Democrats pushing for extended eviction ban

[John Dule]

But what of the noble shoplifter, the carjacker, and the burglar? When shall we legalize their crimes too? #TheftIsAHumanRight

[John Dule]

But what of the noble shoplifter, the carjacker, and the burglar? When shall we legalize their crimes too? #TheftIsAHumanRight

Not theft.

How so?

[John Dule]

But what of the noble shoplifter, the carjacker, and the burglar? When shall we legalize their crimes too? #TheftIsAHumanRight

Not theft.

How so?

This is a once in a lifetime pandemic, and many people have still not found adequate work. If this were normal times, there would be no need for the moratorium. It is a necessary policy to prevent a mass crisis of evictions.

You are providing rationale for why theft should be tolerated in this instance, not establishing any substantial difference between this and theft. By your logic, perhaps we should allow people to steal groceries due to their "emergency need."

[John Dule]

What a great day. America is a free country again.

[John Dule]

I understand you're a landlord or whatever, but you could try having a little more empathy here. You can think this is the correct policy without framing it as "great".

I have tons of empathy for tenants, which is why I support ending the evictions moratorium. Economic policy isn't a win/lose tradeoff. Ending this moratorium is in the best interests of renters too.

[John Dule]

This is a big test of Biden's Democratic Party. Will he do what he knows is right, or will he bend to the will of radicals who support state-sponsored theft? If this government once again undermines the property rights of its citizens, it will have lost all credibility in terms of defending our rights in general.

[John Dule]

This is a big test of Biden's Democratic Party. Will he do what he knows is right, or will he bend to the will of radicals who support state-sponsored theft? If this government once again undermines the property rights of its citizens, it will have lost all credibility in terms of defending our rights in general.

They said the same thing about Abe Lincoln.

waaaaah making me pay rent is literally slavery, i'm just as oppressed as black people

I understand you're a landlord or whatever, but you could try having a little more empathy here. You can think this is the correct policy without framing it as "great".

Ending this moratorium is in the best interests of renters too.

How, specifically?

Let me ask you something: Let's say you own a grocery store. Some kind of crisis (a pandemic perhaps) happens, and the federal government unilaterally decrees that it is now legal for people to walk into your store and take whatever food they need to survive. Not only that, but they tell you that if you try to prevent these people from taking your products, you will be jailed.

If this were to happen:

1) Would you consider this fair?
2) Would you keep restocking the shelves of your store, or would you let your stock run out?

[John Dule]

If you fire the court and have them all arrested, how they rule doesn't matter. I'm no democrat but I wouldn't be opposed to Biden having the supreme court fired then sent to Alcatraz for life it on the grounds of an independent judiciary just being another point of power the credentialled class use to rule over actual humans and impose their agenda.

Will you shut up, man?

[John Dule]

How, specifically?

Let me ask you something: Let's say you own a grocery store. Some kind of crisis (a pandemic perhaps) happens, and the federal government unilaterally decrees that it is now legal for people to walk into your store and take whatever food they need to survive. Not only that, but they tell you that if you try to prevent these people from taking your products, you will be jailed.

If this were to happen:

1) Would you consider this fair?
2) Would you keep restocking the shelves of your store, or would you let your stock run out?

1) I don't think asking if it is 'fair' is the right question, I think the right question is 'is this necessary to avoid an even worse disaster?'

So in such a scenario where food shortages are so bad that people are resorting to stealing food off the shelves of their local grocery stores... yes, I believe that the government should establish some sort of temporary policy to 'allow' this to happen for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't think it would exactly be practical to look to prosecuting tens of millions of people for theft. And I don't think that would exactly be a desirable outcome either. Do we really want tens of millions of Americans to become criminals overnight, all because they were to survive? It's not like they're looting a BestBuy during a run-of-the-mill riot. This is a national catastrophe. This could be the fault of the government. Maybe the problem was inevitable and it's out of their hands.

There are basically three ways the government can approach this 'people are resorting to stealing to eat en masse' scenario:

* Prosecute the thieves (I've already explained why I don't think this is moral or practical).

* Forbid the store owners from stopping the thieves.

* Forbid the store owners from stopping the thieves, and prosecute them if they do.

So ultimately the question would come down to whether or not to pursue legal action against the store owners. So why might doing so be desirable?

