CA to Pay Off All Past Due Rent Accrued During Covid, Giving Renters Clean Slate
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
Either that or somebody up there in power is really invested in the current dysfunctions.
Even better would be if universities and banks offered refunds for their excessive tuition and student loan charges for the past 50 years. ;-)
More realistically, perhaps we should make student loan debt the same as all other unsecured debt, since it's paid off with the same dollars. And universities should be subject to antitrust laws.
Or, ya know, accept that people need a place to stay and recognize that the pandemic was a global disaster that many places were unable to handle, and kicking people out now might be a bigger second order problem.
Landlords, even if, as a business, they don't have an 18 month cash buffer, have equity. If a landlord is hard-up they can attempt to refinance, or go bust and sell their assets (the property) to another more successful (perhaps less levered up) landlord. Rental yields are something like 3-5%, so 18 months of lost income is only an additional 5-8% LTV.
The state should have decreed that anyone who can show hardship (tenant or landlord) be granted interest-free payment holidays for the duration, and made it illegal for leveraged landlords not to pass these on.
They shouldn't, but the fifth and fourteenth amendments exist and retroactively voiding the debt (including forced settlement at a reduced state-judged-as-fair rate looks a lot like either a taking or a deprivation of property without substantive due process, so it is, at best, a magnet for extended and uncertain litigation if anyone isn’t happy with it, and someone won't be; full-value settlement is the fastest way to resolve the adverse impacts of the crisis on renters and landlords, preventing a wave of evictions and/or a wave of ruin for innocent landlords. Is it perfectly just? No. But its almost certainly the resolution that deals with the immediate problem in a way which has the least risk of being derailed by litigation.
Also, the state already entered the game when evictions were suspended. If the choice from your lender as a landlord is bankruptcy or having your mortgage term extended by 18 months, with an 18 month interest-free payment holiday now, if you have hard-up tenants, what would you choose?
(1) Landlords arr often ibdividuals, and (2) in any case, no, they apply to legal persons, generally.
> Also, the state already entered the game when evictions were suspended
There's a reason for different tolerance for litigation risk in those two actions, but in any case by providing essentially full-value compensation for the losses due to the earlier action, this action is not only on firmer ground viewed individually, but also greatly mitigates remaining litigation risk from the earlier action.
But let's not kid ourselves here, if they just lifted the rent moratorium and let it sort itself out everyone here would be complaining about how the homeless are out of control, destroying property values and the "my family has to feel SAFE! The neighborhood has gone to hell!"
I'm glad people are keeping their shelter, we can handle the rest.
We need a huge natural disaster that destroys everything, a lot of you need to be reminded of the importance of community, the cushy gigs and thought bubbles have poisoned the humanity in a lot of y'all.
IMO this should be done via a non-refundable property tax rebate. Don't pay property taxes? Then you already get your subsidy on an ongoing basis.
Even better, let them make a deal with the landlords that to opt in you have to allow for a reassessment to “fair market value” based upon the back rent. That will allow pushing the revenue can down the road for another 25 years.
The end result should be a healthier and more dynamic economy that rewards productive activity without subsidizing slumlords.
Poverty-line renters are most likely pro-Newsome or unregistered, and too few Rep landlords to convert with this $Bn rent subsidy.
[1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-likely-voters/
All that said I think if any state really wanted to help renters they'd make real renting illegal and mandate all the contracts change to lease agreements. Nobody likes to pay their landlord's mortgage, that's not fair whether you made rent payments a priority or not. But seeing as big landowners and politicians always seem to be buddies that's about as likely as as what you originally proposed so I digress.
How about compassion?
Incentivizing bad behaviour for a feel good doesn't tend to end well.
wut?
It's analogous to the student loan situation and the push for loan forgiveness. People who paid off their loans with work, people who chose majors with a calculated payoff, those who picked cheaper schools. These are the people who get punished in favor of those who did no research, picked poor paying majors and picked subjects beyond their means.
This goes double for student loans, as the entire situation there is arguably culpable for the problem in the first place.
It tends to be the people with the best opportunities and the most resources who snidely look down their nose and pretend other people just didn't try hard enough, work hard enough, sacrifice enough, etc.
This is part of how racism and other social ills remain entrenched: Don't give folks the same opportunities, then blame them when their life sucks and attribute it to personal moral failure.
This "solution" that I see right now is the short-termist, feel-good solution that comes crashing down in the "not-my-problem-I-already-got-relected" future.
Some might have better choices than others, but you still should be optimizing for the local "best" choice to align with the global "best" choice.
That doesn't optimize anything. It just means some people get shafted and become cynical about "taking one for the team."
I feel like the outrage at this sort of stuff is because people with good choices instinctively know if you cut schmuck a break, he might get ahead of you. I just remembered once playing monopoly. One of the kids playing busted out. Or would have but I handed him a wad of my money. Kid who was winning then had a complete meltdown.
Come to think of it, Monopoly is a hilariously vile game and it's pretty odd that its still PC to sell it.
Because the state was under no legal obligation to do this, and even perceiving the problem and having a government that wanted to solve it, is unlikely to have done so (or even have beem able to do so, given Constitutional balanced budget rules) if it hadn't ended up with an enormous unexpected budget surplus to throw at it, so acting based on the assumption that it would do so if you had the capacity to pay rent would be an unacceptable risk of eviction once the emergency moratorium ended, which it was certainly going to at some point.
We should do more Jubilees.
Go buy a house. Then I’m guessing you won’t take the deduction on your taxes because you’re thinking of the impoverished renters, right?