Woman with 3 Properties Left Homeless Because Tenants Couldn't Be Evicted
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
> Only $1.7 billion of the $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program has been distributed by state and local governments
Both the landlord and her tenants interviewed in this article do not have the money to rectify this situation, the landlord is stuck without income because of Covid, the tenant is stuck without income because of Covid trying to care for an entire family.
Without government assistance, one of those two parties is going to be homeless, period. You will either have landlords suffering a loss of income (sometimes catastrophically) or you will have mass evictions of low-income renters who have no way to afford housing during the pandemic.
So the entire point of rent moratoriums was that the government was going to step in and provide resources to people affected, to try and prevent these kinds of no-win situations. That money hasn't appeared, despite being approved by Congress. So now we're having a debate about whether it's more moral to force a landlord with 3 properties to live in her van, or whether it's more moral to force a renter caring for her daughter and autistic son to be homeless. Both of those outcomes are bad.
The real story here is, after the government approved $46.5 billion to help prevent situations like this, why only around a tenth of that assistance has actually been distributed to the people who desperately need it.
Given the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, I'm not sure how a lack of money due to her tenants' unpaid rent could cause her to become homeless.
That only applies to some areas of the country, and I believe the supreme court just struck it down.
So as of now, applies no where iirc.
As such, this ruling has no bearing on state issued eviction moratoriums.
Having said that, the New York moratorium (which was passed as a law by the state legislature) expired today (August 31, 2021), so that is a moot point in this case. For completeness, I will point out that the US Supreme court also evaluated this state law [1], and mostly allowed it to continue. The only change they made was allowing landlords to contest the claim of hardship from the tenants. For further completeness, that was the only part of the New York law the Court was asked to rule on, so conceivably they would still have overturned the entire thing if the proper case was brought before them.
[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a23_ap6c.pdf
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a8_3fb4.pdf
The premise here is also absurd. The market for rental properties is extremely hot right now. Sell one of the properties and don't become homeless. You have options. Your tenants probably do not.
Probably wouldn't have gotten top dollar if there's a nonpaying tenant in there but better than involuntary homelessness.
Of course this article is light on details.
I mean to be fair here the government instituted a policy that basically took her property and allocated it for someone else's use for free, depriving her of its use either for revenue or as a place to live. It's a bit disingenuous to spin this as some sort of speculative investment gone wrong.
Let me explain this to folks as simply and unambiguously as I can. Have you ever had a cold? Yes? You will have COVID in the near future. No ifs or buts about it. You will have it, several times each year, for the rest of your life, it's endemic and unavoidable. Do you not want to die of COVID? Get the vax. The calculus is _really_ simple here. This should be the messaging from the CDC and everyone else. People (vaxxed and unvaxxed alike) seem to think they'll be able to "avoid" it somehow. That option was off the table as early as in January of 2020.
Why are we subjecting millions of small landlords to this hadship, especially in the cases where tenants _can_ pay?
I'm not spinning this as a speculative business gone wrong. I'm saying it's a business, and like all business there's risk. Have you ever done contract work, then had to chase the client down for months for the money? Do you have any idea how bad accounts receivable is in a normal business? Sometimes things unexpectedly go wrong, and businesses go out of business.
If I need to choose between a business going under, and millions of people becoming homeless, it's a pretty obvious choice. It becomes even more obvious when you consider the fact that letting millions of people become homeless also crashes the rental market, as prices would plummet.
It's hard to feel pity for someone who owns and rents three properties, yet wants us to believe they are without recourse, such as renting a temporary domicile herself.
The government also shut down businesses which means people like the tenant lost their jobs and ability to pay.
All this is frighteningly prescient with regards to the first generation to receive no SSI, no retirement, no way to make money, and yet will have to pay rent until the day they die.
Huh? The government has destroyed her business by preventing her from evicting tenants who are not able to pay their rent. If she was able to enforce her lease agreement and evict the tenants under the "legitimate" law, she would likely have no problem renting out her property to someone able to pay.
> The market for rental properties is extremely hot right now. Sell one of the properties and don't become homeless.
Interesting that in one sentence you talk about the landlord's business not being viable, and in another you mention that the market for rental properties is "extremely hot".
Right. And this business allows for the removal or tenants if they stop paying their rent. And the Supreme Court has ruled that President Biden has acted illegally in stopping evictions.
I mean, it’s not the fault of the landlord that tenants are to be homeless if tenants cannot find a place to live when the lease rightfully terminates.
The business model didn’t take into consideration such a pandemic. I’d argue that this is a reasonable negligence since the whole society-which includes organizations with much more risk evaluation capability, like banks and governments-didn’t prepare for such a pandemic.
Should the poorer folk in your city be without flat-screen TVs, just so you can continue to play your PS5? Should they be forced to ride the bus, just so you can have an air-conditioned commute?
That's really how those arguments sound, and they both deserve to be dismissed equally.
You're saying these people are going to be without creature comforts if they're evicted, where most of these people are going to be living on the street. Should they do this, so that this landlord can avoid selling a building?
It would be better for those tenants to direct their ire towards the government that made such blatantly unconstitutional laws, rather than attempt to steal goods or services from innocent parties. And this includes essentially forcing one to sell one's possessions as a result of the (very predictable) side effects of said unconstitutional edicts.
You're mixing up the rights of people and businesses here. I'm OK with the government prioritizing the ability for people to live over the ability of a business to make money.
The landlord in this story doesn't have anyone who's willing to home her. What makes you think her tenants are in a different position than she is?
Are rent moratoriums a good idea? I don't know, they certainly are a dangerous area for the government to get into, but we do as a society have a compelling interest in preventing mass evictions during a pandemic, and eminent domain and forced sales are something we regularly use when we have compelling interests in people's property. People can reasonably debate whether or not that compelling interest outweighs other private property concerns that we have; to me, moratoriums are a large step beyond traditional eminent domain laws and eviction regulations, so I get why they make people nervous.
But what I do know is that papering over the problem and casting doubt on whether or not families really would be homeless isn't helpful, it's dismissive. Particularly on an article where someone is actually homeless living out of a van. Obviously the existing social and community support structures for homeless families aren't sufficient, or else the landlord in this story wouldn't be living in a van.
You are assuming she has good credit.