Well, allowing both the theft to continue and allowing the store owners to try and stop them is a contradiction. While the theft itself would not be criminally prosecuted, if we aren't prosecuting them then we have to establish whether or not store owners would have the right to use force to protect their merchandise. If they are allowed to use lethal force to protect it, are the would-be-thieves allowed to defend themselves against the store owners? It would not make sense for the state to allow store owners to use lethal force here... because the thieves are not actually committing a crime, according to the federal government. So we're presented with a nightmare moral and legal scenario, and this could very well turn into a horrific blood bath. Allowing store owners to use force (lethal or otherwise) to stop this theft would not result in a desirable outcome for anybody.

Again, we're talking about a scenario where the choice seems to be steal or starve. And yes, you're going to have some people who take advantage and steal food that they could very well afford - but you'd be hard-pressed to find any law or program that some jerk does not try and take advantage of. That's no reason to end a program, unless there is a significant number of people taking advantage of such a program. And I have not seen any evidence to suggest that most renters who are not currently paying rent because of the moratorium could pay rent but are just choosing not to.

So back to the original scenario, I'm gonna do a quick summary of the comparisons for clarity: we cannot allow up to 11 million people to be evicted overnight, because the consequences would be completely disastrous. You cannot both allow the landlord to try and force the tenant out and say that the tenant is allowed to stay. That's a contradiction. So naturally you have to prevent the landlord from evicting their tenants. How do you prevent this? You establish penalties. Now whether this should be a fine or jail time, I think is a completely separate debate. But I think that establishing some sort of penalty period, is necessary.

At the absolute minimum, they should be staggered. But obviously the moratorium has to end at some point. I don't know exactly when that would be, but I am neither an expert on public health or public housing. Maybe the ideal timeline is October, as Biden intends. Maybe it's January 2022. I don't know. But I trust the judgement of the CDC and the Biden administration that that time is not now.

2) I'm not sure I understand what restocking the shelves is equivalent to in this comparison... I assume you mean finding new tenants?

Assuming that's what you meant... I do think that some sort of forgiveness program for landlords is going to eventually be necessary. We shouldn't make tenants pay the backrent, but leaving the landlords completely out in the cold isn't really a viable or fair solution. Ideally I would like to see some sort of program to allow the landlords to have their debts paid off/backrent paid by the government, what have you. So an ideal scenario/solution would result in not having 11 million evictions over a short period of time, making sure millions of landlords don't go bankrupt, and making sure that nobody is worse off.

---

I hope I articulated this well. It's a complicated scenario, so I apologize of some of my explanations are jumbled or repetitive.

Thank you for the in-depth post. I will try to respond as carefully as possible.

In my analogy, restocking the shelves of the grocery store is just "keeping up supply," which for landlords/developers would mean maintaining existing properties and building new ones. Now please answer me this-- if a grocery store owner found himself in a situation where it was legal for people to simply take things off his shelves and leave, what incentive would he have to restock his store? Why would he keep paying his distributors to bring groceries to his store if all that food is simply going to be stolen anyway? The answer, of course, is that he would have no incentive to do so. He would simply cut his losses and shut the store down once all of the inventory had been stolen. The man is running a business, not a charity-- you cannot expect him to keep resupplying the store out of the goodness of his heart.

How is this relevant, you ask? Well, landlords face the same economic calculus due to the evictions moratorium (though admittedly not quite as extreme). Why should a landlord put money into renovating or repairing his properties if he knows he won't be able to raise the rent from doing so? Why should a landlord put an apartment on the market if there is no guarantee that the renter will honor their contract once he's moved in? Why should a developer build new housing if he cannot rely on the government to enforce rent payments on the building he's invested in? Simple: There is no reason for them to do so. This is the ultimate failure of left-wing economics-- the absolute refusal to consider the incentives created by their preferred policies.

However, there are big differences between the housing market and the grocery store. While in one case, we can see the negative incentives play out over the course of a week, the nature of the housing market is such that it will take years for the effects of bad policy to be fully felt.

Now, having said all this, I agree-- putting millions of people out on the streets is simply untenable. How would I handle this, you ask? Let's look at some alternatives.

1. FEMA and various other government agencies are quite good at coordinating shelter, water, and medical care for disaster victims on small scales. During Covid, we've seen various states take control of public venues (high school gymnasiums, for example) and convert them into medical care centers. The same could be done for homeless people (indeed, we should be doing this regardless of the virus!). Some kind of temporary public housing facilities should have been created as soon as the pandemic started. Wouldn't it have been nice to see the government taking responsibility for its own citizens rather than expecting the private sector to shoulder the burden for free?

