[HN Gopher] California will pay off all past due rent
___________________________________________________________________
California will pay off all past due rent
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-06-22 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (politicalwire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (politicalwire.com)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean
| slate
|
| I feel a little torn: renters who may have lost their jobs, being
| able to get their heads above water seems to be a good thing.
| Bailing out the landlords seems to me to be less of a good thing.
|
| In a world that seems increasingly to tilt in favor of the
| fortunate (those owning the land) and offers little to the
| unfortunate (the renters) my desire for justice wants the scale
| to tip the other direction at least once in a while.
|
| Am I a bad person?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Here's an analogy. The police seize your car, which you needed
| in order to get to work. You stop earning income from the job
| you used to be able to commute to, but you still owe rent.
| You're still making car payments too. A year later, they give
| it back to you. Is it right for them to do that without
| compensating you for the loss of your car/income? At the very
| minimum, they should have been making the car payments for that
| period.
|
| A closer analogy is that the government seized your apartment
| for a year while still keeping you on the hook for mortgage
| payments and is now giving it back.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Is it right for them to do that without compensating you for
| the loss of your car/income?
|
| Right as in "morally right" or right as in "consistent with
| established precedent"? Because the answer is different
| depending on which one you pick. There is tons of precedent
| for people having negligible recourse when it's the
| government doing the screwing.
| nielsbot wrote:
| It's complicated, though, right?
|
| Maybe landlords losing their rental properties would allow
| more people to become homeowners. Earning money by charging
| rent (at a profit) is pure capitalism.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The landlord does no work for the income though, unlike your
| analogy.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Other than fixing plumbing, doing gardening, fixing the
| roof, etc.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| That doesn't even happen every month. Just how much
| should a landlord be paid per hour? As a tenant I'd be
| happy to pay market rates for maintenance instead of
| rent.
| [deleted]
| rhizome wrote:
| It's not a bad use of tax dollars to directly benefit tax
| payers.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's a little more gray when the person making the decision
| is facing a recall election and the subset of taxpayers
| befitting are a demographic (property owners) that is
| proportionately very likely to vote.
| rhizome wrote:
| It's not gray. The recall is BS and the recompense would
| have happened anyway.
|
| Well, maybe not if fucking Caitlyn Jenner was governor.
| ryan93 wrote:
| if they werent taxed in the first place they would also
| benefit
| gregorymichael wrote:
| Wonder what percentage of landlords are big corporations vs.
| mom and pops who invested in a multi-unit instead of a 401k.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| According an _Atlantic_ article titled _" BlackRock Is Not
| Ruining the U.S. Housing Market"_[1]:
|
| _" The U.S. has roughly 140 million housing units, a broad
| category that includes mansions, tiny townhouses, and
| apartments of all sizes. Of those 140 million units, about 80
| million are stand-alone single-family homes. Of those 80
| million, about 15 million are rental properties. Of those 15
| million single-family rentals, institutional investors own
| about 300,000; most of the rest are owned by individual
| landlords. Of that 300,000, BlackRock -- largely through its
| investment in the real-estate rental company Invitation Homes
| -- owns about 80,000..._
|
| _" Megacorps such as BlackRock, then, are not removing a
| large share of the market from individual ownership. Rental-
| home companies own less than half of one percent of all
| housing, even in states such as Texas, where they were
| actively buying up foreclosed properties after the Great
| Recession. Their recent buying has been small compared with
| the overall market."_
|
| [1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/black
| rock-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What portion of the individual landlords own multiple units
| and were operating in the green during the pandemic?
|
| Also, this is looking at only 80/140 million units which
| are singly family.
|
| I expect if you look at the other 60 million multi family
| units, the results would be the exact opposite. How many
| high rise apartment buildings in SF and NY are owned by
| individuals?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. And further, in which direction is the industry
| moving?
|
| It looks as though that my kids will be unable to buy a
| home and may be renters-for-life -- as with an
| increasingly larger percentage of the upcoming
| generations.
|
| No doubt, like in every other pursuit of Capitalism,
| there will be mergers, buyouts, and consolidation of the
| entire "rental industry".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I tend to agree that things will become increasingly
| consolidated, but think it is more the fault of the
| government, opposed to the capitalist system.
|
| It is the government which has inflated the cost of
| housing and assets out of the reach of many people. For
| example, in 2020, there were 10 _trillion_ dollars in US
| covid packages and federal reserve actions, which mostly
| went to corporation to buy assets out from under
| individuals. Thats > $60,000 per federal taxpayer.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| I do find the rush to make landlords whole a little strange.
| Isn't the concept here that you're making a speculative
| investment and the risk is what justifies the profit?
| xf1cf wrote:
| Why? Landlords were forced by edict to keep non-paying
| tenants while simultaneously footing the bill. This is
| completely unfair to landlords and makes the "speculative
| investment" argument into a government decree.
|
| The risk could not legally be mitigated. Otherwise, landlords
| would have evicted en masse everyone who couldn't pay after
| some period of time. I am friends with a few people who own
| houses. They were happy to help as long as their tenants
| could provide at least some payment. It's better in the long
| run to keep good tenants than to evict them even if it costs
| money in the short term. This isn't true in general however,
| and several places have toxic tenants who have refused to pay
| and are taking advantage of the moratorium.
|
| This is the literal definition of theft by decree. Making
| landlords whole should be top priority if their intention is
| to save the housing market. Imagine if they didn't - what
| would happen? Landlords would require stellar credit, several
| months payment up front, and regular financial checks. This
| all assuming they just don't pack up and sell their property
| (which has gone up significantly in value) thereby reducing
| the available places to rent.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > Imagine if they didn't - what would happen? Landlords
| would require stellar credit, several months payment up
| front, and regular financial checks. This all assuming they
| just don't pack up and sell their property (which has gone
| up significantly in value) thereby reducing the available
| places to rent.
|
| So the nightmare scenario here is more people own their
| homes?
|
| I'm not sure I see why that's bad, but it seems just as
| likely that they're selling to other landlords more able to
| handle the vicissitudes of the market.
| xf1cf wrote:
| Where I live Californians have absolutely decimated the
| market. A few realtor buddies of mine say they almost
| exclusively deal in cash buyers from there and I was
| almost outbid on my own house several years ago by the
| same people.
|
| The net result is either these homes will go to the
| wealthy in a state with outsized influence (California),
| or they will be purchased and lived in by them. This
| pushes the locals even further out of the market and
| doesn't really do anything to resolve the current supply
| shortage we have.
|
| For Duplexes though I think you are correct. Likely they
| will sell to far more stringent mega-corps capable of
| withstanding 100 year events.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's analogous to the government declaring it is ok to steal
| from a supermarket. The free market relies on the government
| protecting property rights. When there is a significant risk
| that the government is _not_ going to protect property
| rights, and even legalize outright theft, the end result is
| commonplace in such countries:
|
| Businesses refuse to invest in those countries, and they have
| poor economies that people try to escape from and move to the
| US.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Landlords are welcome to sell their property (at a likely
| tidy profit from what they bought it at, I might add, given
| current prices) and go elsewhere, if that's what they would
| like to do.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The price they can get for it will be reduced by the new
| risk of rent moratoriums.
|
| There's a general exodus of landlords from Seattle going
| on due to a series of punitive laws passed against them
| by the Seattle City Council.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/stop-new-
| ren...
|
| What this means for renters is less places available for
| rent, at much higher prices.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Maybe it will but the current market shows the exact
| opposite trend.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Yes but as a landlord I am supposed to be able to remove a
| non-paying tenant. They took away that ability, so now
| landlord HAD TO provide free housing to someone while still
| making mortgage payments.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Or default on the mortgage.
|
| You're not proving housing, you're preventing people from
| having housing unless they pay you. When housing wasn't a
| speculative investment it was far cheaper and far fewer
| people were forced to rent to make someone else money for
| no labour.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Some landlords rent out a room in their own house they
| live in. If they stopped renting there would be no
| additional housing available.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Couldn't those that are currently such landlords have
| been incentivised to purchase smaller homes, making more
| large ones available? Or alternatively, some large homes
| could be subdivided.
