Poll of the Day > SCOTUS end the CDC eviction moratorium

(+) Yeah! (+)

"It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant, but our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.

If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.

Just when you think the US Government has given up on the law (thanks Joe), along comes the Supreme Court to set things straight

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JixHedgehog posted...

It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant

is it though

half of america disagrees with you

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you certainly are whiny about a lot of things lately

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tbh, the departmental overreach has been insane in the past 20 years.

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Hey, yaknow it's illegal for a pastor to back a political party in Church? The IRS only enforced this once in the last 20 years

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Scresident of the United States?

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FatalAccident posted...

Scresident of the United States?

supreme court

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Mead posted...

you certainly are whiny about a lot of things lately

"It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant, but our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.

If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.

so it other words, they are saying congress should do their damn jobs

You're kidding yourself if you think an eviction moratorium would pass the Senate filibuster hurdle

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JixHedgehog posted...

but our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.

s
m
f
h

we just had a president who did whatever he wanted for 4 years, and the system still wont do shit to help the common folk.

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Very good news. Pay your rent or sleep on the streets.

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Dark_SilverX posted...

Very good news. Pay your rent or sleep on the streets.

its always weird to see people proudly make sociopathic statements

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Dark_SilverX posted...

Very good news. Pay your rent or sleep on the streets.

You'll be complaining more about them sleeping on the streets, though.

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adjl posted...

You'll be complaining more about them sleeping on the streets, though.

Its because they very transparently want poor people and undesirables to die out.

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Dark_SilverX posted...

Very good news. Pay your rent or sleep on the streets.

Opposite of here. So when landlords dont get their money, and therefore the banks dont get their money, the renter ends up on the street anyway because the bank takes the house from the landlord.

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Oh cool so scotus is just accelerating the housing crash now.

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JixHedgehog posted...

"It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant, but our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.

If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.

So it's up to Congress to act unlawfully?
Is Congress not part of the same system?
Speaking of agencies acting unlawfully there's bound to be some discrimination cases coming out of NYC soon.


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papercup posted...

Oh cool so scotus is just accelerating the housing crash now.

Good, I'm sick of trying to get a house and getting back prices that are like $100K above what they should be.

JixHedgehog posted...

"our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.

Lol. Politicians break the law all the time. At least one of scotus judges is a rapist too.

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Awesome, I love homelessness.

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Go ahead and evict people on mass. The insurance rates are going to skyrocket when enough people set fire to all the property management buildings. You ain't never seen a riot like enough people being evicted at the wrong times in their lives. Hell, some people will burn it all down. It's easy to set fire to something. Don't let these people watch "The Crow". You'll see some real man-made global warming then.

Tbh I'm surprised the Supreme Court is pushing so many people to adopt the philosophy of Chairman Mao with respect to landlords.

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It's about time honestly. The fucking CDC should not have this kind of power. Why tf would it be their place to regulate the housing market?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kn08azqUSU

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OhhhJa posted...

It's about time honestly. The fucking CDC should not have this kind of power. Why tf would it be their place to regulate the housing market?

What?

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papercup posted...

Oh cool so scotus is just accelerating the housing crash now.

As opposed to what? Just having a moratorium indefinitely?

I don't agree with the moratorium in general because I think it's absurd that the government could just tell you you're not allowed to the laws that enable the business to work. However, I could at least understand it when people were on lockdowns, businesses were getting shut down, and a not insignificant percent of the population was completely unable to work on government orders. I don't agree with it, but I understand the moratorium in that case.

Now, however, we have the lowest unemployment rate we've had in 50 years. I get that rent is high and wages are low (though companies are so desperate now I'm regularly seeing fast food in the 20's with signing bonuses), but that's pretty much business as usual for this country. It's not the CDC's responsibility to resolve the wage gap. If there's supposed to be a justification that it significantly impacts the spread of the virus then they better have some good god damn statistics to justify fucking over legitimate land owners.

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Smarkil posted...

fucking over legitimate land owners.

They got relief, too, which you would know if you weren't so busy simping for these greedy whiners.

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JOExHIGASHI posted...

Lol. Politicians break the law all the time. At least one of scotus judges is a rapist too.

People still believe that?
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Clench281 posted...

