Millions of Americans could face eviction as housing protection expires in June

And as a result, money will devalue, and rents will go up. So long as UBI recipients are competing with each other over housing, that's how it will work.

> since UBI as "proposed" my comment would replace other safety nets like unemployment benefits.

If UBI is universal, why would unemployment benefits be cut? wouldn't that mean the unemployed get comparatively less?

> to pay for the rest of UBI you wouldn't just print money but instead raise taxes

The problem with this is that tax rates now follow from UBI.

Previously we might say "The tax people pay is X% of income".

Now we pay a fixed sum $Y to everyone and we need to make up for $Y * P ; where P is the size of the population.

that means the average tax payed needs to be $Y per person. This obviously can't be equally distributed (otherwise Y = 0) but now the relative tax rate depends explicitly on population size. You've just moved the goalpost by making income less relevant, and citizenship more relevant; Now every new immigrant making less than average wage, increases the tax rate for everyone making more than average wage. Instead of opposing tax rates, the wealthy will oppose immigration rates.

The benefit of not guaranteeing tax-derived UBI, is that no one has to care who enters the country, b/c it doesn't have any effect on them.

If not needing to live in the big city was the case, then that would indeed change the desirability of various properties across the market. This would be the case, with or without UBI. There's also no guarantee that "Oklahoma or something" would stay cheap if demand went up.

But big cities are desirable in other ways too (lots of common resources), plus UBI isn't necessarily so that people no longer need to work; If people move somewhere with cheap rent, but low business prospects, they'll get stuck in that situation, and a different kind of UBI-dependant poverty class with arise.

To TLDR this: this feels like the "Parable of the broken window" - The mechanics of the economy are too complex (and unintuitive) to be captured in a few speculative anecdotes, especially ones as drastic as "UBI making having a job unnecessary" - this is effectively the economic equivalent of a "toy project" - a toy argument so simple if fails to capture the complicated and significant side-effects that such a proposal with have; Needless to say, the road to hell is paved with good intensions, some of the most drastic socialistic changes have been disastrous.

But no, I don't think you should be able to walk out of a grocery with whatever you want. But the difference is a grocery provides a service, it has a function. A landlord is mostly a parasite extracting money but provides little value. if anything landlords just makes it more expensive for everyone to get a roof over their head.

The ways risk is being distributed in society is a fascinating topic.

Ok but GSE is the government, so it's not like the government isn't helping landlords. And what is actually happening to people with other mortgages? Are landlords failing to meet private loans and getting foreclosed as a result? Or are they getting some relief too?

> and they just paused payments, didnt eliminate them (unlike rent which is essentially eliminated / uncollectible)

I don't buy this complaint (if I understand the situation correctly). The argument was purportedly that you can't make mortgage payments without rental income, but you can't lease your home anymore because it's occupied. But when you get the relief, you don't have to make mortgage payments for that duration at all... not now, not in the future. You only pay for months that you are able to lease your home. i.e. the mortgage payments for those months are eliminated. (Right?) That seems like a much better situation than renters' as far as the mortgage payments go (who legally owe backpay rent and might now end up homeless, landlords's care to follow through notwithstanding), certainly not worse.

> Also, property taxes can be substantial and often higher than the mortgage depending on your area, and that wasn't addressed.

Also not buying this one. The stimulus + unemployment were there for landlords too. For landlords who have half a dozen homes and can't afford all of them together, I'm sure they have plenty of resources at their disposal and wouldn't face eviction or the risk of landing on their streets like many of their tenants.

This point is enough.

I'd be personally ok with the government bailing out smaller landlords (just because), but the largest percentage of these defaults are going to affect private equity firms who have bought an outrageous amount of the housing stock. We need to stop socializing risk and privatizing profits, and this would be a good place to start.

Now, if you want to say "well, the government should have also enacted a mortgage moratorium, and made the banks the ones who shoulder the financial burden, rather than landlords (whether individual or corporate)," I won't argue with that in the slightest. But given who "the government" was at the time, that would have been an extremely hard sell. (Even now it would be pretty difficult.)

> They end up with a 30 year old house that has been rented. There is a lot of cost in the upkeep of a rented house.

> you then have to pay the taxes on it when you sell the place.

Owners only pay taxes if the gain is greater than the depreciated loss; (and if owner doesn't 1031 exchange it for another property to lose money on) so, the premise that a rented house has lost value shouldn't really intersect with a capital gain.

Expensing missed rent and eviction costs isn't free money; it does require reserves, but it does help a 1 year impact spread out over many years.