|
| Why should tenants pay for the greed of landlords? They
| get paid for doing nothing, the least they could do is
| bear their own risks.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Ok, but how do we handle this _until_ we completely
| remake the world in precisely the way that lucian1900
| thinks it should be?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| So you've never heard of duplexes? Default -> homeless
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The government changed the rules of the investment, though.
| Before the eviction moratorium, landlords could at least
| predict the maximum amount of rent they would lose due to
| non-payment before they could evict someone and find new
| tenants. The moratorium removed that option, changing the
| risk profile dramatically without warning. That's the issue.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| It really scares me that this even needs to be explained to
| people. The government is outright stealing from landlords.
| They literally made it illegal (while also not passing an
| actual law, as far as I know [which is how every COVID
| restriction worked as well]) to evict somebody.
|
| So many people have this juvenile notion of what a landlord
| is, too. They seem to think the only type of landlord is a
| mega-tycoon that owns hundreds of properties. Don't get me
| wrong, I am against all forms of theft so it's still wrong
| to steal from them, but it makes it a lot more apparent how
| wrong it is when you're stealing from the old Grandma that
| has 1 or 2 extra properties that she rents out.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I totally agree. I don't understand what isn't clear
| about this. The rules completely changed against the
| landlord. They got completely hosed by this.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 1) I wonder how many landlords would have evicted but
| found their _hands tied_ by the government. I mean, who
| was going to move in?
|
| 2) You call this notion of a landlord as a mega-tycoon
| juvenile but then present the equally juvenile (in my
| opinion) idea that land lords are just old Grandma with 1
| or 2 extra properties she rents out.
|
| 1 or 2 extra properties? Wow, grandma. Must be nice.
|
| And I think the data will show that the trend in
| landlords is in fact toward mega-tycoons. (Sort of like
| the trend in farming that _used_ to be old Grandpa with 1
| or 2 acres.)
| emodendroket wrote:
| If a change in the law causes a stock I own to crater in
| value, is the government "outright stealing from" me?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| The issue here isn't the value of the property going
| down.
| emodendroket wrote:
| So imagine I lost my dividend, which is a more plausible
| analogy than many of the others being offered up.
| nybble41 wrote:
| That obviously depends on what the change was. If the
| business of the company in question was predicated on
| selling services to the government and the law changes
| such that they no longer require the company's services,
| then no, that is not stealing from you. If the change in
| the law is that the company is henceforth required to
| provide service without payment then yes, absolutely,
| that is stealing from you.
|
| The government doesn't owe you a particular market price,
| but when they interfere with your perfectly voluntary
| private business dealings (or just outright take your
| stuff for public use without just compensation, which is
| basically what happened here) that is a clear-cut example
| of theft.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| They didn't interfere with voluntary business dealings.
| They took away a service (evictions) that you were
| expecting the government to provide to assist your
| business dealings.
| gruez wrote:
| In some cases, yes. Hence why trade deals contain IDS
| provisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-
| state_dispute_settlem...
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| To others, "the issue" is that the rules of investment
| include commoditizing homes while militarizing police
| responses to vagrancy and loitering. IMHO, bailing out all
| landlords with the budget surplus makes sense for a
| different reason: to ensure that the next time the
| government needs to do something like this, given the ever
| escalating financial and fiscal emergency in which a
| majority of us find ourselves, they know that the
| government will figure out a make good on the other end.
| treeman79 wrote:
| The state caused the harm to landlords. So it can be argued
| the state is responsible for the problem.
|
| Imagine your neighbor sneezes. So the bank sends thugs to
| take steak your rent money. Then sending police to take your
| house for non payment.
|
| All the while blaming you as the problem.
|
| At some point the absurdity has to be dealt with.
|
| Yes this argument is flawed. But so is the whole shutting
| down the economy thing.
| freerobby wrote:
| If the State is protecting debtors from going through
| bankruptcy, it seems appropriate that the State compensate the
| creditors who would otherwise be able to make claims as part of
| bankruptcy.
| aaomidi wrote:
| A better solution would've been to average out how much rent is
| per month. For people who owed their landlords, that money just
| gets given to the landlords as an amount to bail them out. For
| example, $1250/month. Landlords would legally be required to
| accept that as payment for any debt owed by their tenants.
|
| Everyone else who was able to continue paying rent gets $1250 *
| {however many months the government is covering}. Landlords
| included.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| Better link: https://apnews.com/article/california-health-
| coronavirus-pan...
| skilesare wrote:
| We left California last year because our rent was too high for
| risky times. This fucking sucks. We could have stayed and Saved a
| ton of our kid's and our heartbreak and our landlord(a great guy)
| could have been made whole. Wtf?
| oluwie wrote:
| There were laws in place that protected you from being evicted
| if you couldn't pay your rent. You could have stayed if you
| really wanted to.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Those laws did not happen immediately, nor was it clear what
| would happen if they did not pay their rent. Skilesare made
| the sensible move by presuming they would have a ton of
| unaffordable debt if they had stayed and ended up with a bill
| for all of the unpaid rent.
|
| However, as US governments are prone to do, the decision is
| made to punish those who were prudent and made sacrifices,
| and to assist those who took risks. Which might be okay if
| the government was giving the cash to everyone, as that would
| not punish those who made sacrifices.
| kbelder wrote:
| They liked their landlord; maybe they didn't want to
| (effectively) steal tens of thousands of dollars from him.
| [deleted]
| gotoeleven wrote:
| If you think of the california government as a natural disaster
| then things make a lot more sense.
| Simulacra wrote:
| What kind of fraud protections might there be? Let's say a renter
| only pays in cash. They agree with the landlord to lie and say
| they have not paid rent for the past x months. Landlord collects
| money and splits with tennent.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I hope there is an unemployment/income test for individuals
| receiving this benefit, and a means test for the companies
| receiving it.
|
| There is no reason for individuals who were employed throughout
| covid to receive this. Same for multinational rental companies
| who operated in the green throughout the pandemic.
|
| I don't think my sliver of hope in public policy could handle it
| otherwise.
|
| Meanwhile, most of the fully employed people I know with student
| debt are skipping payments in anticipation of federal loan
| forgiveness
| lilyball wrote:
| No. Means tests only exclude those who need it. The fact that
| some people will get money who didn't truly need it doesn't
| harm anyone, and it's far better for some people to get a
| benefit they don't need than for people who need it to be
| excluded. And besides, means testing costs money to execute,
| and often raises the cost above what it would be if they simply
| didn't means test.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Please don't start posts with "No." I find it undermines
| constructive discussion and attempts to find common
| understanding.
|
| It is not hard to show a 2020 tax filing and demonstrate
| income, or lack theof, and should be a reasonable request
| before giving someone 10s of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
|
| What do you think would be an appropriate level of scrutiny?
| Should anyone be able to apply with no fact checking
| whatsoever?
| godshatter wrote:
| Initiatives like these always tend to hurt the most responsible
| people more than the rest. The landlords are fine. The people who
| maybe could have paid their rent on time but didn't want to
| reduce spending in other areas to compensate for it end up okay.
| It's the people who paid their rent first and on time then
| reduced spending in other areas that are the ones getting the
| short end of the stick. This only applies to people that could
| actually switch things around like this, though.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| > The people who maybe could have paid their rent on time but
| didn't want to reduce spending in other areas to compensate for
| it end up okay.
|
| Honest question- do they in fact end up OK? What about their
| credit? I imagine most credit agencies, future landlords,
| lenders, etc. would consider it material information to know
| whether a borrower / prospective tenant had declined to / been
| unable to pay their rent for over a year.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Ignoring the details (who is and is not fine, who is
| irresponsible vs who is unlucky, etc), you're right - but
| that's the inevitable social contract behind all government.
| It's a zero sum game and not everybody wants or needs to
| benefit from every resource equally, so all action boils down
| to some form of redistribution, directly or indirectly.
| hn8788 wrote:
| The problem is that it sets a precedent for the future. If a
| similar situation of extended lockdowns happens, why would
| anyone pay their rent if the government has shown that
| they'll pay it for you when the lockdowns are over?