2. Screwing with large property management companies is almost excusable, but robbing elderly people of the income they get from renting to tenants is insane. Firstly, small-scale landlords should've been given the option to evict their tenants if necessary (granted, they would've still had to go through the byzantine labyrinth of the courts, which would provide a disincentive right off the bat). Secondly, if the landlords chose to let their tenants stay (say, at half the normal rate), they should've received better tax credits than what they got. This way, you can include landlords in the decision-making process without robbing them of their livelihoods and giving them no say in the matter.

This would be effective because it would present landlords with a genuine choice. What do you prefer-- a reduced (yet untaxed) income, or no income at all? Some people don't have the luxury of choosing the latter, and so I think most small landlords would settle for keeping their tenants at lower rents regardless. But placing a blanket ban on evicting squatters (the "shoplifters" in my analogy) only serves to further break the trust between landlord and tenant. Some leftists will tell you it is good for the balance of power in this relationship to tip completely towards the tenant. What they fail to realize is that nobody wants to sign a contract with someone who is under no obligation to honor it. You cannot nullify people's obligations like this and expect the market to just deal with it. This kind of irresponsible public policy poses a serious threat to the supply side of market equations. Sellers need an incentive to transact. It's that simple.

As for your suggestion that we should "trust the CDC and Biden" to decide when to let the moratorium expire, LOL. Biden was perfectly happy to let it expire on the 1st like he said he would, and he only directed the CDC to come up with some shoddy justification to do otherwise after the rose Twitter emoji crew held his feet to the fire. It is completely transparent that this moratorium is being extended due to the political pressure being placed on Biden by the socialists in his own party, not out of a genuine concern for public health. This is an extremely disturbing precedent to say the least.

[John Dule]

The fact that we are arguing the "constitutionality" of preventing poor people from being thrown into the streets is everything wrong with our society. Good decision from Biden.

There are ways to provide these people with shelter without resorting to state-sanctioned theft.

[John Dule]

Cori Bush spoke specifically to what causes homelessness in America. The fact that people work jobs for wages that can not sustain even their basic needs. The fact our healthcare system is broken and that our approach to homelessness is a patchwork of unreliable services. She also didn't mention race,
probably as to not be polarizing but I will. America's homeless crisis also has a lot to do with race and the dysfunctional American policies towards the Black community.

I think everyone here agrees that we need to address both the homelessness crisis and the root causes of it. Literally nobody likes leaving people on the streets to fend for themselves. But you're talking about our broken healthcare system, our poor social safety net, and low wages. How exactly does this fall under the purview of the CDC? This has nothing to do with the pandemic. I agree that we should try to fix these problems regardless of Covid, but there is no reason why a federal agency, the point of which is solely disease control, should be able to unilaterally issue policy like this. It is obvious that Biden and the CDC both thought an extension on the moratorium was no longer necessary, and the fact that they have kowtowed to activists' demands is clearly due to political pressure and not serious pandemic policy.

For the record, some of the things I mentioned on the last page of this thread are actually in Mrs. Bush's proposal! I agree that the government should provide facilities for homeless people, even if this is just in the form of a rented warehouse filled with beds. It's worth noting, however, that taking people off the streets is frowned upon by the activist left in the Bay Area, which seems to think that moving homeless people to state-run facilities is stage one of some kind of NIMBY "final solution."

What could be more real than actually being homeless?

You seem to have a hard time understanding that people aside from you are capable of empathy. Let's review:

1. Do you understand that it is possible for a government policy to have unforeseen ramifications that hurt the very people it was intended to help?

2. Do you understand that some of us believe this is exactly what the evictions moratorium does?

Once you can answer "yes" to both of these questions, perhaps this discussion will be more fruitful.

[John Dule]

You seem to have a hard time understanding that people aside from you are capable of empathy. Let's review:

1. Do you understand that it is possible for a government policy to have unforeseen ramifications that hurt the very people it was intended to help?

2. Do you understand that some of us believe this is exactly what the evictions moratorium does?

Once you can answer "yes" to both of these questions, perhaps this discussion will be more fruitful.

 I don't have a hard time understanding anything. If we really cared about homelessness there would be bipartisan agreement to tackle these issues and there simply is not. Homelessness is not a topic that is frequently discussed on Atlas or in Congress. Nobody is seriously arguing against landlords. Democrats and Republicans already passed money to help them, will likely pass more, there is a tax code and political power structure to help landlords, they wield outsized power in Congress. Nobody can say with a straight face the same exists for homeless people.