You're kidding yourself if you think an eviction moratorium would pass the Senate filibuster hurdle

Totally right, but that still doesn't excuse executive overreach. The solution here is election reform (criminalizing gerrymandering, eliminating barriers to voting, getting corporate money out of politics, etc...) and for people to stop voting in the incumbent 80-90% of the time while also complaining about congress being do nothing.

Gaawa_chan posted...

They got relief, too, which you would know if you weren't so busy simping for these greedy whiners.

I'm so glad you brought this up so I can mansplain to you my experience as a landlord. I will caveat this by saying that I, mercifully, have not had to deal with tenants who refused to pay. The one tenant who was unable(or unwilling) to pay ended up leaving willingly. Otherwise I've had good tenants who have been able to keep their employment throughout. This is gonna be a long one boys so buckle the fuck up.

Let's talk about the relief shall we?

The relief for the pandemic comes from the CARES act and an additional funding by the treasury later in the pandemic. This funding was distributed to states to be disbursed at the local level. The local resource allocation rules vary widely and very frequently were not effective in covering the costs incurred through the pandemic for a great many people.

At the start - resources were distributed with little regard to infrastructure in the disbursement of funds at the local level which left many small towns or towns with little to spare in terms of resources with no way to intake relief requests. Sure, Los Angeles has the staff to stand up a web portal to intake rental assistance requests a town in butt fuck Nebraska does not. So requests like that were typically limited to being done in person. A little bit of an ask in the middle of a pandemic, no?

But how much were these local resources paying out? Well, it varies by municipality. Broward County FL. as an example paid up to a maximum of 60% of owed rent. So that means the landlord is taking the brunt of a 40% hit to their rental income through that program and gaps in these sorts of programs existed across the country. In the meantime, you have a backlogged system that can take months to process an application and provide assistance. This, of course, is after fulfilling the requirement of a hardship which in itself can take a considerable amount of time to justify. You have to have already missed rent payments for that particular hardship to have occurred in order to qualify for the assistance on top of the myriad of other rules for assistance.

This of course, is assuming all the tenants are good tenants who are trying their best to fulfill their obligations. The relief for, as I understand it, every one of these programs goes directly through the tenants. Nothing can come from the landlords themselves. So they have to rely entirely on the good will of the tenant to apply for and receive the assistance. In some areas it requires an agreement between both tenant and landlord but even in these cases the tenant agreement is required. Heres what a bad tenant has to do in order to not pay their rent and not be evicted nothing.

At this point there are now people through this pandemic who will have not paid their rent for 16 months. If these people had applied for rent assistance in Broward County in a 2 bedroom apartment (average rent of $1,556), that means for that one renter the landlord is out $10,000. Very likely even more considering utilities arent covered under this arrangement. And thats assuming the best case scenario for a good renter. They could just as easily be out $25,000 and still have a renter in their unit that they cant get rid of.

Here are some random news excerpts about reimbursement

https://www.montanasports.com/millions-still-struggling-to-pay-rent-despite-relief

The state of New York received nearly $3 billion from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program yet the state has only doled out less than 1% of the funds.

Congress approved nearly $47 billion to pay landlords as tenants fell behind on rent. As of June 30, only $3 billion of the total had been distributed.

In some states, tenants must provide a signed, written declaration to their landlord showing that they've tried to obtain assistance. That application could be used as a defense against eviction for a full year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/coronavirus-small-landlords-struggle-as-renters-stop-payments.html

Greg Brown, senior vice president for government affairs for the National Apartment Association, said many of his members have expressed frustration with residents who are unresponsive and dont show up to court.

The latest estimate for outstanding rental debt nationwide is $58 billion, averaging about $6,000 per renter, according to Brown.

And in February, Texas began a $1.3 billion rent relief program. At least 72,000 people have completed applications, but by the end of March only 250 had received a payment, according to a report from the Texas House Urban Affairs Committee released earlier this month.

And thats another problem for small landlords: communication. More than 60% of renters who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus did not contact their landlords, according to the Avail survey.
Avail conducted a survey in late March of more than 3,000 mom and pop landlords and over 7,000 tenants who rent from them. More than half (54%) of the renters said they had already lost their jobs due to the coronavirus outbreak, and of those, about a third said that if they couldnt afford to, they would simply stop paying rent. Some said they would look to family and friends for help, while others said they didnt know what they would do.