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Because you have minimal chance it will happen again at an
| opportune moment for you. I'm still waiting for Cash-for-
| Clunkers 2.0 so I can offload my rust bucket. Unless that
| happens in the next couple of years, I will have no use for
| the program (again, dammit!).
| burkaman wrote:
| People who paid their rent aren't hurt by this at all, they
| just aren't directly helped by it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They are paying or at least on the hook for the cost of
| everyone else.
| burkaman wrote:
| You don't pay tax on rent, so I don't see the connection.
| Some people might have stopped paying rent but kept paying
| income tax, so they contributed to this as well.
|
| One could argue (I would disagree) that taxpayers are hurt
| by this, but taxpayers and people who paid rent are not the
| same group.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The people I was pointing to being hurt is the income tax
| payers at large.
|
| How would you argue that they are not hurt by it?
| burkaman wrote:
| This policy was necessary to avoid mass evictions, which
| would have required the state to spend even more in
| social services for those evicted. So taxpayers
| ultimately save money.
|
| Also, seems like this is largely being paid for with
| pandemic-related federal aid money, which I think had
| restrictions on how it can be used, unlike tax revenue.
| nielsbot wrote:
| How so?
| ar_lan wrote:
| Because they paid rent (responsible), and now their taxes
| are going to pay landlords for other's rent. It's
| basically saying there is an incentive to stop paying
| rent if the government will just pick up the tab.
|
| Note: I'm not saying I agree with the mindset above, but
| this is a how a good chunk of people think.
| kbelder wrote:
| Elsewhere on HN there's an article about how Americans no
| longer think hard work will lead to success.
|
| I suspect these sorts of political actions are a large
| part of the reason. It is just one more kick to a person
| who worked hard to cover their responsibilities. One more
| thing to make them wonder why they even try.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is such an odd position. Completely seriously with
| no /s or irony whatsoever, why should you even try? There
| is no inherent piousness in hard work. I don't believe
| for a second that my success has anything to do with hard
| work. I fell into a career field that pays well and I got
| my opportunity by being raised by white middle-class
| parents. I work less hard than all of my peers while
| making more than them because mysterious market forces
| completely beyond my control. In a parallel universe the
| financial situations would be reversed with no change to
| our jobs except I would be labeled lazy.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I assume those who could pay, did. Others (and their
| landlords) are getting a government bailout.
| ar_lan wrote:
| Yes, I assume as well.
|
| I think "government bailout", while technically true, is
| a bit loaded, however. Landlord's hands were forced by
| the eviction moratorium - so it's a bailout for a problem
| the government caused.
|
| Now, that "problem" is probably better then the
| alternative (a bunch of people suddenly becoming homeless
| in the middle of the pandemic), but the state did force
| landlords to not evict even if rent wasn't getting paid
| (not allowing them to find new renters who could try to).
| beerandt wrote:
| It's not a bailout.
|
| It's money that's either _contractually_ owed by the
| renter, or _constitutionally_ owed by the government, as
| a private taking.
|
| The landlords are being made whole, not getting "free"
| government bailout money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's basically saying there is an incentive to stop
| paying rent if the government will just pick up the tab.
|
| Well, no, its not; its saying that _if_ the government
| declares an eviction moratorium (which is extremely rare)
| without a rent moratorium, it _might_ also, later, if
| finances ard convenient and it otherwise feels it
| expedient, retroactively decide to pay off unpaid rents
| before the end of that moratorium gets you evicted for
| unpaid rent.
|
| (OTOH, the Fifth Amendment litigation already happening
| around the eviction moratorium itself might make that
| non-optional, anyway, and mooting that by providing full
| compensation now potentially saves the additional costs
| associated with litigation.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That doesn't address the question of where the money
| comes from (taxes & debt).
|
| I totally agree that the government screwed over
| landlords with the moratorium. Everyone with an IQ above
| room temperature at the time agreed a better solution was
| better unemployment insurance for those who lost their
| jobs.
| ab737 wrote:
| Only civilised society rewards the rule-abiding citizen.
| Californians have got what they voted for.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| This can be extrapolated to the handling of the corona virus
| itself. How are the states that made the hard decision to keep
| their economy going vs locking it down supposed to feel when in
| the end states like California who had one of the strictest
| lockdowns that even drove Elon out of the state ended up
| getting a bailout anyway..the right thing apparently doesn't
| matter when you have access to unlimited fiat money. Lessened
| learned from the guy who paid and went to work like a sucker
| lilyball wrote:
| Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off.
|
| The people who haven't paid their rent have done so by and
| large because they couldn't afford it, not because they just
| chose not to. Paying off their rent helps those people, the
| people who couldn't afford to pay it themselves, and ensures
| they don't lose their housing as a result.
|
| It certainly is true that landlords benefit from this package
| as they get their money, as opposed to an alternative like
| forcing all rent debts to be forgiven. But "landlords benefit"
| isn't a harm.
|
| Perhaps a more equitable solution would have been to determine
| the median rent across the state and then give that amount of
| money to all renters. But that has a lot of difficulties, such
| as how do you handle folks who rented only for part of this
| time (including those who had to stop renting due to job loss).
| And what about folks who own their homes and are dealing with
| mortgages; paying off rent is likely to be more accepted by
| non-renters than a plan where non-renters get money and renters
| don't. Of course, the plan could be extended to people with
| mortgages too. Or heck, just give this money to every person
| over 18 (or 21?) in the state. This would presumably
| significantly expand the costs involved in the plan though, but
| it would certainly be the most equitable.
| acchow wrote:
| > Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off.
|
| There are plenty of ways for the state to use this money to
| benefit everyone instead of only landlords.
| newfriend wrote:
| If I give a million dollars to everyone except you, am I
| harming you? I didn't do anything to you, but you are now in
| a much worse position than everyone else.
|
| That is how it harms people. Even worse, it harms only the
| most responsible people.
| luffapi wrote:
| It helps the most responsible people (and everyone else) by
| not causing a massive wave of homelessness. When people are
| evicted, they don't vaporize. They're still your neighbors,
| they just live on the sidewalk in front of your house.
|
| Whether you view it as an ethical win or a practical one,
| reducing homelessness helps all of us.
| skilesare wrote:
| Yeah...f this. I feel harmed. I put my family through a lot
| to be responsible.
| gattis wrote:
| well, the money to pay the rent off comes from somewhere...
| ultimately taxpayers, which includes these "responsible"
| people
|
| every time the government alters the fair-market price for
| things, a transfer of wealth is created. sometimes for the
| better. but yeah, in every case, someone is getting boned.
|
| at least this is only addressing the past and not creating
| upside-down incentives going forward. if the state said they
| were paying off any delinquent rent going forward, then only
| a fool would pay their rent. although, I'm sure a lot of
| people are making a mental note for themselves to stop paying
| rent the next time there is a state of emergency.
| ummonk wrote:
| That's not true. A lot of people chose not to pay rent
| because they didn't have to thanks to the eviction freeze.
| godshatter wrote:
| > Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off.
|
| I wasn't really objecting to the initiative necessarily, just
| lamenting the fact that the people who decided to sacrifice
| more to keep their rent paid up during a tough time instead
| of just letting it slide hoping they can figure something out
| later are the ones that aren't really gaining anything here.
| I don't know what the best solution would be here.
| rajin444 wrote:
| The middle class family that halted saving for a home to pay
| for rent is not harmed here? I would be furious. There's
| certainly harm in policies that reduce trust in the system.
|
| Something like a 0% interest loan from the government seems
| more fair here, but much harder to implement.
| Spivak wrote:
| You would be furious that someone who couldn't pay their
| rent is getting aid while someone who you, who could,
| isn't? I will never understand why people get so angry and
| others' lack of suffering. When you fall on hard times do
| you not wish that others not have to suffer like you did?
|
| "I had known I was going to get a bailout I would have
| purposely not met my contractual obligations" isn't really
| the best argument.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The other fair way is give everyone the same amount of
| bailouts, regardless if they need it or not.
|
| This specific way (and all the other bailouts the US does)
| wrecks people who are responsible and save. But it should
| be clear to everyone by now that holding USD and playing it
| safe are the losing positions, as all risk will be
| socialized and profit will be privatized.
|
| Not playing the game means losing.
| luffapi wrote:
| > _The middle class family that halted saving for a home to
| pay for rent is not harmed here?_
|
| No, the middle class family benefits because there isn't an
| army of homeless people in their city.
|
| If landlords find their speculation doesn't pay off, I'm
| not harmed. If millions of people are evicted, we are all
| harmed.
