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Comment by mansion7 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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