That will leave millions of landlords in the lurch. Most have mortgages on their properties, and while some can apply for the governments forbearance program, that doesnt cover all of their expenses. (Forbearance for the record just means that instead of paying one mortgage every month, you have to pay it all at the end of the agreed term and theres no law requiring lenders to provide a forbearance).

That was the case with Christina Kelly, a home care aide in Omaha, Neb. She lived in a house with her 17-year-old son, paying $850 a month in rent. After losing her job and when unemployment insurance ran out in August, she fell behind on her rent. Her landlord moved to evict her in December after the lease was several months expired.

Ms. Kelly found a job at a telemarketing agency and was approved for pandemic rental assistance that would cover her back rent, plus one future month, totaling $3,000. But the landlord wouldnt accept it.

(Im no mathematician but Im fairly certain $3000 dollars doesnt cover 5 months of rent at $850)

CONT...

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Last month (June), California officials streamlined applications for the money after advocates said many renters had given up on the process due to its complexity and language and technology barriers.

https://archive.is/KVHdY#selection-4673.0-4673.270 (Wall Street Journal)

The money has been slow to reach landlords, though that has recently improved, Treasury officials said. The National Apartment Association, however, says this money is inadequate to cover the rent debt hole. It is suing the U.S. government for an additional $26 billion.
Retired couple Rebecca and John Faulkner own a rental home in western New York, where they say they are owed more than $13,000 in unpaid rent, dating back to March of 2020. Their tenant has refused their pleas to pay and installed a Private Property No Trespassing sign in the front window of the house, Ms. Faulkner said.

https://www.fox10tv.com/news/coronavirus/landlords-are-running-out-of-money-we-dont-get-unemployment/article_4fb06b5b-3502-563c-8dc8-1a924b5862cb.html

If landlords are struggling, tenants will also be affected as home maintenance slides. "I'm seeing landlords who can't pay for trash removal," Gray said. "We're getting 'no heat' calls. They aren't paying real estate taxes. They aren't paying their mortgage." He said one property his company manages had a plumbing problem that cost around $38,000. The owner did not pay the bill.
Some landlords, he said, are being paid less and seeing the wear and tear on their property increase as grown children or friends double up after losing their own housing. Routine maintenance that was supposed to take place this year has in some cases been delayed or canceled because landlords just don't have the money, said Gray. "They can legislate the need to do timely repairs," he said. "But for many landlords, there is no money."

Lets talk about those mean old landlords shall we? Always just these greedy parasites taking everyones money while theyre living the high life drinking champagne and eating caviar right?

According to a survey performed by Avail a subsidiary of realtor.com - As of 2017 55% of all rental units were owned by 8 million part-time landlords colloquially referred to as Mom and Pop. These landlords, in total, owned 24 million units approximately three units per person (units defined as an individual rentable entity IE apartment, house, etc.)

Of these people the majority are between 30-59 years old and maintain full-time jobs while landlording on the side. Of those respondents only 4.7% inherited their property.

But they gotta be making so much money right?

(Greg Brown, senior vice president for government affairs for the National Apartment Association ) He said only $0.10 of every $1 that a housing provider receives is profit, with the remainder going to mortgage payments, property taxes or other operating expenses.

Most small landlords do not have access to credit to cover their costs from lost rent payments. More than half (58%) said they did not have access to any lines of credit that might help them in an emergency, according to Avail.

What about my own experience? I bought, as my first home, a duplex while making $50,000k a year (under the average wage for my state) several years ago. To date, I have never received a dime from friends or family through inheritance or otherwise to get me to where I am today not the least of which for the properties I own.

I net on this first property right now a grand total of $450 a month (about 15% of the total rent after mortgage/taxes but BEFORE maintenance costs) after years of rent increases and improvements to the property. I do all my own maintenance. Ive upgraded the property out of my pocket. I, during the pandemic, offered as much personal assistance to my tenants as possible to the point where I reduced rent for a number of months out of my own pocket just to help people out in a shitty time.

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Lastly, and I say this with absolute sincerity, get fucked.