| hn8788 wrote:
| At a minimum they should at least force you to submit a
| financial report and show that you couldn't pay your rent.
| Back when the housing bubble burst, I knew people who stopped
| paying their mortgage because the only way to qualify for a
| short sale was if you weren't paying your mortgage. They
| could still afford to pay it, they just felt like moving and
| didn't want to lose money on the house.
| content_sesh wrote:
| What proof is there that means-testing this to weed out
| "unworthy" renters will save more money than it costs?
| duskwuff wrote:
| If anything, adding an intrusive means test (like a
| "financial report") is likely to exclude a lot of
| deserving renters, especially ones who are
| unbanked/underbanked.
| gruez wrote:
| > Nobody is being harmed by having unpaid rent paid off.
|
| opportunity cost?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| It depends on your goals. Do you want to create a maximally
| fair society? Or do you want to minimize suffering? If it is
| the latter, it can be completely acceptable for aid initiatives
| to end up giving more to people who planned less well.
| ar_lan wrote:
| This is a very similar situation to student loan forgiveness,
| and for a very long time I shared your attitude.
|
| You are correct in the sense that programs like this
| _incentivize_ being irresponsible, on the surface. I went
| through all of college working extra-hard to make sure I came
| out debt-free, while other people racked up debt partying - and
| now they maybe get to get these loans completely forgiven?
|
| It feels similar. But one thing I came to realize is overall,
| the people who are actually being benefited here are typically
| not people who _wanted_ to not pay rent. They are people who
| wish their livelihoods weren 't necessarily uprooted due to an
| unforeseen pandemic.
|
| It punishes the "responsible" in the same vein that a
| libertarian might view taxes as punishment. But this is
| overwhelmingly helping those who got affected the hardest in
| society - so I think "punishment" is the wrong mindset, and it
| could really be viewed as just "helping" those who need the
| help the most.
| olivermarks wrote:
| The landlords aren't 'fine'. I know of a couple of people
| crippled by lack of rent income, the mortgages were still due.
|
| There was no moratorium on paying mortgages and a lot of people
| have made huge sacrifices in order to hang onto their
| properties in the last 14 months.
| nielsbot wrote:
| You'd need data to know the percentage of landlords that are
| struggling. If landlords are struggling with their
| investments, they were over leveraged in a sense.
|
| Personally I am not opposed to this type of bottom-up
| bailout, however I think this move should not end up being
| profit-generating for landlords. Not sure how you'd determine
| that, etc.
| cmckn wrote:
| My landlord owns two properties. I live in an expensive
| area. If I didn't pay my rent for a year, it's unreasonable
| to assume that they could float that. Do we want to live in
| a world where all landlords are large corporate entities
| with the leverage to survive a once in a century upset? (I
| do not.)
|
| It's in vogue to harp on landlords, but it's one of the
| more common small business models; owning a rental property
| is probably the most realistic way you or I could earn some
| income on the side. They're not all Scrooge McDucks.
| nielsbot wrote:
| No, but what about having more homeowners instead?
| cmckn wrote:
| Landlords will always need to exist, because there will
| always be situations when renting is advantageous or
| necessary. But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read:
| me) to make the transition from renting to owning.
| foogazi wrote:
| > But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to
| make the transition from renting to owning
|
| Plenty of housing available before blackrock snatches it
| all up
|
| https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-
| Montgo...
| olivermarks wrote:
| It would be ideal to have more homeowners but right now
| we have Blackrock et al buying up real estate to rent
| out.
|
| 'in the future you will not own anything' #WEF
| https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-
| buying...
| notJim wrote:
| I'm not sure why it's so amazing that there are a bunch
| of local landlords profiting off people's need for
| shelter. Great for them that they get to get rich, but
| why is making sure rich people stay rich so important
| again?
|
| In my experience, landlords are often a pretty toxic
| element in local politics (opposing upzoning, opposing
| progressive policies in general.) IME as a renter
| corporate landlords were not really better or worse than
| small-time landlords. At least with the corporate
| landlords, I can buy shares in the company and reap some
| of the rewards back. Even better, the government could
| buy shares through a social wealth fund, and return some
| of the profits to the whole of society.
| beerandt wrote:
| >why is making sure rich people stay rich so important
| again?
|
| Why is enforcing legal contracts so important?
|
| Besides being one of the very primal functions of a
| working government.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| If all of the properties owned by small scale landlords
| are converted into properties owned by large scale ones,
| you're going to end up with more income inequality.
|
| It also probably pulls wealth out of the local area,
| depending on where the owners of those larger
| corporations are.
| ericmcer wrote:
| So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not getting
| rent will cause me to default immediately. This is a
| frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a safety net
| and other fallbacks in place. The current economy continues
| to reward taking on as much debt as possible (stocks only go
| up, houses only go up, past due rents covered, etc.) and
| punish ever having cash in reserve.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not
| getting rent will cause me to default immediately.
|
| It is not immediately. This has been going on for a year.
|
| >This is a frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a
| safety net and other fallbacks in place.
|
| It is one thing to save, but many people are not able to
| save for a year or more. They may have lost their job AND
| no longer get any rent money for a year.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| There's a difference between losing some of your passive
| income versus losing the home you live in.
|
| Landlord are absolutely fine.
| olivermarks wrote:
| There are many people who previously scraped together money
| to buy rental income homes who have really struggled during
| the eviction moratorium. It is very expensive to maintain
| rental properties in California and the eviction moratorium
| has made it possible for people to get federal relief money
| via California but not pay their rent. The idea 'landlords'
| are heartless, louche smug rentier folks is not born out in
| the vast majority of cases. This is Newsom buying votes to
| try to prevent the recall IMO, along with other cash
| handouts and showboating going on.
|
| A sensible solution 12 months ago would have been to pay
| renters rent for them directly, but that wouldn't have been
| as desirable politically.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The vast majority of rental properties are owned by
| people who aren't even remotely close to struggling. You
| can verify that both statistically (richer landlords own
| more properties) and anecdotally as a renter.
|
| Housing would also be far cheaper if it wasn't common to
| speculate on it, by landlords small and large. It used to
| be, in fact.
|
| A far more sensible solution would be to outlaw owning a
| property one doesn't live in, so housing prices would
| come down to levels where us renters would be able to
| buy.
|
| An in-between solution would be massive social housing
| programmes, so people can rent much more cheaply from a
| non-profit entity. After all, building housing is a tiny
| fraction of the cost of housing, the rest is all
| speculation.
| spfzero wrote:
| The largest fraction is the value of the land. The land
| is not more expensive because landlords own it, rather
| than homeowners. It's expensive because more people want
| to live on it, whether they own or rent. People want to
| live in certain areas, due to proximity to jobs, nice
| weather, transportation etc.
|
| Homeowners speculate too. It would be hard to find
| someone buying a home who was not considering its future
| value.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Is that true? Arguably the vast majority of the value of
| the land is also due to speculation.
|
| After all, most cities have large numbers of unoccupied
| homes, owned merely as a financial instrument.
| awillen wrote:
| Outlaw owning property that one doesn't live in means
| that anyone who can't afford to buy is homeless, because
| renting is illegal. That's not a sensible solution. You
| say "us renters would be able to buy" but you're probably
| not someone who's living paycheck to paycheck. Those
| people can't afford to buy even if real estate prices
| drop dramatically.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The state or local authorities could easily rent out to
| those that do not own, social housing already exists and
| used to be far more common. Entire countries had nothing
| but social housing before 89. Private landlords aren't
| the only way renting can work.
|
| A single minimum wage used to be enough for a family to
| get a mortgage, that has not been true in many decades in
| most countries.
| pxeboot wrote:
| > There was no moratorium on paying mortgages
|
| Maybe not for large commercial loans, but traditional
| mortgages (usually for 1-4 unit properties) absolutely could
| be deferred for ~1 year if you could show a loss of income
| from the pandemic.
| mlyle wrote:
| I feel like I need to translate because of the over-emphasis
| on the word "fine." The person is saying after an initiative
| like this, the landlords and those who were willfully
| delinquent end up made whole or nearly so, but those who
| scrimped to pay rent under difficult circumstances end up
| worst off.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Could they sell the property?
