An eviction moratorium put into place by the CDC for the Coronavirus pandemic ended today and will likely lead to a major wave of evictions. Politico. The Supreme Court had signaled that any extension would be overruled so the Biden administration punted the issue to Congress, which was unable to pass any legislation to extend it. The ban was put into place last September to deal with people who had lost money due to the Coronavirus. Adding to the issue is the fact that much federal rental assistance has not yet been distributed, with New York especially being a major problem. The moratorium cost landlords billions of dollars each month and many of the smaller landlords that own only a few rental properties were especially hard hit. The situation will likely to vary from state to state with some states having allowed eviction proceedings, but not he evictions themselves, to continue throughout the pandemic.
My Comment:
I personally always thought this was a terrible policy and one that should not have been put into place in the first place. It was always kicking the can down the road and is obviously going to cause major problems as these protections are expiring.
I guess the CDC did not understand human nature because I guarantee there were a large number of people that heard "eviction moratorium" and understood it to mean "I don't have to pay rent anymore" and took advantage of the situation. These people have now racked up ten to eleven months worth of debt for each month they didn't pay rent. They deserve to be evicted but man, what did the CDC expect to happen? And I am guessing a huge number of these people were not effected by the pandemic at all. They just didn't want to pay rent.
A lot of these people might end up homeless long term. After all, landlords talk to each other and they have a list of people that are bad tenants. Taking advantage of the government to avoid paying rent for ten months is a good way to get blacklisted. They may also end up going bankrupt because of the debt they accrued. I don't feel sorry for them one bit because they made their own beds and now have to lay in it.
Making things worse if the fact that many states have been completely incompetent in paying out their rent relief money. New York apparently has done a terrible job with this. This is bad because there are at least a few people that were indeed hurt by the Coronavirus pandemic and they should be the ones getting money so they can avoid eviction. You can question the wisdom of giving out billions of dollars like this but everyone should agree that if the money has been allocated than these state governments should actually pay them out.
There might be a silver lining here for renters and perspective home buyers and that might be that rent and home prices could go down. With so many open homes and apartments landlords might have to reduce costs to attract new tenants. That might just be wishful thinking on my part as I was hoping to buy a home someday but have been outpaced by the market here.
This is going to cause problems for the Democrats though. The far left is furious about this and won't take "it's illegal" as an excuse. They hate landlords in principal alone and hate the idea of them getting the money they are owned or having their constituents actually have to suffer consequences for their actions.
I take this as another sign that the Democrats are in trouble for 2022. They have been pretty consistent in not delivering for their far left base and those people might stay home in the next election. Many of them only even voted for the Democrats because they hated President Trump so much. With him a non-factor in 2022, the Democrats may be out of luck with many of these voters either staying home, backing up primary challengers or even voting 3rd party.
Finally, I have to point out that eviction is a lengthy and costly process that takes months to handle. I know in Texas they were able to evict people without evicting them, so it will go faster there. But in many states the process will likely take months longer than it already does due to the flood of cases. I am guessing that more than a few landlords will just punt and take the loss as long as their tenants start paying rent again.
No comments:
Post a Comment