Democrats pushing for extended eviction ban

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

No sense in making policy based on fear of what you think the court might do. They'll probably strike it down, which is fine, but it probably gets you a couple points in favor of court packing and makes it just a little bit more difficult to act against the admin in the future.

You can't court-pack away a 9-0 or 8-1 ruling.

Well, you can, but that's kind of giving away the whole game and I don't think Biden has the hunger for that.

[CEO Mindset]

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.

[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?

[H. Ross Peron]

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?

No need to go that far. To paraphrase another Democratic President, "John Roberts has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."

[MR DARK BRANDON]

Again, why does Biden think SCOTUS will uphold this?

He doesn't.  He basically admitted he is abusing litigation time to squeeze a few more days along with  trying to pass the blame on SCOTUS for not allowing something that could eventually end at unilateral dictatorship.

Note* this action by itself isn't a dictatorship but allowing this effectively gives the CDC infinite powers.

I’d be cool living in a Biden dictatorship

[H. Ross Peron]

Again, why does Biden think SCOTUS will uphold this?

He doesn't.  He basically admitted he is abusing litigation time to squeeze a few more days along with  trying to pass the blame on SCOTUS for not allowing something that could eventually end at unilateral dictatorship.

Note* this action by itself isn't a dictatorship but allowing this effectively gives the CDC infinite powers.

I’d be cool living in a Biden dictatorship

A dictatorship in the Roman sense.

[AGA]

So people will be thrown in jail for trying to exercise basic property rights? All so that people who have been receiving generous government benefits can continue to squat? This is madness.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Again, why does Biden think SCOTUS will uphold this?

He doesn't.  He basically admitted he is abusing litigation time to squeeze a few more days along with  trying to pass the blame on SCOTUS for not allowing something that could eventually end at unilateral dictatorship.

Note* this action by itself isn't a dictatorship but allowing this effectively gives the CDC infinite powers.

I’d be cool living in a Biden dictatorship

Apparently authoritarians are everywhere these days.

[MR DARK BRANDON]

I support this tbh, 11 million where gonna go homeless through no fault of their own, and this was really all the White House could do

[Ferguson97]

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.

[CEO Mindset]

So people will be thrown in jail for trying to exercise basic property rights? All so that people who have been receiving generous government benefits can continue to squat? This is madness.

If you want to see a society with strong property rights look at premodern India. The west only industrialized due to having comparatively weak property rights and governments less respecting of 'private property' such as feudal estates or slaves than the other civilizations ofeurasia.

[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.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Again, why does Biden think SCOTUS will uphold this?

The policy expires before the supreme court comes back from their recess.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

National Review is unhappy:
President Biden Announces on Live TV That He Intends to Break His Oath of Office

President Biden knows that the CDC’s eviction moratorium is illegal, having, per Gene Sperling, “not only kicked the tires,” but “double, triple, quadruple checked.” He also knows that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal, and that the majority of the legal scholars he has consulted think that the Court is correct.

And yet, because a bunch of progressives have spent the day complaining, Biden announced just now that he intends to violate his oath and reissue the order anyway. “The bulk of the constitutional scholars,” Biden admitted at his press conference just now, “say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” Then he said that he was prepared to try his luck anyway.

Perhaps he could try sticking an (R) after his name? I understand that gives the National Review entirely different opinions about constitutionality.

[lfromnj]

Long good Effort post

Ok I don't really agree but I gave the recc because it was a pretty good explanation of your views.


Now anyway the government is arguably paying landlords. Infact any landlord who wants the government relief won't be evicting their tenant.

However issues include

• The fact the payments didn't really come till months after. This can also be blamed on Trump
• The fact there are still delays in the payments in how the states are giving it out. Note the most commonly cited example is FL but it isn't really a red state issue. NY IIRC has been the worst state
• They come with conditions such as only paying most of the rent instead of all and expecting the landlord to waive the rent
• Often has severe restrictions on evicting the tenant anyway to replace them with a better tenant even after the debt is covered.
• Also has restrictions on rent increases depending on state

Now a landlord trying to recoup their losses has to debate accepting this pretty bad offer.
Now let's see.

Looking at it only from the info that H Ross gave us.

As far as I can tell, I'm the first poster on this thread whose life is directly affected by the continuation of the eviction moratorium. My parents as well as my aunt and uncle (siblings, not a married a couple) who live in the same apartment complex as us have been struggling to meet their rents for the past year after having faithfully paid rent for decades to our apartment, with some of my family having lived there since 1988. My dad has faced reduced earnings from his job while some of my family members are still looking for long-term work. None of us intend to avoid paying the rent indefinitely, but even if not directly pandemic-related, the eviction moratorium as well as accompanying rental aid takes off a heavy burden for us. Despite the left-leaning nature of this forum, this thread seems dominated by instinctual rightists (regardless of avatar colour) who seem to see the average renter failing to make payments on time as some kind of shiftless lumpenprole who is merely using the opportunity to live rent free indefinitely.

Even if the landlord doesn't really have sympathy he really should accept the offer. Recouping 80-90% of his losses from a long paying tenant would absolutely make sense especially if they were paying for the previous 30 years.

Now on the other hand say a landlord got a tenant at say January 2020 who they tried to evict in February but ran out of time. Here I guess you probably only recoup a small percentage from a collections agency but at least you can replace with a better tenant.

