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Comment by jude- | Hacker News Reader

I sense a lot of resentment coming from people who managed to pay rent. My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone who was at risk of getting evicted now won't be? Would you rather make large swaths of the population homeless, especially those who couldn't work during the pandemic? If so, then what do you think those large swaths of now-homeless people -- who now have a very good reason to be very angry at basically everything, and now have a lot less to lose by acting on that anger -- are going to do next?

If you follow this line of thinking to its conclusion, you'll come to the same conclusion that politicians of all stable countries realized a long time ago: society is a lot more stable, and a lot less violent-class-revolution-y, when everyone has affordable housing and basic needs met. By seeing to it they everyone is housed, dear resentful renter, you are saving yourself.

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Society works on fairness as well as stability. This kind of thing also makes the people on the margin resentful and angry. See also the discussion of student debt repayment. Alice and Bob are identical and almost able to do X. Alice sacrifices Y to get X. Bob keeps Y is later given X for free. Bob comes out ahead. Why shouldn't Alice feel resentment?

More fundamentally, what is resentment doing for Alice? Why bother exerting that negative emotional energy, holding a hatred for someone else's positive change of circumstance? It's not like your hatred is going to change your circumstances.

> See also the discussion of student debt repayment

My brother and I went to the same university. His social life in high school was better than mine, but grades were worse for it, and he had to take on a lot of student debt. Meanwhile, I studied my ass off and earned a full-ride scholarship. And yet, if his loans got forgiven, I'd be ecstatic for him.

Bob and Alice should both feel resentment toward Joe’s son who inherited millions and owns the majority of stock in the company Bob and Alice are desperately trying to apply to.

Unless you’re wealthy, the enemy is very clearly the rich and not those at or below you on the socioeconomic ladder.

If your mom tells you and your brother to clean the house, bathe the dogs, wash the cars, and repaint the living room, and you do all of it while your brother is sick, you wouldn't feel slightly upset if she paid his rent and you got nothing? Most people don't want all those people to be homeless, but it does feel punishing that other people are having their way paid for while contributing less.

I would not feel upset in that scenario. I would feel upset if my mother didn’t pay my brother’s rent and then my brother stole from me for food money and set up camp on my sidewalk, then died 9 months later.

Homeless isn’t just something that impacts the person without the home, it effects everyone.

> but it does feel punishing that other people are having their way paid for while contributing less.

How Dickensian. Nothing is being done to you, so I fail to see how this could be seen as "punishing." It's not like living at the mercy of a state program is a good outcome -- before this program was announced, the life situations of many of these people and their dependents who "contribute less" was far, far more precarious. Why not just see this as an act of overdue mercy -- an act of your greater community pulling together to overcome a devastating plague that profoundly affected us all?

Taxpayers are ultimately paying for this, so yes something is being done to everyone who pays taxes in California. And if someone made every effort to pay rent, and another person with the same income did not pay rent, that second person will have an advantage when renting in the future since they will have more cash on hand.

TFA states that the money is from aid packages from Congress, so not really.

Also, how do you know that this is giving the recipients any advantage? If they're behind on their rent, they're already in shitty financial circumstances and probably already received credit score decreases.

> My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone who was at risk of getting evicted now won't be?

If you read any of the comments you'll see that people who are against this are against this because it benefits the irresponsible more than the responsible. eg. "Initiatives like these always tend to hurt the most responsible people more than the rest" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594862

Have the majority of the beneficiaries of this program done anything irresponsible, and do we have a way of accurately and dispassionately measuring this? COVID-19 wasn't their fault, nor was the government's handling of it their fault either. It's not like either of us know the full circumstances of all Californians (and their dependents) who are getting this relief.

EDIT: Sure, there are probably some people who were irresponsible. I'm not denying that. I'm asking whether or not we should we forgo helping the many people who were victims of this circumstance because some undeserving people might get something out of it? Sounds inhumane not to.

I can definitely see how someone who sacrificed to pay rent throughout the pandemic, maybe using up some of their retirement funds or defaulting on car loans in the process, would be frustrated to learn now that they could have just not paid rent instead and been fine. They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless.

(I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't live in California, don't rent, don't own rental property.)

> They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless.

That sounds like a pretty privileged take on their parts. If they were wealthy enough to survive a global pandemic that upended the global economy without anyone's help, that speaks pretty well for them. But not everyone was so fortunate, and that's what this program addresses.

I see no cause for resentment here, anymore than I see cause for resentment against poor people on Medicaid while the more-fortunate pay for health insurance. Like, sure -- we could do something "radical" (by US standards) and make Medicaid available to everyone, but if the choice is between having health insurance only for those who can afford it (and sucks to be you if you can't), and having a Medicaid tax to pay for health coverage for those who can't afford insurance, I'd much rather take the latter.

The issue is that people who could of paid their choose not to. And they benefit from it. While people who struggled to pay are left with nothing.

There are example of landlords who no longer received rent, despite tenants still working from home. Tenants then used the savings to buy a house, leaving the landlord to try and recover lost rent.

Does that sound like the right people got the benefit?

Can you identify these undeserving people? Can you do so at scale with reasonable expense, such that you don't end up spending the majority of your money determining who is "worthy" and who isn't?

If the answer to either of these is "no," then the question is fundamentally between helping everyone who's struggling (even those who don't deserve it), and helping no one. The former option might piss off a few fortunate people who could maintain rent (with sacrifices) during the pandemic, but the latter option would put many, many people and their dependents out on the street. The latter clearly creates far, far more pain and suffering than the former. Moreover, the former form of suffering is self-inflicted -- these fortunate people choose to feel resentment.

No, this is not about choosing to feel resentment this is the basic human sense of fairness and justice. It’s not an American belief, it’s pretty universally human.

And your straw man is just that - a straw man. It’s not a choice between “forgive rent” or not. The current approach is shit. Find a better one.

This is absolutely about choosing to feel resentment. Why else would you care that someone else got a leg-up if it doesn't affect you, personally? Like, nothing was taken from you, and nothing was done to you, and yet you still feel bad that someone else's life just got better. That's resentment.

Thought experiment. Everyone in the US gets a $10,000 stimulus payment, except you.

Is that fair? Nothing has been taken from you.

Now think about it in terms of income inequality. If someone makes $1M per year, why do you care? It doesn't hurt you. You choose to feel resentment because someone else is better off.

First, fairness != resentment. One is a quantifiable statement, and the other is a feeling. It would not be fair to me if I didn't get the stimulus while everyone else did, but I would still be quite happy for everyone else.

> Now think about it in terms of income inequality. If someone makes $1M per year, why do you care? It doesn't hurt you.

I don't care, because by itself, someone else earning $1M per year doesn't affect me.

What I do care about is when people turn their wealth into power, because that does affect me (and many others). Like, income inequality wouldn't be a problem if the high-income people didn't keep using their wealth to exert undue influence (to put it politely) in politics, religion, media, and other shared aspects of our society.

See the difference? I don't resent people for being wealthy. My feelings towards them depend on the things they do with it.

I don't resent people for being wealthy. My feelings towards them depend on the things they do with it.

Then we agree. I don't resent people for having their rent debt forgiven, I resent them for having it forgiven when they had the ability to pay it all along.

I'm not sure it's going to be that clear-cut. If you rented a place, and can prove you could have afforded it, but simultaneously can't prove that you paid rent for all the times it was due, then that's going to hurt your future ability to rent and/or borrow money for some time. Future renters and loan officers look (or will soon start looking) at this data.

Some localities are making it illegal to screen based on credit history or passed evictions.

See where we’re going?

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