Who's going to declare a "moratorium" on mortgage payments though? Last I checked it's still due every month.
The moratorium also notably doesn’t apply to people who can pay, but just choose not to.
It is tough to feel bad that landlords might have to temporarily sacrifice their profitability so their tenants don't literally starve to death. Comments like this are just telling on themselves that they care more about the financial health of the home owner class than the literal health of the renter class. Once again, this doesn't change how much a tenant owes. It just removes the ability to kick a tenant out. Courts will work to resolve these financial disputes once we are over the pandemic.
The economy is like a big giant circle of life, some parts are terrible, some parts can withstand a lot of business, but if momentum starts to die then we're all in trouble. I'm also not advocating for a full re-open I think that's more damaging in the long run, I'd support diverting money from some of the big government sinks (i.e. defense spending) to help social issues in the short term, Boeing and folks have enough of a war chest to withstand some short term losses.
I think the moratorium is a good idea but I think a better idea is subsidizing rent needs with continued stimulus checks.
Hiding behind the DoD being "politically untouchable" is cowardice when 200k folks are dead.
The answer to the political feasibility question is a straight no. There is not going to be political support to redirect DoD funds to direct stimulus payments to the population. We can't even agree to print new money to pay for more stimulus checks. This basically kills this conversation until at least November.
Whether it is practical is a more difficult question to answer. You were the one who brought up the whole economy is a circle of life idea. That DoD money doesn't just disappear. It goes to buy good and services and it goes to pay people. Abruptly stopping those payments would cause economic problems just like stopping people from paying mortgages. I would even bet that the multiplier is higher for DoD spending than mortgage spending based on the recipients of the money. Would this mean that DoD spending is better for the economy than mortgage spending? I honestly have no idea. Although I do agree that this country should reduce DoD spending and increase spending on social problems long term, it isn't as easy as making an immediate transition in the middle of a pandemic.
I see you have never tried to collect on a debt. The expected repayment rate for these rent debts is probably going to be single-digit cents on the dollar.
Good. Do you know how many more people died in the 1918 flu pandemic and the Irish famine due to not having housing?
All that death could've been avoided.
An often overlooked, but important, aspect of the Irish famine is how landlords and the ever increasing subdivisions of their property[1] brought about the conditions for the famine, and how evictions afterward[2] hastened the deaths of already starving people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Tenants...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Evictio...
People arguing this is authoritarianism clearly don't have to worry about going homeless during all of this.
There is a reason Vietnam is doing so much better than the US while being far more dense...
My lawyer advised me to negotiate rent to an amount my tenant can pay stating, "the only way you'll be able to collect is by a future collection action, and many times those types of judgments are worth about as much as the paper they're printed on."
I say this all to try and drive the point home, a moratorium on evictions is akin to an implicit rent reduction or rent elimination.
I finally decided to look them up on LinkedIn—turns out they used to be a property manager, something I'd overlooked during my background check. I think they just know how long the rope is right now, and how my hands are tied, so they're using the system to their advantage ¯\_(ツ)_/
While there are always edge cases, I really doubt any significant number of people who can afford to pay would even consider taking advantage of this.
> Federal Mortgage Relief Programs
>Federally Backed Mortgages
>Under the provisions of the CARES Act, individuals with federally backed mortgage loans who are experiencing financial hardship due to COVID-19 can request a forbearance period by contacting their mortgage servicer. Federally backed mortgages include FHA, VA, USDA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
>The CARES Act provides for affected borrowers to defer their mortgage payments for up to 180 days. Borrowers also have the right to apply for an extension of another 180 days of forbearance. There will be no penalties or fees added to the account, although regular interest will still accrue.
The above is from this Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/04/20/mortgage-pay...
In the article, they link to this resources page: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus/mortgage-and-hou...
Not all mortgages are backed by the federal government, but if you’re serious about not being able to afford your mortgage you should look into yours, and check to see if your state has any resources too.
What is a democratic government but a representative of society (ok in the US it's mostly a representation of corporate money, but I'll return to that...), if you take society to its origins of a village of farmers, when one farmer gets sick, the others don't say "well, too bad, if he can't work, he's not going to eat.", instead they would share their food with him until he can work again (even if he doesn't, or if he can't work because of age instead of sickness, they wouldn't let him starve).
Nowadays everyone's just hungry for money that they're thinking "Fuck society, all I care about is getting paid.". It's amazing how the Republicans said for years they can't do handouts, if you don't work to live you're lazy, etc, but when millions lost their jobs, the GOP rulers suddenly agreed to give everyone money to survive. Oh, suddenly socialism is possible? It only took a global pandemic for the GOP to care about the citizenry they're supposed to serve.