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| Renting out houses is not a risk-free business. Risk
| materialized and hit people who took way more than they could
| chew.
|
| But I doubt most of them are really "crippled" in light of
| crazy price appreciation on the other hand. They might be
| forced to sell due to cash flow problems (immediate cause of
| most business failures anyway, no?), but should still be in
| the plus after the sale goes through.
| mizzack wrote:
| Most risk is covered by lease terms. Failing that, there's
| eviction... until the government intervened and changed the
| fundamental contract.
|
| And, no, no one is going to buy your house if it has non-
| paying tenants that can't be evicted. They would just be
| inheriting your problem due to tenant's rights.
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| Non-paying tenants is just a short-term problem and you
| can put a dollar amount on it. It's not the worst thing
| that can happen to a property. People with deeper pockets
| than you and able to wait it out would still buy with the
| right discount for the inconvenience and uncertainty. Or
| even for the mere right to be your buyer - there's
| extreme housing supply shortage in certain markets if you
| haven't been following the news. With some comical
| extremities like people pledging to name their firstborn
| after the seller etc
| WalterBright wrote:
| Having the government declare that renters can live rent-
| free and cannot be evicted is not a normal business risk.
| It's very close to outright confiscation of property.
|
| Governments that do such things tend to have very poor
| economies as a result, as very few businesses are willing
| to undertake such risks.
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| It's longtail-ish but there could be a number of other
| reasons why you might not be able to rent out a property
| for many many months.
| awillen wrote:
| Sure, but when the government is the one that expressly
| puts these rules in place, the government needs to take
| responsibility for the impact of them.
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| And they did! At least in California, that's the news
| here. Overleveraged people got a lesson but will be made
| whole it seems. And every houseowner massively profited
| from house price appreciation.
| beerandt wrote:
| It is confiscation of property, and an illegal one, since
| it's not for public use.
|
| Not allowing an owner to exercise all of his rights of
| ownership is a taking, even if it's not permanent.
|
| You see this often with construction projects that
| expropriate not only the title to land needed, but also
| temporary servitudes (leases) on adjacent land for site
| access or extra room for construction.
|
| Point being, the "temporary" nature of the order, and the
| fact that the landlord retains title/ ownership, doesn't
| preclude it from being an (un)constitutional "taking" of
| private property.
| bronzeage wrote:
| It's kind of done for the public good. If it didn't
| happen, there's a chance the rent/housing market would
| spiral out of control along with the economy, dragging
| down the landlords with it.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Most courts to consider it so far have not considered the
| state-level eviction moratorium laws to be a taking that
| is occurring without compensation.
|
| See, e.g.,
| https://www.inversecondemnation.com/files/eviction-
| moratoriu... (massachusetts)
|
| (A federal court also declined to block it)
|
| I am too lazy to look at all of them.
|
| The reason they are usually found not to be takings is
| twofold.
|
| First, they only prevent a specific type of relief. In
| most of them, nothing in them stops the landlord from
| suing for money damages, or even necessarily for breach
| of contract with ejection as a remedy. They only usually
| prevent you from filing eviction petitions.
|
| Second, they generally do not state that you are not owed
| the money, only that you may not temporarily collect it.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/takings goes through most
| of the current tests, and most moratorium rules fail
| them.
|
| For example, taking again the MA one:
|
| 1. It does not allow permanent physical occupation (they
| are temporary)
|
| 2. It does not cause loss of _all_ beneficial /productive
| uses of the land (you are still owed the money, and in
| fact can sue for money damages)
|
| etc
| philistine wrote:
| Where I live, a renting agreement is covered by certain
| government guarantees. For example, you cannot evict
| someone if they fail to pay, you need to obtain consent
| from a judge to do that.
|
| To my mind, if the government suddenly refuses to evict
| anyone for public health reasons, the taking of
| intangible property rights is minimal, non-discriminatory
| and justified. We're at war with a virus here, some
| sacrifices will have to be made. If people can be
| evicted, more people will die than if they stay put.
| paxys wrote:
| Not every landlord is doing fine. A huge portion of the rental
| market is individual owners relying on rent income to keep up
| their mortgage payments.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Are there data on this?
| xnyan wrote:
| Lots of investors have been convinced that they are not
| really investors and housing is not really an investment but
| rather a source of "passive" income. If anyone is in trouble
| with their (primary residence) mortgage for whatever reason,
| I support polices that provide assistance.
|
| Outside of that, like all investments renting a dwelling
| involves risks including the risk that you may not able to
| boot your tenet if they stop paying for a time.
| spfzero wrote:
| That risk has always been 90 days maximum loss of rent, by
| law in some places, so you could understand landlords
| calculating that happening maybe once every 5 years or so.
| And they could be careful in selecting tenants, so they had
| a way to mitigate the risk.
|
| In this case, however, the law was changed retroactively to
| an open-ended, tenant-gets-to-live-in-your-house-for-free.
| Hard to see how landlords should have factored the
| likelihood of that in.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| There is risk that the property would be damaged, risk
| that massive maintenance bills could arise (cracks in the
| foundation), risk that it would be unrentable, that
| rental rates would drop, or that property values would
| decrease.
|
| If small investors were basing their calculations that
| the only risk is up to 90 days without rent... then yeah,
| they miscalculated the risks.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > including the risk that you may not able to boot your
| tenet if they stop paying
|
| I agree that this is a risk landlords must consider, but
| there is a big difference between ordinary investment risk
| (mispredicting future supply/demand/cost/etc.), or
| unforeseen accidents or "acts of god" (e.g. losing your
| rental property to a wildfire or flood), and the risk that
| some powerful third party will step in and prevent you from
| evicting someone squatting on your property. The first two
| cases are either your own fault or no-fault; the third case
| is a direct result of deliberate action by someone else,
| which means that _they_ , not you, should be liable to
| repair the harm which _they_ caused.
| xnyan wrote:
| I agree that if the government halts evictions, then the
| government should foot the bill, however it is known that
| the government does have the ability to force private
| entities to provide critical services (for example,
| emergency room services) at the cost of the provider.
| Right or wrong, there's plenty of historical evidence
| that this is a real risk for providers of housing and
| needs to be considered when making decisions about
| housing investments.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I agree that if the government halts evictions, then
| the government should foot the bill, however it is known
| that the government does have the ability to force
| private entities to provide critical services (for
| example, emergency room services) at the cost of the
| provider.
|
| Is there? Your one example js weaker than you seem to
| think. For emergency room services, the law requires that
| for _Medicare-participating_ hospitals. That 's
| practically equivalent to a general requirement, but its
| legally distinct, and landlords don't have a practical
| necessity to sell their services to the government as
| well as other customers.
| beerandt wrote:
| Even there, there's almost always a mechanism for the
| state to reimburse the the hospital for unpaid emergent
| care.
|
| And it's (generally) only mandatory when the patients
| condition is emergent, and the hospital is only required
| to stabilize them before discharging them. Not treat them
| indefinitely, or even treat/test for every presenting
| symptom they might have at the time.
|
| Most states have similar eviction laws, giving renters
| 7-14 days to move out. After that, it's no longer an
| emergent condition.
| pasabagi wrote:
| This is crazy. Everybody expects to lose money in natural
| catastrophes - except, for some reason, if you're in the least
| productive and most predatory sector of our economy (the
| landlord), you're entitled to a bailout, for what purpose
| exactly? What's the human harm that happens if some banks
| repossess a few over-leveraged rental properties? Compared to the
| millions who have lost jobs, school years, their health, etc in
| the pandemic? Making landlords whole should be the _last_ thing
| anybody is spending money on.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Because the government put in place an eviction moratorium. Why
| do the landlords have to pick up the tab? If there was no
| moratorium and the landlords had the ability to evict, I would
| agree with you. But in this case, the government forced them to
| house people so they should pay up.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Why do the landlords have to pick up the tab
|
| Instead we taxpayers have to.
| dntrkv wrote:
| As we should, since the eviction moratorium was put in
| place to prevent mayhem during a pandemic that affects
| everyone.
| sushid wrote:
| I don't understand why landlords would be in a class by
| themselves when the pandemic hurt businesses/ventures
| across the board. Why are restaurants forced to close not
| made whole? What about factories that lost productivity?
