers or child-safing banisters and railings For example, in California, all new homes must have solar power, with the requirement that [1]: > The solar panel system needs to be large enough to meet the annual electricity usage of the building > builders can decrease the size requirement of a system on a property by incorporating battery storage ... <and> ... by incorporating energy efficiency measures or other demand-responsive measures 1. https://news.energysage.com/an-overview-of-the-california-solar-mandate/ https://news.energysage.com/an-overview-of-the-california-so...

herlitzj 5y ago

> assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need I'm not sure you've fully thought through how complex this would be. There are 40 million rental households in the US. Even if only 1% (400,000) decided to be a part of this program and you could close every case in 1 hour (which is probably wildly low) that's 45 man-years of effort.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
So, to run with your for-instance, if we wanted to do all of that in a month, then we'd have to put 45 x 12 = 540 people on it. Nationwide. For a month, and then we're done. That doesn't seem particularly difficult. Of course, it would take three years to roll out the computer application that they would need in order to make and document the decision, but that's somewhat a separate problem...
- herlitzj 5y ago
  Well, that's just the time necessary to action the accounts. You'd still need to hire all of those people, get them equipment and software, pay them, etc. IT, HR, management, payroll. Probably double or triple your man-hours. But on top of that, I specifically chose what are probably unrealistically low numbers. It would maybe be closer to 20-30% utilization and 8-20 hours to close a case (totally guessing here :shrug:). So maybe 730 - 2700 man-years, roughly. Plus above-mentioned overhead. Spinning up a 500 person accounting firm wouldn't be snappy.

abletonlive 5y ago

> But no rentals at all? So the only way to have somewhere to live is to buy a house? Really? How is that practical and not a recipe for massive homelessness? As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate but none of those issues invalidates the need for a rental market to exist. I suggest a ban on all SFH rentals. The reason why it seems unviable to have everybody buy a home is because there is so much demand created from people owning multiple homes and bidding up prices in the name of making a profit. If we eliminate at least SFH rentals it becomes much more viable. There are at least 16 million SFH rentals and that number is just growing. This would solve two problems at once: reduce sprawl by encouraging the building of non-SFH for profit seekers, and reduce demand for SFH which is currently being driven up by profit seekers.

Cd00d 5y ago
What is SFH? Google says some kind of supplement, but I'm guessing your 'H' refers to 'housing'.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Single Family Home

rhacker 5y ago

If rentals were illegal the price of buying a 1300 sq. foot home might have been 100k instead of 700k. So I stand by my belief that it's - oh there's already a name for it - rent seeking.

thegrimmest 5y ago
That still leaves an enormous quantity of people who don't have 100k just laying around, and are not reliable enough to be loaned the sum.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Someone who can't be trusted with 100k shouldn't be entrusted to inhabit a house worth 700k. One careless action can easily cause 100k worth of damage to a house. It's probably easier to keep 100k safe than it is to keep at least 600k of value of a 700k house safe.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    Ehm, I'm not sure how that makes any sense at all. Someone who can't be trusted to repay 100k can certainly be trusted to inhabit a (insured) house worth 700k without setting it on fire. Landlords do exactly this all the time. Also, it's not about keeping the money safe, but about generating a return.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Well if we're talking about loaning 100k for the house, you can always execute your lien holder privileges to take back the house if they don't pay. Mortgage insurance providers a like service to the mortgage provider to minimize losses. I'd much rather be in position backing mortgage on 100k house, backed by mortgage insurance, than risking someone I don't trust with that same 100k having full custody of my house worth 700k.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago

jackson1442 5y ago

the biggest problem in renting right now is the lack of tenant protections in many states. my landlord likes jerking me around and adding nonsense fees that (at my hourly rate) would literally be more cost effective to just pay instead of fighting with them. granted, this is a college landlord that is just taking advantage of college students, but I should have more recourse than “sue them eventually” when my landlord charges me a $90 late fee on my $0 balance that requires 6 office visits to resolve. the other problem with landlords is that they aren’t spending capital to build. they’re spending capital to buy. corporate landlords (say 25+ units) should not be allowed to buy existing single family dwellings imo.

dehrmann 5y ago

> This is the government foisting welfare onto the private sector rather than doing it properly. This is the key point. It's the same with rent control. It's governments dodging its responsibilities, then pushing the costs to the private sector unevenly. If you really want these programs, send the people subsidy checks. It's more fair to renters, it's more transparent, and it makes it easier to track the true cost. Don't want to send out those checks? Maybe you shouldn't volunteer landlords to subsidize your social program.

II2II 5y ago

> If the government didn't want people evicted due to pandemic circumstances, what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. The question is, did the government have the manpower to do a case-by-case assessment. One of the issues faced in Canada was getting employment insurance money out to people in a timely manner. Their approach was very much loosen the criteria and take claims at near face value until they had time to sort things out. Fortunately, the government can sort-of do that in that scenario. Unfortunately for evictions, things have to be sorted out before a person ends up homeless. As for "f*ck landlords", I never quite understood it. Then again, I've always dealt with small landlords and usually had some form of reference for them before signing the lease.

alistairSH 5y ago
No, the US didn't have the manpower for manual review. Further complicated by our federal system, with most social programs run at the state level. Even more complicated by a decades long effort by conservatives to make state/local programs difficult to use because everybody should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The closest we could come was the stimulus checks that went to anybody with a prior-year's income below a certain threshold (IRS has that info).

indigochill 5y ago

> what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need. I theorize this is infeasible in the US at the national level because there are probably regions in the US with insufficient manpower to do this manual review (though someone might correct me on this). It's easier to throw money at the problem by giving money to those who don't need it than it is to hire and maintain headcount. I suspect this because this is far from a new problem. People have long abused welfare in the US who don't actually need it because the review process is incredibly lax (which in turn perpetuates the idea among the American right that government welfare is a waste of resources). Though aside, I'm always wary of believing stories I read on the internet that paint the political situation in a certain light even if they're allegedly from individuals. But I've personally known people in real life who bragged about abusing welfare before, so I know that's a thing (though I don't recommend you take my word for it).

cletus 5y ago
I don't believe it's infeasible because we already do it to a large degree. At the Federal level there is a Section 8 housing. At the state level there are various rent assistance programs. Most people are also W2 employees so their income is tied to their SSN so a lot of this can be automated by simply looking at your actual monthly income. The fact that you'd need to apply for this would also discourage some people from abusing the system. Lastly, I don't really care if the system isn't perfect and some people get assistance they don't need. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be "good enough". At an ethical level, I'd rather give people the benefit of the doubt and not make them homeless than worry about them abusing welfare some of the time. > People have long abused welfare in the US who don't actually need it I'm always skeptical of claims like this because they're used as a political tool to attack poor people for being poor. OMB's estimate [1] put this at "5.6 to 7.2%". In a country that spends a trillion dollars a year on the military, that's a literal rounding error that I don't care about at all. [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/12/30/updated-data-on-improper-payments/#:~:text=An%20improper%20payment%20is%20a,the%20relevant%20statute%20or%20regulation https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/12/30/upda....

georgeecollins 5y ago

>> The government saying you can't evict someone is basically telling people they don't have to pay rent anymore If this were true, then you would expect an explosion of evictions now that you can do it. I think that avoiding eviction is an important reason to pay rent but there are other, particularly not going into debt, not wrecking your credit score, and keeping your rental in the long term. I don't disagree that this was dumb as a blanket policy but this was also an emergency no one expected and no one knew how serious it would be in terms of health and impact on the economy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]