Winning a suit is one thing - collecting damages is something else.
Well, to that I'd say, if my money had anywhere near the impact of everyone's money pooled together I'd do it. Until then I'll keep advocating for public funds to be spent this way, and I assume OP would as well.
If you lend each completely broke person $100 they are still about to be completely broke and your investment will be wiped out after a brief respite. But if you hand each bankrupt person $X,000 then many might be able to dig themselves out of the hole and remain productive members of society.
Maybe Bill Gates and Bezos could execute a one time rent forgiveness program from their personal values - that might even work out pretty well in the short term, but it'd be placing too high of a burden on those two in particular.
All the billionaires in America do not just have that much money just laying around. This would be a budgetary concern of the federal government. No citizens could individually pay everyone's rents.
Also, most people, even most people on here, don't have 20k to throw around willy-nilly even if they have assets exceeding that amount.
You can stress about this and spend a lot of your time chasing down someone for repayment. This is the wrong approach IMHO.
Instead just sure in small claims court (limited to $5,000). This is done without lawyers. You simply present your lease agreement, bank statement and any relevant communications.
Once you get that judgment give it to a collections agency and forget about it. The agency will take a percentage of anything they collect.
Then just look at anything you get back as a bonus.
Depends on your state. Here, small claims is limited to $25,000 with no limit for eviction suits.
Also, as others have noted, different jurisdictions may have higher limits.
But to go to civil court to recover $20,000 just isn’t worth it. Your legal expenses will be significant and you face the prospect of losing or being unable to collect.
So by limiting your potential damages you don’t incur litigation expenses, spend less time and stress on it and your net return may be similar.
What’s better? $5,000 it costs you nothing to get a judgement for (other than a nominal filing fee) minus 10-20% for the collection agency or $20,000 you may need to spend $10-20K to litigate?
People who aren’t paying rent after the pandemic started likely aren’t doing it for fun. Most likely they are underemployed, hence collections will stack up. “Living within your means” assumes it is even possible to find employment and a handful of life/medical/mental/family stability that not everyone has.
You seem to underestimate how much of modern life in the USA depends on credit. Electric, water, telephone, internet service require credit or suffer the costs and inconveniences of prepayment. Rental housing almost always requires credit checks in any desirable market.
You also seem to assume that collections can never be converted into a lean on your assets or garnishment of your wages. And that doesn’t even begin to crack the strange and painful tactics debt collectors use on your family, employment, friends, and other social pressures.
> This is all a result of me living responsibly within my means.
Implying that not using credit cards is how one lives responsibly within their means is kinda weird and wrong. Yes, you can live irresponsibly with a credit card. You can also live responsibly with it too. And it will give you extra consumer purchase protection (in case of a fraud or a bad fair vendor), as well as 1-5% return on purchases.
Some would argue that missing out on that 1-5% return and extra consumer protections is the irresponsible move. But either way, the whole "using credit cards means living irresponsibly and outside of their means" is absolutely nothing but a complete lack of understanding of how credit works.
The preceeding is a statement about most of my life. I've gotten better at such stuff and my lifestyle has changed after grad school -- and since I didn't have credit cards while living below the poverty line and generally being a schlub, I didn't fuck up my credit, so a few months of having a credit card as a de facto adult earned me a near-perfect credit score when I needed it.
Functionally, a credit card would work exactly like your debit card or cash, except you would also be reaping all the benefits of credit cards and improved credit scores.
But overall, I agree with your point about cost-benefit analysis and impulse control being difficult to overcome.
> I often wonder how people on the verge of eviction think about this kind of thing — whether it is salient or even understandable
My answer is that people in those situations think about these things very differently than people who have never encountered them. Or, flip it -- if dings on your credit score are the worst speedbump that society has thrown in your path, you probably don't have the skills necessary to live broke.
I didn't come for financial advice, but thanks
> I often wonder how people on the verge of eviction think about this kind of thing — whether it is salient or even understandable.
If they're on the verge of eviction they're probably more worried about keeping heat, water, or food going. Landlords are an abstraction if your kid hasn't eaten in 2 days.
Sure, but the issue is that the suing party isn't getting anything out of it. You sue for damages, the defendant has nothing, so their credit score goes down.
That's fine, they get punished+the credit score decrease helps future landlords avoid the same situation with that tenant. But as a suing party, you get literally nothing out of it. The defendant's credit score going down doesn't help you personally one bit, you get no restitution or compensation.
This situation is going to play out over the next decade at least and it will be terrible for (almost) everyone involved.
If you're renting and can afford to: pay your damn rent! In five years, you don't want to be staring down a judgement for a year of rent, plus interest, plus "collection" fees.