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Comment by ryan_lane | Hacker News Reader

You've made a business from renting people property. You've staked your ability to pay your bills on that business, and you've found yourself in a situation where your business is no longer viable. This sounds like a poor investment strategy to me. Should all of your tenants be homeless so that your business succeed?

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.

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> you've found yourself in a situation where your business is no longer viable

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.

I’d claim there’s a good chance that mass evictions would lend themselves to lower property values and rental incomes which would also lead to an unsuccessful business strategy and a similar outcome. Whether or not this is preferable would then be a separate conversation of hypotheticals.

Mass evictions would lead to everything opening back up overnight. It's utterly pointless to have _any_ anti-COVID measures at all when a vaccine is available to anyone who wants it. Moreover, it's strongly counterproductive.

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?

Government interference in emergencies is a risk of doing business.

It's a bit disingenuous to say the government took her property and allocated it to someone else's use. The government, during an emergency, disallowed eviction, but didn't cancel rent. The rent is still owed.

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.

If we were being fair one party wouldn't be allowed to buy a shelter and rent it to someone who has less means than them.

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.

The reason the business is no longer viable is because the government basically seized it and gave the products away for free.

> You've staked your ability to pay your bills on that business, and you've found yourself in a situation where your business is no longer viable.

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".

If this line of business is by government intervention made to fail, fewer people will get into this line of business and then there will be fewer properties in the market ensuring there is even tighter supply of rental properties.

> This sounds like a poor investment strategy to me. Should all of your tenants be homeless so that your business succeed?

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.

What is your address? After all, having people come to your house and steal all your property is a risk that you accepted when you purchased said property.

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.

No one stole the property. She still owns it. She can still sell them.

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?

Absolutely. Without private property rights, society would fall apart. And though it's doubtful most people would be homeless - most people have friends and family, after all (unless they have alienated then by suggesting their property be confiscated or subject to some form of squatting)

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.

Society doesn't fall apart without private property rights. Lots of countries have socialized ownership, at least for some percentage of the housing stock, and they do perfectly fine. I'm not advocating for socialist ownership of all property, though. I'm a fan of private ownership (though would prefer that some amount of the housing stock was publicly owned for rental stock).

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.

> And though it's doubtful most people would be homeless - most people have friends and family, after all

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.

The standard advice is to have enough cash reserves to cover all your mortgages for 6-12 months. It's been more than 12 months but most conforming loans have been able to get forbearance, and yeah, not sure why selling one wasn't an option in this scenario.

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.

> You've made a business from renting people property.

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.

They ruled that the executive branch doesn't have this power, and that congress should pass legislation. They didn't say the government doesn't have this power, just that the wrong branch used it.

Exactly. They ruled that President Biden acted against the law, because he doesn't have the power to do this. If congress were to pass legislation, they'd have to take in account the "takings" clause of the constitution.

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