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WTF was the point of pay people unemployment and stimulus checks, if not to pay their bills/rent?

I can't believe we as society just laughed and robbed all the landlords. This is truly shameful.

Big investment firms are taking advantage of it

https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-hous...

Note, Blackrock is also getting a ton of FED money

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-hires-blackrock-to-help-cal...

Remember, "by 2030: You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy."

https://rumble.com/vdgi1h-world-economic-forum-by-2030-youll...

Also cars. The bus line is the only public transportation in my city. They went from being so full you may have to wait for the next bus to almost empty.

I've also noticed a lot of people got 'new' cars (financed I'm sure), and are letting their old ones collect dust rather than selling them.

I'm guessing a lot of stuff is going to wind up being sold here shortly.

I find that hard to believe. Between the chip shortage and the supply chain issues, new car supply has been constrained and the used car market has gone gangbusters.

You don't have to believe it, but why would chip shortages impact used cars.

You were the one who assumed it was new new cars.

Part of the reason that used cars are in such short supply is that so many bought the used ones up.

We had an epidemic in my city of people with cars who never had one before, accidents everywhere. Paper plates were all you saw for months.

The bus lines speak for themselves.

The used cars didn't increase in value until well into the pandemic.

Blah blah sometimes explaining the real world to people in bubbles gets so old.

Nonstop agitation propaganda meant to rile the have nots against the haves.

You can look at it like that. But you could also realize that landlords in these areas have had government assistance for ages. They got tax abatements, low financing and protections against competition.

That's not even close to a free market. They benefited from that government interference, but now they are annoyed that their tenants are getting that support.

When people are ok with moral hazard being ignored for so long, these types of things are inevitable…

The only thing shameful in society is the existence of landlords.

This is one of the strangest things I have ever heard anyone say.

Landlords buy something, and then charge someone else more than it is worth to use it- because it is necessary. They are essentially home scalpers. Don’t feel bad for them.

Have you ever ran the numbers for a rental property? I have — after interest on the mortgage, taxes, repairs, insurance, HOA fees (if applicable), management costs, etc., margins wear thin to non-existent in most areas. Plus you’re taking on risk in the case of being unable to find renters / rent / home depreciation. Running rental properties is largely a commodity business like any other, which means competition drives down margins (all else equal, I understand there are local idiosyncrasies that might make this not the case). For sure it can be lucrative if you’re smart, and prudent, and lucky, and manage to keep your head above water on a 30 year loan or few, and I imagine there are big players that can command lower interest rates and those sorts of thing; but there’s plenty of Joe Schmoe landlords who are running small businesses, and they’ve been forced arbitrarily to take the brunt of the economic downturn on the chin in order to protect their tenants. Why should they be forced to disproportionately pay for this?

Those “Joe Scmoe” landlords are mostly graduates/victims of real estate guru nonsense who over leveraged themselves thinking of how rich they’d be in 5 years. I have no sympathy for them.

They(the landlord) has agreed to take on a risk to profit on someone else’s need. I’m not going to _ever_ feel bad if that risk played out unfavorably for them. That’s insane.

In an important sense, taking on risk to profit on someone else’s need is how the entire economy works…

You can argue that much of what we produce nowadays isn’t a fundamental “need” like shelter, but that’s really beside the point, and a function of our relative prosperity as compared to previous eras.

How do you propose housing be managed if not by voluntary exchanges?

I think public housing should be provided to those that need it and private housing should be available to those that can afford it. Same with food, same with water, same with healthcare, same with education.

Part of that risk calculation never was government banning them from evicting renters if they don't pay rents. Maybe in future they need to add substantial increase on rents to take in account next pandemic. As clearly the government does not protect their property.

You just described commerce as scalping. A grocer is a scalper according to you. So is a meat distributor.

Land is unique among resources (as is labor).

I don't necessarily have issue with someone renting out their second property, but I am starting to think the societal problems with large scale rental operations and the disappearance of land ownership as an achievable goal for so many, outweighs the right of large scale landlords to exist.

Except that retail is a service you pay for.

Modern landlords are mostly government subsidized (tax abetements, low financing rates for "business", etc).

There are definitely landlords that provide a valuable service, but there's a reason why profiteering landlords are almost universally disliked.

PS: Remember where we get the term "landlord" - the feudal lord that collected tax(aka rent) while providing a very specific service to the peasants on the land plot that was grated to him by the superior nobleman.

It's nothing like that today... Even the losses in their income get socialized - how do you think Donald paid only $750 in federal taxes? The whole system is setup to protect "landlords".

I happily pay to buy directly from local sources. Also; people don’t need meat, they do need housing.

You’re missing the point of what I am saying entirely though. If you treat housing as an investment and the investment goes sideways for whatever reason, why should anyone feel bad for you? It sucks, but that’s how investing works!

You don’t think other legislation/govt intervention impacts non-housing financial investments? Thems the breaks. They took the risk, let them own it. That’s literally the entire freaking point!

Not everyone wants to be a homeowner. A lot of people enjoy the flexibility of being able to just pay the monthly rent and not worry about anything else, and being free to move on a whim when they need to. You expect the owner of the property to do the upkeep work for free in that scenario?

I think renting is great. I’ve done it many a time. I’ve also been screwed over once or twice. That’s not really the issue.

