[HN Gopher] The Victims of the Eviction Moratorium ___________________________________________________________________ The Victims of the Eviction Moratorium Author : jseliger Score : 27 points Date : 2021-02-23 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (reason.com) (TXT) w3m dump (reason.com) | daniel-thompson wrote: | Clearly some landlords are getting hurt due to some tenants | taking unethical advantage of the situation. But I think we need | to wait to draw broad conclusions until this can be | systematically analyzed at the macro level, rather than doing so | from the one-off anecdotes in the article. | testfoobar wrote: | Landlords are part of the financial system. Deciding landlords | must take the loss on rent so that their tenants can be safe is | sensible health and social policy during the acute uncertain | phase of the pandemic last year. That uncertainty is now gone. | | If the government wants to house people in rental properties | indefinitely, then the government can pay to do so at the | prevailing market rates. | tomg wrote: | I don't understand how a waiter and a home-care provider can | afford to buy a rental property that is apparently worth charging | $80,000/yr in rent. I'm in the wrong business! | ceejayoz wrote: | As with much of the US pandemic response, a half measure with | significant consequences. | testfoobar wrote: | The sad part is how politicians and organized groups are | seemingly afraid to change their direction for fear of voter | retribution. Comparing datasets across states and regions, it | is not entirely clear to me which had the most effective | policies. I would like to see an official CDC report that | identifies which policies worked and which did not. I don't | think we're going to see a report - because it would become an | instant political hot potato. | | Eviction moratoriums in 2021 - a full year after the start of | the crisis are nonsensical. Individual owners such in the | article will eventually lose their properties to deeper pockets | - further entrenching wealth disparity. | jedmeyers wrote: | > Individual owners such in the article will eventually lose | their properties to deeper pockets | | How do we know that's not the actual goal of those policies? | testfoobar wrote: | Sad story. It is time for eviction moratoriums to be lifted. The | second peak of the pandemic is behind us in nearly all datasets | in the United States. | techsupporter wrote: | But is the second-wave of the economy coming roaring back so | that people have jobs to go to in order to pay rent behind us | in nearly all datasets in the United States? | | Or would those people still be thrown out onto the street with | no housing? | | Because if there's anything we need to be doing in the United | States, particularly on the West Coast, it's bringing _more_ | people to homelessness. | heavyset_go wrote: | I find it hard to be sympathetic with people who chose to | overleverage themselves with their investments. | bigmattystyles wrote: | You could make the exact same point towards the renters who | were banking on their job to pay the rent. One is called a | mortgage while the other is called rent. | heavyset_go wrote: | There's a difference between working to eat, and investing. | Investments have inherent risk, and if you can't bear that | risk, don't overleverage yourself. | bigmattystyles wrote: | Reading the article, the owners aren't exactly rolling in | it and are also depicted as mostly working class. If it | wasn't for a global pandemic, most would have been fine and | they would have thought to have invested very | conservatively. In my mind, it's just that it's | convenient/expedient to make them eat the cost of unpaid | rent - | rob74 wrote: | The difference being that you can choose to take out a loan | and buy a house, but you can't really choose not to pay rent | (unless you want to be homeless of course, but that's not an | option I would recommend to anyone) | RupertEisenhart wrote: | Do you also find it hard to sympathise with people who are | trying to escape the trap of poverty? If I made assumptions | about your circumstances, would I be surprised? | bigmattystyles wrote: | I feel the same way about rent control. It's not fair for society | at large to make property owners eat the cost or the lost | potential income alone. I am aggressively pro rent control and | pro eviction moratorium during the pandemic, but I am for a | (progressive) tax to fund these programs. It's just unfair to | make yourself feel good by supporting these programs when you | don't have any skin in the game. I'm not naive though, I know | that if you raise taxes to fund these programs as a society as | opposed to a property owner having to fund it alone, those | programs will lose their popularity. This is a case where most | people's support for these programs is literally all talk. And | yes, some property owners are scum and/or large corporations and | people will game the system. But then you address that with | oversight with teeth. | pasabagi wrote: | What is the moral basis of rent? Rent is by definition | differentiated from service provision in that it is simply the | use of a legal right to extract an income. | | I don't see a moral basis, so I don't see how anything that | impacts the interests of renters can be unfair. Bad on | pragmatic level, perhaps, but not a moral one. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-23 23:00 UTC)