| What about people that lost their lives being "essential
| workers"?
|
| CA is already the biggest landlord/homeowner friendly
| state by far with Prop 13 screwing everyone else. Not
| sure why landlords charging $4000 a month for a 100 year
| house gets off scot free when we have business shutting
| down permanently from COVID.
| dntrkv wrote:
| PPP ($1T), EIDL ($300B), Stimulus Checks ($400B),
| Restaurant Revitalization Fund ($30B), EDD/Unemployment
| ($300 + $600 = $900/week per person) vs $5B ($45B
| extrapolated to the whole country) for landlords.
|
| And the landlords were the only ones that were required
| to continue providing service without being paid.
| sushid wrote:
| Why are you including federal loan programs and stimulus
| checks when we're talking about a CA program that
| benefits only landlords?
|
| These are also programs that landlords would have already
| directly and indirectly benefited from.
| dntrkv wrote:
| This program benefits the tenants who owe back rent, they
| indirectly benefit the landlords. Otherwise, the
| landlords can sue/evict those tenants with the
| repercussions associated with doing so. California
| stepped up to prevent this. Other states that don't do
| this, will have a lot of pissed off landlords and
| homeless people.
|
| Most landlords are individuals with 1 or 2 properties and
| would not qualify for PPP, EIDL, Restaurant
| Revitalization Fund, or the Shuttered Venues Grant.
|
| And even if there weren't programs focused on helping
| other industries, the way landlords were affected is
| unique since they had to continue providing service for
| free.
|
| Were restaurants required to continue feeding people
| throughout the pandemic with no pay?
| alert0 wrote:
| This is a similar situation to rent control, it privatizes
| the costs of a social problem.
| triceratops wrote:
| Presumably the eviction moratorium was in place to prevent
| large-scale homelessness and social unrest. If 10% of the
| population was suddenly out on the streets, it would be total
| mayhem; near societal collapse. In a situation like that, how
| many good, paying tenants are there to go around, to replace
| the people that got evicted?
| sushid wrote:
| The government forced companies to stop work (retail,
| factories, etc.) but the companies had to pick up the tab.
| They had people on payroll, leases to pay, depreciating
| assets to get rid of.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Yes, and there were multiple programs enacted to help
| business owners (PPP, EIDL, Restaurant Revitalization Fund,
| etc) and employees (EDD, fed unemployment, etc)
| brewdad wrote:
| And the landlords already used those.
| viro wrote:
| which one of those helped landlords with mortgage
| payments?
| ummonk wrote:
| No, the government didn't force them to keep people on the
| payroll. They were free to fire employees.
| beerandt wrote:
| They didn't force companies to continue employing workers,
| or continue their office leases, or continue any other
| expense.
|
| And they certainly didn't make them continue to pay workers
| who refused to work (from home or otherwise).
|
| Or force them to provide their services/products for free
| to non-payers.
| alert0 wrote:
| >you're in the least productive and most predatory sector of
| our economy (the landlord)
|
| I never really understand this. Let's say I own a 4 unit
| building on a decent sized lot in a big city. I make housing
| available to 3 other families in a place they could not afford
| to own. What is your alternative? I should tear down the
| apartments and opt to live in a single family home? How does
| that help anyone?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| You shouldn't be allowed to own property, nor should anyone
| else. We should all own nothing and like it. We should all
| live in uniform boxes so that nobody can have something nice
| unless there's enough for everyone to have some. That's the
| kind of thing that, if people don't already believe it,
| they'll believe it soon enough based on recent trends.
| nlitened wrote:
| Sell it at a loss to somebody who does better risk assessment
| of their leveraged investments?
| alert0 wrote:
| The comment is about landlords being predatory, not about
| an underwater investment.
| pasabagi wrote:
| 1. I own a 4 unit building on a decent sized lot in a big
| city.
|
| 2. I make housing available to 3 other families
|
| This is the point - the second sentence does not actually
| follow from the first. The person who built the building,
| either the actual builders or the investors, _make it
| available_. At this point, it is a normal service-provision
| kind of relationship you see across the economy.
|
| Except, with landlords, it isn't that they provide the
| building. It's that they provide the land. The land is
| parcelled out in a manner which, _at best_ could be compared
| to if we just gave rights to parts of the electromagnetic
| spectrum to whichever radio stations started pumping waves
| into it first. Of course, in reality, land ownership is
| usually rooted in much more brutal and sordid stories in
| America.
|
| So you essentially end up with a class of people who take no
| risks, provide no service, and add no value, employ nobody,
| and often literally do nothing.
| alert0 wrote:
| >The person who built the building, either the actual
| builders or the investors, make it available.
|
| The person who owns the land makes it available by deciding
| to rent to people. The person who owns the land can decide
| to tear it down or not rent to people.
|
| >take no risks
|
| Real estate is not a risk free investment. It would be much
| more popular than bonds (when interest rates aren't near
| zero) if it was.
|
| >provide no service
|
| Maintaining the property in a habitable condition is a
| service. Maintenance expenses are why a large number of
| people choose to rent instead of buy when staying somewhere
| short term.
|
| >add no value
|
| Making housing available in desirable locations for less
| than the cost of a SFH is adding value. It can reduce
| people's commute or put them in neighborhoods they want to
| live in. If that land was instead covered in SFHs (which
| seems to be the implied ideal for the "landlords should not
| exist" crowd) the number of people who could live there
| would be significantly reduced.
|
| >employ nobody
|
| Landscapers, plumbers, electricians, roofers, property
| managers, cleaners, inspectors. In the case of new
| construction, a lot more people.
|
| >often literally do nothing
|
| Ha. I wish.
| pasabagi wrote:
| > The person who owns the land makes it available by
| deciding to rent to people.
|
| No, the state makes it possible for the landlord to
| charge money for the land, by preventing squatting. The
| land is already available. It is the ownership that
| renders it unavailable.
|
| As for the factual side of your argument (maintenance
| expenses as a motivator, etc), I can't comment. It's
| starkly different from my experience. I imagine it's
| actually starkly different from yours - you're just using
| it to rationalise the inequity.
|
| Obviously, there can be incidental work in the
| maintenance of a monopoly. If somebody tomorrow gave me
| exclusive right to the fishing in the north sea, then I
| rented that out to fishing companies, there would be work
| involved. But fundamentally, renting out exclusive rights
| is not primarily about exchanging services for money.
| When you own land, you have just such an exclusive right,
| and it is just as predicated on the willingness of the
| state to back it, and is therefore an entirely political
| decision whether or not this is actually a good idea.
|
| In the case of California, the state with a crazy
| unemployment problem, and sky-high property values, it's
| unarguable that the current system is not working. So
| questions of what is and is not a legitimate or useful
| monopoly over resources (land, in this case) should be
| totally on the table.
| joecot wrote:
| My alternative would be to establish a land trust to manage
| the apartment building. Then you can provide housing for 3
| other families without also making a profit off of them.
| Here's an example of a Land Trust:
| https://www.sawmillclt.org/
|
| The argument is often as you say, that Land Lords add value
| by giving housing where people couldn't otherwise afford to
| live. And this is undercut by two points:
|
| 1. The landlord isn't the essential part there. If the point
| is to provide housing without having to buy, that's easily
| done with land trusts and co-ops. The only downside is that
| there isn't a Landlord to make a profit, but it's better for
| society as a whole.
|
| 2. If landlords didn't buy up properties for the purposes of
| turning around and renting them, the property values would be
| lower because there wouldn't be as much demand on the market.
| Then a decent portion of the people you're talking about not
| being able to afford to live there ... would be able to
| afford to live there.
| alert0 wrote:
| I appreciate the reply, I hadn't seen these before and I'll
| do some more research on them.
|
| My initial reaction is how does this address the issue of
| developing more units in dense urban environments? For
| example, if we convert all multi family dwellings in LA to
| CLTs. Housing is more affordable and no residents are being
| displaced. Now more people want to move to LA. Who builds
| housing for them?
|
| They would be required for compete over an extremely
| limited number of SFHs. Unless the CLTs had a provision
| that every Nth year, they would be torn down and
| redeveloped for greater density, this sounds like it would
| cause a city to completely stagnate. That Nth year clause
| would really go against the non-displacement goal. It could
| be sustainable if a city had zero growth, but for desirable
| metro areas that are mostly developed, that is not the
| case.