 The CDC believes throwing a large number of Americans into homelessness or unstable housing situations while they are currently trying to end a pandemic is counter productive. I find that reasoning rational and pretty easy to grasp.

On the contrary, we are discussing it at this very moment! I happen to live in the region of the country with the worst homelessness crisis, so I think about these issues quite often. It's just that I've come to a different conclusion than you. Unbelievable, I know!

You can demonize landlords and developers all you want, but at the end of the day, they are the ones who are responsible for supplying the market with housing. And they will not supply you with housing if they cannot reasonably expect that you will honor the contract once you sign it. Why would someone enter into an agreement in which they must hold up their end of the bargain under the law, but the other person can back out whenever they choose? The safer thing is not make the deal at all.

This is why we have a housing shortage in my state, and why so many properties sit empty while homeless people freeze on the streets. Developers cannot build new housing because NIMBYs have used zoning laws to prevent construction projects they don't like, and landlords cannot rent to tenants because they have no legal recourse if the tenant refuses to pay rent. Left-wing housing policies have created a high-risk, low-reward environment for property owners, and unless you send in uniformed officers to actually seize their property, you will not be able to force them to build affordable housing or put existing units on the market. These policies-- the evictions moratorium included-- have slowed the supply of housing to a light trickle.

So why should anyone be "seriously arguing against landlords?" Again: This is not a win/lose scenario. There is a way to help homeless people, renters, landlords, and property developers all in one! The market is wholly capable of providing people with affordable housing, but due to rent control and zoning ordinances, people are given no incentive to do so. At the same time, the government wants to build its own "affordable housing" (aka slums), which will do nothing but create more dilapidated public infrastructure and a safe haven for crime. And meanwhile, homeless people are being left out in the cold while the state focuses on building public housing without providing them with the mental and drug rehab care they need. The government does have a responsibility here, and it is fumbling it badly.

[John Dule]

Your confusion lies in believing landlords contribute something to society.

What on Earth is your problem with landlords? Your parents can't possibly be charging you much to live in their basement.

[John Dule]

1. FEMA and various other government agencies are quite good at coordinating shelter, water, and medical care for disaster victims on small scales. During Covid, we've seen various states take control of public venues (high school gymnasiums, for example) and convert them into medical care centers. The same could be done for homeless people (indeed, we should be doing this regardless of the virus!). Some kind of temporary public housing facilities should have been created as soon as the pandemic started. Wouldn't it have been nice to see the government taking responsibility for its own citizens rather than expecting the private sector to shoulder the burden for free?

This would have to be a massive federal project to house a potential 11 million people, and during a pandemic this sounds like a very easy way to create thousands of COVID hot-zones. I think you're approaching it the right way though... do you think something like having the federal government buy out the landlords could work? That way they're not losing any money, the responsibility becomes the governments, and nobody faces eviction during a pandemic.

The thing is, people complain about the private sector "failing us" in crises like this because people can't afford rent. But why are we acting as though it's the private sector's job to singlehandledly care for people in need? One of the main functions of a government is to prevent people from slipping so far through the societal cracks that they turn to crime and extremist politics. It is the government's job to do right by its citizens in a situation like this, but the powers-that-be have shifted that responsibility to landlords-- many of whom don't actually have the money to deal with this on their own. I may be a libertarian, but I know when we need good government, and this is one of those times.

Having the government buy up people's property (I assume through eminent domain) would surely be more expensive than what I'm proposing. And again, simply giving the landlords the option to evict tenants doesn't mean they'll actually do it. Most of them would prefer some income to none at all. But we need to give property owners a way to get rid of problem tenants, because otherwise they will inevitably abuse the system in the worst ways possible. You can't rely on a tenant to pay rent out of the kindness of their heart any more than you can expect a landlord to provide housing out of the kindness of their heart.

Yes, not all landlords are property manage companies. And yes there are many elderly people who rely on the income they generate from renting out their property... but if we're going to go this route, there are millions of elderly tenants who would be out on the street in this scenario. And I'd wager that we would see more elderly evictees than evictors.