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@Smarkil The guy you're responding to pretty much admitted to being a maoist. Read about what maoists want to do to landlords and understand you're wasting your time talking to him because you will never bridge that empathy gap.

Looks like Maoism is the new right wing distraction talking point

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Mead posted...

Looks like Maoism is the new right wing distraction talking point

Looks like accusations of being a right winger are the new internet dumbass distraction talking point. The guy is literally in this topic being an apologist for maoism with respect to landlords.

Gaawa_chan posted...

They got relief, too, which you would know if you weren't so busy simping for these greedy whiners.

Pretty cool how you completely skipped over the rest of his points.

jiffdiff posted...

The guy is literally in this topic being an apologist for maoism with respect to landlords.

youre the one obsessed with Mao dude

not wanting people out on the streets during a global pandemic is pretty fucking far cry from encouraging poor people to murder landlords, youre being a reactionary alarmist to the point of comical absurdity

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Smarkil posted...

I net on this first property right now a grand total of $450 a month (about 15% of the total rent after mortgage/taxes but BEFORE maintenance costs)

... Plus all the equity for the property. Which is enormous. Why don't you include that in what you're getting out of the deal when it's a huge contribution to wealth?

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Mead posted...

Looks like Maoism is the new right wing distraction talking point

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also, i had to look it up because my ancient ideology knowledge is, admittedly, a bit rusty

What is Maoist ideology?
Answer: Maoism is a form of communism developed by Mao Tse Tung. It is a doctrine to capture State power through a combination of armed insurgency, mass mobilization and strategic alliances.

almost as stupid as their prior boogeyman: marxism.

of which maoism is a variety of marxism, lmao.

however, it is interesting that...the maoism doctrine is exactly what was attempted on january 6th at the united states capitol.

all these people know how to do is projection, lmao

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Smarkil posted...

As opposed to what? Just having a moratorium indefinitely?

I don't agree with the moratorium in general because I think it's absurd that the government could just tell you you're not allowed to the laws that enable the business to work. However, I could at least understand it when people were on lockdowns, businesses were getting shut down, and a not insignificant percent of the population was completely unable to work on government orders. I don't agree with it, but I understand the moratorium in that case.

Now, however, we have the lowest unemployment rate we've had in 50 years. I get that rent is high and wages are low (though companies are so desperate now I'm regularly seeing fast food in the 20's with signing bonuses), but that's pretty much business as usual for this country. It's not the CDC's responsibility to resolve the wage gap. If there's supposed to be a justification that it significantly impacts the spread of the virus then they better have some good god damn statistics to justify fucking over legitimate land owners.

Wow, someone is highly not paying attention to the world.

Revelation34 posted...

People still believe that?

Yeah, it's true so why wouldn't we. Anyone that is in with Trump is fucking evil.

adjl posted...

You'll be complaining more about them sleeping on the streets, though.

No I won't, but the people not paying rent will be complaining while laying on a bench.

zebatov posted...

Opposite of here. So when landlords dont get their money, and therefore the banks dont get their money, the renter ends up on the street anyway because the bank takes the house from the landlord.

Landlords are doing their job and the renters are messing up the flow. The renters are blowing their money elsewhere, so that is on them and why they are getting thrown out.

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Dark_SilverX posted...

Landlords are doing their job and the renters are messing up the flow. The renters are blowing their money elsewhere, so that is on them and why they are getting thrown out.

The landlords are still owed their money and they can pursue legal action later. Don't worry, those poor, poor landlords will be just fine


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Arcturusisnow posted...

Yeah, it's true so why wouldn't we. Anyone that is in with Trump is fucking evil.

So how long has Kavanaugh been in prison now?

Clench281 posted...

The landlords are still owed their money and they can pursue legal action later. Don't worry, those poor, poor landlords will be just fine

Can't get any money if it doesn't exist.
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Revelation34 posted...

Can't get any money if it doesn't exist.

Yeah, and your tenant could die before paying rent, a tree could fall on your house, etc. I guess that's a risk you ultimately take on with an investment property (not a this-is-a-guaranteed-positive-return property)

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Noting that a tenant ultimately not paying rent is more of a not making as much wealth problem instead of a actively losing wealth problem

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Dark_SilverX posted...