|
| Market rents cause healthy turn over. There are other ways
| to address affordability, such as addressing wage growth,
| removing density restrictions, or expanding Section 8. Non-
| profit landlords would just further distort the system by
| not addressing systemic needs that require capital.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > with land trusts and co-ops
|
| The hardest part with this - as with many other similarly
| noble undertakings - is to find a person who's willing to
| do all the job of setting things up and then step aside.
|
| As we empirically see, there are not many people like that,
| otherwise this country would be full of land trusts.
| ar_lan wrote:
| A few notes:
|
| An active problem in the US' form of capitalism is we don't let
| businesses die naturally. I think landlords fall under this -
| if they can't find renters for the prices they are charging,
| then their business is functionally failing, and it should be
| allowed to simply die. This is economically healthy at a more
| macro-level and invites better management practices and reduces
| people over-leveraging.
|
| In this case, people were still renting, however, and
| functionally for free. Landlords got screwed due to government
| intervention - the moratorium on evictions forced landlord's
| hands - it was the state saying "your business structure must
| be forced to fail" here, which is pretty ridiculously unfair of
| the state.
|
| Making the landlords whole seems entirely correct given their
| over-stepping measures earlier last year.
| LanceH wrote:
| Providing shelter to people is the least productive sector of
| the economy you could think of?
|
| Why would land owners get a bailout? Because they were mandated
| by the government to provide their services without payment.
| repiret wrote:
| As a landlord, I expected to loose money during the pandemic.
| One of the risks you take on is that the rental market
| changes and you can't get as much money for your property as
| you planned on. I have no sympathy for landlords who got less
| rent. Bailing them out means they don't have to sell, which
| increases the price to acquire rental property, which
| increases rents, which hurts the renting public at large.
|
| I agree that this policy punishes the responsible - the ones
| who made other sacrifices in order to not get behind on rent,
| because they were told they'd eventually owe back rent and
| didn't want to be in that hole.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > One of the risks you take on is that the rental market
| changes and you can't get as much money for your property
| as you planned on
|
| Yes, but you don't expect to be forced to house people for
| free for over a year.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Landlord are holding shelter hostage, not providing it.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Many people would not be able to afford shelter even if
| there were no landlords. Can someone making $10 an hour
| afford a $500k house? Landlords are providing shelter to
| people who otherwise could not afford it.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Homes used to be far less expensive relative to minimum
| wage or median income. Landlords and speculation are
| precisely why homes are so much more expensive now.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Owning a building that provides shelter isn't providing
| shelter. Rentiers are commonly considered to be the least
| productive sectors of economy, whether they rent homes or
| software licenses.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It is not just a normal natural catastrophe since the
| government had an eviction moratorium. If there was an
| earthquake that destroyed your rental you could rebuild and
| then rent it out to paying people.
| hourislate wrote:
| This reminds me of the saying "The road to hell is paved with
| good intentions". This sets such a dangerous precedent. Next time
| something like this happens no one is going to pay rent. If they
| don't compensate the people who made incredible sacrifices to pay
| their rent (selling everything they had, borrowing from family
| and friends, using every last penny of savings), it will be a
| tragic.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I don't understand California's finances at all.
|
| Only a year ago they declared a budget crisis with a $54 billion
| deficit. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-budget-crisis-
| gavin-...
|
| Now they have a $75 billion budget surplus, 1/3 of which came
| from emergency federal funds: https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/politics/california-budget-su...
|
| I suppose paying off past-due rent is fair to landlords who were
| required to house tenants rent-free and it could be argued that
| it's coming from the federal COVID funds, but that's still a huge
| chunk of budget to spend.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| What's not to get? The federal government gave them a huge
| amount of money to pay off their debts
| encoderer wrote:
| There are a lot of very wealthy people in California who paid a
| lot more capital gains tax in 2020 than people predicted.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| From what I understand California has a very progressive tax
| system and as a consequence revenues vary by a lot. If
| wealthy Californians have a good year the coffers bulge but
| when they don't ... everything dries up.
|
| Not necessarily a problem if the State spent like that but
| they tend to spend like every year will be a fat year. Go
| figure.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Nearly every state thought they were having a budget crisis a
| year ago because it looked like there was going to be an
| unprecedented economic crash.
|
| Most of them are doing much better now since the pandemic-
| related economic downturn turned out to be much milder than
| originally anticipated.
| bgorman wrote:
| California got bailed out by the IPO mania of 2020
| DevKoala wrote:
| It's almost as if the system balanced itself out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not surprising when the purchasing power of USD is
| continuously lowered to ensure debts are repaid. Nominally,
| everything is fine.
| sonthonax wrote:
| A lot of people are rightly complaining in this thread about how
| unfair this is to those who sacrificed to make good their
| obligation to pay rent. However the fair option, where everyone
| is paid would have an even greater distorting economic effect:
| because a huge amount of this money will just go into paying
| mortgages, little will go into circulation; and ends up being
| really a bail out for banks (while also probably saving the
| really poor from another pointless bankruptcy). If $20k was just
| given to everyone, it'd have a massive inflationary effect.
|
| I personally don't like either solution: landlords should have
| taken a haircut. But it's really hard to force landlords to take
| haircuts because the housing market is so incredibly illiquid;
| selling a house is a difficult transaction, once you've found a
| buyer you then need surveyors, who can delay the process long
| enough to cause the deal to fall through and the cycle to start
| over (and in LA the whole grandfathered housing tax creates even
| more perverse incentives). This way housing ends up being a bit
| of a unique asset class because selling up when faced with cash
| flow issues almost never makes economic sense. This ends up being
| a bit of a viscous cycle because it makes individual housing
| transactions extremely volatile.
|
| It's somewhat perverse that there aren't real market makers in
| the domestic housing market.
|
| It would be fantastic if there was some state market maker
| providing a buyer of last resort, that would have the economies
| of scale to make it work. It would allow the housing market to
| actually function as a market. In this case, if a landlord was
| having cash flow problems, they would be able to immediately
| liquidate. They'd take their haircut at a fair price that way.
| Right now, distressed property is a microeconomic quagmire.
| dvdhnt wrote:
| It would be wonderful if every person or family had a suitable
| home before we allowed surplus housing to be used as a commodity.
| However, we don't live in that world, at least not yet.
|
| And while I am generally anti-rent-seeking, if we do not bail out
| landlords (whether or not they should be in their position not
| withstanding) then those homes will bought up by corporations and
| investment firms which absolutely should not own them.
|
| Corporations foreclose at a much higher rate than individual
| landlords (look up "cash for keys") because they have the
| resources to do so. If we don't bail out landlords then we're
| looking at an acceleration of Corporate Feudalism.
|
| Therefore, and it is tough for me to say, bailout landlords, then
| use tax credits to reward those who paid their rent on time, even
| if they were employed throughout the pandemic. Why? It is
| infinitely better to allow citizens to build their bank accounts
| rather than corporations and/or a generally ineffective
| government.
| desine wrote:
| I live in California. I got laid off in December of 2019, right
| before the pandemic. I got a small gig that held me over for a
| bit, but fell behind on rent. A few months ago I got a new job
| and caught up on rent. If I had taken care of some other past due
| bills first, I would be essentially getting a few thousand extra
| dollars for being irresponsible.
|
| I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated we shut down the economy for so
| long. I'm frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were
| exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for
| hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID.
|
| I want to help the less fortunate. Plenty need it, including
| friends of mine. But somehow I feel slighted by this. Some of my
| neighbors in my building were posting rent strike signs on the
| walls. I never supported that.
|
| I don't like this, and I don't like that I don't like it. A 0%
| loan for the renters would make me happier, but that wouldn't
| solve all the issues.
|
| I'm already looking to leave the state. I don't like where my tax
| money has been going or the regulations that have been pushed
| here. I was born and raised in California and it saddens me how
| it's changed recently.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > I'm frustrated we knew the infection and death rates were
| exaggerated by faulty PCR testing and financial perks for
| hospitals impacted by cases they could attribute to COVID.