The people who are landlords agree to the risk of owning a property and renting it out to someone. Why should I feel bad when the risk comes to fruition? Why should anyone?

Should you be able to just profit endlessly on housing risk free for no dang reason other than you had money before someone else? I don’t know. I don’t really care. I have a feeling these landlords will be just fine.

> Why should I feel bad when the risk comes to fruition? Why should anyone?

The landlord didn't assume the risk that they couldn't remove the resident AND the resident wouldn't have to pay.

This was effectively the state seizing property, forcing the landlord to maintain the property and providing it to someone else.

You also probably don't know who most landlords are, but in way of example, say I rent out a room. Should I be subjected to someone living in my house, then lose my house because they aren't paying and I cannot afford to not rent out that room?

This is a common scenario.

>The landlord didn't assume the risk that they couldn't remove the resident AND the resident wouldn't have to pay.

Then they assumed wrong. National emergencies happen, in this instance a pandemic (that is still very much ongoing) meant that potentially millions of people stood to lose their livelihoods and their place to live. Millions of people with no jobs and no homes, a catastrophe, to put it mildly. Ordinary rules do not apply the same way in extraordinary situations.

How many landlords lost their homes due to this? How many could sell one of their properties and weather the storm with the profits?

>This was effectively the state seizing property, forcing the landlord to maintain the property and providing it to someone else.

No property was seized. The government did its most important job, namely supporting citizens who are unable to support themselves, those who do not have enough capital to weather a storm.

Someone who rents out a room is not going to lose their home from such a moratorium. It is a deliberately misleading argument to frame it like that, and it is not a common situation.

Some risks should belong to those people if they can't save enough to survive a year or two without pay they don't deserve to rent. They should be out on streets or find place where they can afford to buffer a year or two for rent. It's not up to landlords to take that burden, but instead it should have been on renters.

You don't plan, you get out. Maybe then government can find you some tiny box or tent to live in until you can plan and pay.

You should sit down and calculate the absolutely disastrous consequences for the economy if you put millions of (jobless) people on the streets, during a massive epidemic.

The rise in property values alone over the last 10+ years should have been more than plenty to cover any landlord's expenses due to the moratorium. They did not plan for the bad times, too bad for them. They had the means to mitigate by preparing, renters living paycheck to paycheck have no such possibility, so the government did its job for once and helped out the under-privileged.

So the landlords can just sell some of their properties, downsize and scale back until better times. They gambled on stability and lost.

Why don't renters have to take reasonable responsibility during pandemic? That is have enough funds on hand to cover their living cost in any situation? Being jobless is no excuse as they could have lived cheaper and saved more previously. Maybe by being homeless for a few years or decades.

I will admit that you had me for a minute there. Pretty solid impression of a ghoulish libertarian.

> The landlord didn't assume the risk that they couldn't remove the resident AND the resident wouldn't have to pay.

That’s not how risk works.

> You also probably don't know who most landlords are, but in way of example, say I rent out a room. Should I be subjected to someone living in my house, then lose my house because they aren't paying and I cannot afford to not rent out that room?

My parents are landlords, god bless their souls. But they know what they got into. I chose to distance myself from their business because I find it morally revolting.

Also; don’t gamble your house away if you can’t afford to lose! That is how this works!

PS: my parents are making fucking bank as landlords right now! Don’t feel bad for any of them! They literally just made an offer on a third lake house.

It is how risk works. You assume any and all risks when you buy the home, including the ones you don’t know about.

> The people who are landlords agree to the risk of owning a property and renting it out to someone. Why should I feel bad when the risk comes to fruition? Why should anyone?

Ok then. People who didn't take on the risk to buy a home in 2009 when homes were cheap should not complain that homes are too expensive now, therefore we should not have tax payer funded affordable housing. Those same people didn't take on the risk to go to school and get a better job. Why should I feel bad when someone wants the fruits of risk, but doesn't want to take on any of the risk?

Exactly; don’t.

Better still: sublease but don’t pay the landlord! I know someone in New York who tried to buy their neighbor’s apartment. The deal fell through because the tenant was nearly a year behind on a rent and couldn’t be evicted. Except the tenant didn’t live there anymore. They subleased the apartment and pocketed the cash instead of paying the owner.

Obviously this is fraud and maybe this person could be prosecuted for it, maybe, but it seems like the kind of thing that just slips through the yawning cracks.

Meanwhile, back in Seattle:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/want-to-ra...

This was proposed by Sawant, an economics professor.

This should be easy to sort out for many landlords. See who was still employed and yet didn't pay rent.

Prospective future landlords should be able to tell this easily when they do a credit check. Good luck ever renting again! And if the landlord sues for the rent owed, and the person was still employed and making the same salary, many tenants will get a judgement against them.

I think in the future, landlords will only deal with two types of tenants -- those who paid rent during the pandemic, and those on Section 8.

> This should be easy to sort out! See who was still employed and yet didn't pay rent.

> Prospective future landlords should be able to tell this easily when they do a credit check. Good luck ever renting again!

This is illegal in Seattle. Basically impossible to enforce, but illegal all the same. You are supposed to take the first renter that qualifies and passes a standard pre-screen - not with in-depth looks like that.

I don't know about this take. We're supposed to shed tears for the landlord managing properties worth probably 8 figures but for the families if unemployment checks and the generosity of their landlords isn't enough... then that's just life? That's not exactly what I want to hear from policy makers.