No I won't, but the people not paying rent will be complaining while laying on a bench.

I applaud your logical consistency, but I'm afraid you're very much in the minority if you want delinquent tenants thrown out but don't also mind the existence of homeless people. Most people saying things like that want poor people to outright disappear, and will happily turn a blind eye to whatever has to happen to effect that end.

Dark_SilverX posted...

The renters are blowing their money elsewhere,

What, like on food? Utilities? Sure, there will always be renters that frivolously spend money they get from rent relief programs, and that's bad, but characterizing every person that can't make rent like that is baseless and outright harmful, especially when you use that to justify ending programs that countless people legitimately rely on.

Smarkil posted...

(Greg Brown, senior vice president for government affairs for the National Apartment Association ) He said only $0.10 of every $1 that a housing provider receives is profit, with the remainder going to mortgage payments, property taxes or other operating expenses.

Averaging a 10% profit margin is actually pretty good, especially considering the fact that you're seeing a constant growth in equity as the mortgage is paid and will eventually see that margin skyrocket once it's paid off and the tenant is paying you in full instead of paying your mortgage for you. Even more so where, with a decent tenant and a well-maintained property, there really isn't much actual work involved in earning that profit. I can count on one hand the number of hours of labour my landlords have had to put into the units I've been renting in the past three years, and making a collective $4740 (assuming 10% profit) for that is really, really good.

Also, I have to laugh at "housing provider." Landlords are middlemen. They don't create or provide housing any more than a grocery store creates or provides vegetables. The service landlords provide is to take on the risks of property ownership so those without the capital to cover those risks can live somewhere (albeit at a premium that, in many cases, quickly totals more than that necessary capital would have been). That changes when you start dealing with larger developments, whose parent companies do create housing, but you're focusing on par-time landlords, so we'll stick to that (especially where the corporate landlords do tend to be the ones laughing on their yachts while they double people's rents for no reason). Trying to use euphemisms for "landlord" isn't fooling anyone.

Smarkil posted...

Most small landlords do not have access to credit to cover their costs from lost rent payments. More than half (58%) said they did not have access to any lines of credit that might help them in an emergency, according to Avail.

As much as I hate to be callous about that, real estate is well-known to be a high risk investment. This has always been true, as much as large rental corporations have been pushing to erode tenant rights in an effort to reduce that risk. If somebody's making such a high risk investment without establishing a Plan B to cover their costs if it goes awry, that's just poor planning on their part, such that it's hard to sympathize with it. I'm all for improving the ability to evict and secure compensation from genuinely bad tenants, since there are as many horror stories out there of horrible tenants as there are of horrible landlords, but not at the expense of the countless good tenants that don't actively destroy the properties they rent.

Furthermore, there's a global pandemic afoot that has drastically affected most people's ability to make money. Why shouldn't landlords expect to similarly lose income? Conversely, landlords should also expect the same supports that are being offered to other people that are losing income, as appropriate (and the fact that they aren't being properly distributed is indeed a problem), but the notion that landlords losing money from the eviction moratorium is inherently so terrible that it would justify doing away with it is granting landlords a special status that no other businesses are seeing, and there's just no reason for that.

Smarkil posted...

I net on this first property right now a grand total of $450 a month (about 15% of the total rent after mortgage/taxes but BEFORE maintenance costs) after years of rent increases and improvements to the property. I do all my own maintenance. Ive upgraded the property out of my pocket. I, during the pandemic, offered as much personal assistance to my tenants as possible to the point where I reduced rent for a number of months out of my own pocket just to help people out in a s***ty time.

And you know what? I appreciate that you've done that, and I'm sorry that you're being adversely affected by measures meant to protect tenants from less empathetic landlords. Much like good tenants often end up being hurt by measures meant to compensate for bad ones, good landlords often end up being hurt by measures meant to restrict bad ones. It's unfair all around, such that the whole system needs a lot of drastic changes. Unfortunately, the bad landlords tend to also make the most money (by virtue of cutting costs to improve their margins, which in turn allows them to purchase more properties), which gives them the lobbying power to keep screwing over tenants and good landlords alike, so who knows what it'll take to actually effect those changes.

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