|
| You can be frustrated without making up claims. Infection and
| death rates were not exaggerated. Death rates were higher
| initially due to the ramp up in proper treatment. Infection
| rates were subject to selection bias which skewed the
| denominator early on in the pandemic.
| desine wrote:
| I'm not making up claims I'm repeating what doctors and
| nurses have come out and said - they were told to mark deaths
| as COVID related if the patient had a positive test result,
| even when cause of death was not specifically COVID related.
| Many "whistleblowers" (a bit of a stretch since it is not
| fraud or illegal) have spoken out on this. The CDC changed
| the policy of an asymptomatic patient's positive PCR test
| counting as a a "case" in January of this year. Now, symptoms
| or multiple positive tests are required. This is hard fact
| not some spurious claim.
| dntrkv wrote:
| We can go back and forth about what constitutes a "COVID
| death," but if you look at excess mortality for 2020/2021
| you will see that if anything, we are under-counting COVID
| deaths.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.ht
| m
|
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say about the false
| positive PCR tests in asymptomatic patients, but false
| positives in PCR tests are rare and would barely impact the
| numerator.
| triceratops wrote:
| > they were told to mark deaths as COVID related if the
| patient had a positive test result, even when cause of
| death was not specifically COVID related
|
| What's "specifically Covid related"? If a cancer patient
| catches Covid and takes a turn for the worse, it's fair to
| call Covid the cause of death. Did a sudden surge of people
| with asymptomatic Covid die in car crashes and cause LA to
| run out of crematoria capacity in January and February?
|
| The unbiased way to look at it is excess deaths, since
| Covid was the only new major cause of death last year.
| Going by that, about 40k people died of Covid in California
| in 2020, or about 0.1% of the state's population.[1] The
| actual number is probably higher than that because flu
| deaths are way down in 2020 due to Covid countermeasures.
| And California had about 5k flu deaths in 2019.[2]
|
| 1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/27/40000-excess-
| deaths-i...
|
| 2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_
| mort...
| ummonk wrote:
| A similar thing happened with the Obamacare subsidy payback
| waiver. Those who underestimated their income and we're overpaid
| in subsidies ended up able to keep it all.
| jude- wrote:
| I sense a lot of resentment coming from people who managed to pay
| rent. My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone
| who was at risk of getting evicted now won't be? Would you rather
| make large swaths of the population homeless, especially those
| who _couldn 't_ work during the pandemic? If so, then what do you
| think those large swaths of now-homeless people -- who now have a
| very good reason to be very angry at basically everything, and
| now have a lot less to lose by acting on that anger -- are going
| to do next?
|
| If you follow this line of thinking to its conclusion, you'll
| come to the same conclusion that politicians of all stable
| countries realized a long time ago: society is a lot more stable,
| and a lot less violent-class-revolution-y, when everyone has
| affordable housing and basic needs met. By seeing to it they
| everyone is housed, dear resentful renter, you are saving
| _yourself_.
| adamdusty wrote:
| If your mom tells you and your brother to clean the house,
| bathe the dogs, wash the cars, and repaint the living room, and
| you do all of it while your brother is sick, you wouldn't feel
| slightly upset if she paid his rent and you got nothing? Most
| people don't want all those people to be homeless, but it does
| feel punishing that other people are having their way paid for
| while contributing less.
| luffapi wrote:
| I would not feel upset in that scenario. I _would_ feel upset
| if my mother didn't pay my brother's rent and then my brother
| stole from me for food money and set up camp on my sidewalk,
| then died 9 months later.
|
| Homeless isn't just something that impacts the person without
| the home, it effects everyone.
| grahamburger wrote:
| I can definitely see how someone who sacrificed to pay rent
| throughout the pandemic, maybe using up some of their
| retirement funds or defaulting on car loans in the process,
| would be frustrated to learn now that they could have just not
| paid rent instead and been fine. They're not getting that money
| back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people
| become homeless.
|
| (I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't live in California,
| don't rent, don't own rental property.)
| gruez wrote:
| > My question to you all is, why? Why be upset that someone who
| was at risk of getting evicted now won't be?
|
| If you read any of the comments you'll see that people who are
| against this are against this because it benefits the
| irresponsible more than the responsible. eg. "Initiatives like
| these always tend to hurt the most responsible people more than
| the rest" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594862
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Society works on fairness as well as stability. This kind of
| thing also makes the people on the margin resentful and angry.
| See also the discussion of student debt repayment. Alice and
| Bob are identical and almost able to do X. Alice sacrifices Y
| to get X. Bob keeps Y is later given X for free. Bob comes out
| ahead. Why shouldn't Alice feel resentment?
| luffapi wrote:
| Bob and Alice should both feel resentment toward Joe's son
| who inherited millions and owns the majority of stock in the
| company Bob and Alice are desperately trying to apply to.
|
| Unless you're wealthy, the enemy is very clearly the rich and
| not those at or below you on the socioeconomic ladder.
| DevKoala wrote:
| This is good news for many. I have a friend who rented a floor on
| his duplex and he was incredibly helpful during the pandemic with
| the family that rented from him; he definitely deserves this.
| starik36 wrote:
| Well, don't I feel stupid paying rent on time for this past year
| as everyone around just stopped all together.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If it helps, there isn't enough money to pay everyone's rent
| and it looks like they're just going to pay low income people's
| rent.
|
| Or, they could not pay anyone's rent and see if anyone really
| gets evicted. It's not like there were a ton of people waiting
| to rent those apartments
| WalterBright wrote:
| This is a giant slap in the face to every renter who scrimped and
| sacrificed to pay their rent.
| threatofrain wrote:
| And forgiving student loans is a slap in the face to any middle
| class family that had to scrimp and sacrifice for over a
| decade. Paying off somebody's loans is always a slap to
| somebody's face.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Uplifting someone else who needs it doesn't slap my face. I
| paid off all my student loans myself, but I'm still for loan
| forgiveness and free, subsidized education. We've got to get
| past this zero-sum "he wins therefore I lose" mentality.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The (federal) government can print money. States can issue
| debt. There is no reason governments cannot give the same
| amount of cash to everyone, thereby not punishing those who
| played it safe.
|
| The constant bailing out of only those who take risks is
| just socialization of risk and privatization of profit,
| I.e. corruption.
| oluwie wrote:
| So I'm okay with this b/c the government forced landlords not
| to evict people who couldn't pay. This is just the govt's way
| of paying it back.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The government should give everyone the same amount of cash
| then.
| oluwie wrote:
| Why? I really don't understand the logic for that.
|
| You, personally, as someone who paid rent isn't owed
| anything by the government?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The logic is to prevent moral hazard caused by
| socializing losses and privatizing gains. By giving
| everyone the cash, people who made prudent decisions are
| not punished, and therefore are continued to be
| incentivized to make prudent decisions.
|
| By rewarding only those who made risky decisions (whether
| or not they could have done otherwise), the system
| incentivizes that behavior. The effects of which can be
| seen in numerous events in history.
|
| Note that I am all for redistribution of wealth if need
| be, but the mechanism must be fair. If the concern is why
| the government is spending excessively in comparison to
| tax receipts, then that is a different problem with the
| solution of "marginal income/sales taxes".
| Roba2015 wrote:
| I told the tenants to leave 2 months in advance but the last
| month didn't pay and I had to pay from my own expenses to cover
| the mortgage
| aiisahik wrote:
| This is very anti-progressive and economically idiotic. If
| landlords can't handle owning without rent, there is a very
| simple solution: SELL.
|
| All housing is very inflated right now so it is highly unlikely
| that their equity is under water.
|
| The result of this action is to prop up asset prices and continue
| to make housing unaffordable for everyone in CA. The only way
| housing becomes more affordable in CA is to reduce the price of
| housing - aka reduce asset prices. This doesn't help.
| unanswered wrote:
| I wonder how many people in the governor's office mysteriously
| stopped paying their rent, and when? You'd be crazy, absolutely
| bonkers to pay rent now until it's clear what the covered dates
| are.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| You must have low income to qualify.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Can you share a source? I haven't seen this and it would make
| me feel a lot better.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html#rente
| r
|
| The landlord also has to agree to waive 20%.
| Roba2015 wrote:
| I had to pay mortgage the last month from my own expenses because
| tenants refused to pay since it was their last month and I'm
| wondering if there's a way to get my money back?
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