On the last hand I want to ask H Ross Peron if his family's apartment complex is rent controlled?
33 years seems like a crazy long time for renting an apartment and my best guess is it is rent controlled.

In this case it would actually make sense for the landlord to evict as they could make more money from new tenants.

[Torie]

Biden comes close to admitting that what he did was probably illegal, but it buys time since it will take a bit of time until it is struck down. He does not bother to even make a legal argument in his statement. Does anyone have a problem with that?

"Biden on Tuesday acknowledged that the new order stood on tenuous legal ground but said it was worth the risk.

"Whether that option will pass constitutional measure with this administration, I can’t tell you. I don’t know," Biden said. "There are a few scholars who say it will, and others who say it’s not likely to. But, at a minimum, by the time it gets litigated it will probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people who are in fact behind in the rent and don’t have the money."

I assume the next thing that will happen is someone will file a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction to stop its enforcement.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I'm glad I never rented the apartment above my office. 

[Old Man Willow]

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.

[Torie]

I assume the next thing that will happen is someone will file a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction to stop its enforcement.

Is there any hope of this happening early enough to render the order irrelevant? The legal pretext for the CDC's original order was astonishingly flimsy, but that didn't seem to matter.

One can apply for a preliminary injunction ex parte, and get it within 24 hours, but I doubt a court would deem it that kind of emergency. So it needs to be a noticed motion, and that might take say three weeks to be heard, after opposition papers have been filed.
Odds are it will buy Biden about a month - as advertised. I don't recall as clearly as I once did the federal rules of civil procedure. Memory is the second thing to go alas when one becomes old.

[GP270watch]

 It's pretty sad people are ok with the social failure of throwing people into the streets, something that predates the pandemic. The indifference and callousness we have towards homelessness in America is one of the saddest and sickest aspects of our society.

Cori Bush is an example of why representation matters, she's lived out of her car. She understands and sympathizes with many Americans in a way that many congress members couldn't or don't care to.

I Lived in My Car and Now I’m in Congress. We Need to Solve America’s Housing Crisis.

Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure. Our government created the economic and social conditions under which I, and countless others, became unhoused — through unlivable wages, the absence of affordable housing and childcare, and an inaccessible health care system. Instead of comprehensively addressing this crisis, our government has approached it with patchwork solutions that disregard the humanity of people without housing and those who are living on the edge.

[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.

[GP270watch]

It's pretty sad people are ok with the social failure of throwing people into the streets, something that predates the pandemic. The indifference and callousness we have towards homelessness in America is one of the saddest and sickest aspects of our society.

Cori Bush is an example of why representation matters, she's lived out of her car. She understands and sympathizes with many Americans in a way that many congress members couldn't or don't care to.

I Lived in My Car and Now I’m in Congress. We Need to Solve America’s Housing Crisis.

The eviction moratorium has ruined countless landlords and removed most of their power to deal with problem tenants. It has encouraged landlords to keep their units off of the market at a time when they are more needed than ever. This sanctimony about how anyone could be so cruel as to oppose a policy that has had such disastrous consequences, that will probably cause more homelessness in the medium-to-long run, and that is now being extended without so much as a legal pretext, is ridiculous.

Furthermore, Bush's editorial is pure bloviating. Her proposal is a joke, consisting of little more than an extended description of why homelessness is bad. How do you think that bureaucracies deal with vague exhortations about what they "shall strive" to do? And of course it contains the now typical demand to declare a "public health emergency," presumably because many people believe that this justifies anything.

It's like a parody of how activists think: Make a long list of abstract demands, with no real detail provided except when it comes to specifying massive amounts of money, and then insist that anyone who dissents is responsible for the problem. This isn't legislating. It's demagoguery.

 You're completely wrong. Other countries have tackled homelessness as a social ill with the immediate remedy being getting people off the streets and enrolled in the social services they need to get back on their feet, they have had success with this approach.

Here's how Finland solved its homelessness problem

 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.

Homelessness and Racial Disparities

Your response perfectly illustrates my point. We've had a homeless crisis before the pandemic, so the idea that the bigger injury is this temporary hardship for landlords, who have already been earmarked and promised funds to attempt to make them whole, while we've had a years long homeless crisis with no real government commitment to take those folks out of much direr hardships, shows the hypocrisy and callousness that I was mentioning.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Cori Bush may have some inkling at what causes homelessness, but the bulk of what she's proposed as a solution is, quite simply, either utter garbage or not concrete. She's fundamentally from an activist background and she sounds like it, for both better or worse.
I certainly think that letting Cori Bush dictate the housing policy of this country would end up as well as when we last elected a Bush president of the United States.

[GP270watch]

I am not a free market doctrinaire, but I do have very little patience for people who put abstractions before reality.

What could be more real than actually being homeless?

Landlords are facing a temporary hardship that will end whenever government officials deem it is in the public interest for society as a whole. The money has been passed to attempt to make them whole, the fact that much of the money hasn't been dispersed doesn't mean it never will be but they have something concrete, where many homeless people do not have anything. I must also mention that the pandemic exacerbated homelessness despite eviction moratorium because many shelters and social services both public and private that do exist where reduced or shutdown for safety precautions. The same is true of substance abuse and mental health facilities. But apparently nobody cares because these people are not landlords.

And Cori Bush does have solutions you just oppose them philosophically it seems.

https://bush.house.gov/media/press-releases/congresswoman-cori-bush-introduces-unhoused-bill-rights-first-ever-federal

[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.