Look, if I had my way, a system for dealing with homeless people would already be in place. It would involve:

1) A blanket ban on "public camping." If someone is arrested on this charge, they would be taken to a facility where a doctor would observe them and determine their mental state.
2) Rehab centers for homeless people who are drug addicts. We already have needle exchanges, and it would be good to provide rehab services at those same facilities so that people could get help if they needed it.
3) Government housing for genuinely homeless people. This kind of facility would be extremely Spartan, and it wouldn't be comprised of permanent structures (unlike a project). This would simply be a place to put homeless people where they could have a roof over their heads and some level of stability in terms of food and water. They would not be expected to pay rent (again, unlike a project, which is for poor people and not homeless people).

I would've wanted this in place before the pandemic. We had similar programs to these in California before Governor Dumbass scrapped them so he could cut taxes by 0.2%. I'm confident that a system like this would be preferred by homeless people, and even if these kinds of facilities did turn into Covid epicenters, it could not possibly be worse for their health than living on the street would be.

I understand the economics of the situation. I'm not a leftist, and it's why I don't believe that the moratorium should go on forever (and I don't think any serious person does). Again, I think that this is a truly unprecedented scenario and that it's a necessary action for stability. I would compare it to eminent domain, but I assume that you oppose that on principle.

[...]

I have to say I don't really agree with the premise that Biden changed a national policy because of rose emoji Twitter. I doubt Biden has even heard of rose emoji Twitter.

Then when does this end, Ferguson? Because I'm sure you know that the AOC/Bush/Omar/Pressley crowd would love to see the evictions moratorium made permanent. Even with the Delta variant, vaccinated people have no reason to worry about contracting the virus anymore. Businesses are reopening and there is a huge demand for workers right now. Why do we still need this moratorium? Again-- it is transparently obvious that it was extended due to the mounting political pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party, not out of a serious concern for public health.

It's not just that left-wing activists don't understand the economic incentives they're creating-- they think that even attempting to understand this is a waste of time, and they accuse anyone who discusses the matter of "lacking empathy." But I do not oppose left-wing housing policies because I am callous, or even for ideological reasons. I oppose them because they will harm the very people leftists want to help. They will strangle supply. They will drive up prices. They will force renters to have more cash on hand and higher credit scores when they rent homes. They will slow down development. They will encourage developers to build luxury condominiums rather than affordable housing, so as to avoid rent control laws. The list is almost endless. And the sooner left-wingers realize that we, too, are trying to help the homeless, the sooner something might actually get done about this problem.

[John Dule]

Holy **** this is modern day legalized slavery
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/small-time-landlords-hanging-on-by-their-fingernails-as-eviction-moratorium-drags-on/amp/?taid=610d1df2e362840001f1fdc8&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&__twitter_impression=true

One woman stopped paying this spring, Sookram said, then demanded that he fix her hot water heater when it blew. That ended with city officials threatening Sookram with daily fines.

It's quite amazing that leftists want to legally force landlords to provide services to people for free against their will, all while some idiot earlier in this thread claims that renters are the ones being treated like slaves.

[John Dule]

1) A blanket ban on "public camping." If someone is arrested on this charge, they would be taken to a facility where a doctor would observe them and determine their mental state.

2 and 3 are decent proposals, but 1 is reeeeaally bad IMO. Criminalizing homelessness is a terrible idea. It's good that you're recognizing this as a mental health issue, but arresting them is just not a good idea in any way, shape, or form.

Then how would you handle it? We need to get these people off of the streets, but they are often too mentally addled due to drugs or illnesses to seek help even if it is offered. Why is it considered "kinder" to let a mentally ill person sleep in a gutter, soil himself, and scream obscenities at passersby than to bring in the police and social workers and commit him to an institution? I don't like the idea of the government arresting people simply for being mentally ill, so criminalizing homeless activities instead is the logical next step. And again, I don't want these people taken to jail or the courts. I just want to provide a simple criteria for when the state needs to step in and get someone to the proper care facility.

Well, that's exactly why I don't consider myself to be a member of the Squad's wing of the party.

And yes, there are people who would want the moratorium to be extended indefinitely - and they also seem to want housing in the US to be completely nationalized, which I also do not agree with.

As I said, I don't know what the ideal timeline is. This is just something that I'm willing to defer to the experts in Biden's administration on - and I think we can both agree that he is not the type to stack his administration with leftists.

Who are the "experts" you're talking about? Again: The experts were going to let the moratorium lapse. Cori Bush is not an "expert," and this is happening largely because she made sure that ending the moratorium would look politically bad for the Democrats. This is not about public health, and pretending that large-scale property theft can be justified simply because unelected bureaucrats in the CDC said so is a lazy way to avoid confronting the issue.