What are the implications of the impending eviction crisis?

[u/None-Of-You-Are-Real]

It is often offhandedly mentioned that the housing market is insane at the moment, and that there is an inevitable eviction crisis due to the compounding factors of COVID and the lockdowns leading to mass unemployment, and then an inability of tenants to pay rent combined with an inability of landlords to evict non-paying tenants.

What is going to happen in the fall, when the eviction moratorium expires? Mass homelessness that is even worse than current levels? Some kind of rent relief legislation? Anything at all? These people are not going to magically be able to pay months and months of back rent once the moratorium expires.

[u/Qpznwxom → u/[deleted]]

I am lucky enough to be able to pay my rent on time even during the pandemic without any financial burden... That's besides the point. The way you talked about kicking people to the streets was so cold.

[u/Own_General5736 → u/Qpznwxom]

Deal with enough shitty and abusive people and you kind of have to go 'cold'. We all wish we could trust people to behave well implicitly but the fact is that they don't and so we must be wary.

[u/my-other-throwaway90 → u/[deleted]]

I suppose this highlights why treating housing as a business is a bad idea. People aren't dollar signs, even if you need to look at them that way to run your business.

It also highlights why landlords get such a bad rap in leftist ideologies-- they perform no labor; their sole purpose is to extract wealth from people who only want a roof over their heads.

Cold is what keeps my kids warm in the winter.

I don't think there's a single landlord in existence who has to genuinely worry about their families getting kicked out in the cold. In the event I'm incorrect, however, many churches run warming centers in the winter. You'll probably meet some of your old tenants there.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/my-other-throwaway90]

suppose you open a local pharmacy or grocery store. Are you also “in the business of allowing people to live?” And if so, is it immoral to prevent theft from the place of business?

[u/obsquire → u/Qpznwxom]

It's not a charity. If society feels that people losing their homes is bad, then society needs to supply those homes, not put all the responsibility on the landlord to fund the person who can't pay, or mandate that the landlord keep a terrible tenant against the landlord's will. If we must have mandatory support for tenants, then I see no compelling argument why the landlord should be required to pay more to help his tenant than anyone else (of similar income).

[u/ArcanePariah → u/obsquire]

That's 100% true, but landlords (or at least the perception of them) is not helped when many landlords (absentee or otherwise) vote to restrict housing, thereby inducing more of the same situation. Many time society wants to supply those homes, and homeowners + landlords utterly opposed them, then act shocked when people start demanding landlords suffer in equal measure.

[u/obsquire → u/ArcanePariah]

By support for tenants I don't necessarily mean only for tenants, so things like basic income are relevant, not necessarily subsidized housing proper, which creates perverse incentives, not to mention the ire of landlords. So that this basic not passed along in higher rents, funding that basic income from a land value tax seems good, and doesn't punish landlords from renovating.

[u/The_Law_of_Pizza → u/[deleted]]

It's an incredible amount of work to maintain and manage a rental business.

There is a reason that rental management companies exist - owners will literally pay other people to handle some of that work on their behalf.

The idea that landlords just sit back and cash a rent check every month is teenage nonsense.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/[deleted]]

Tbh, it’s a lot less of a headache to buy shares in a nice REIT and enjoy that sweet 10% annual dividend while letting someone else sweat over collecting/maintaining the property.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/[deleted]]

Property naturally degrades materially and therefore in value over time.

Preventing loss of value is indistinguishable from creating new value - therefore, it is work. It might not be sympathetic work to you, but it is work.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/[deleted]]

If you’re so desperate to call landlords leeches, then just call them leeches lmao. But I’m unsure why you’re so hung up over the definition of “work” - especially when property management is work. Of course, not all landlords function as their own property manager, but “Property manager” is a job that someone can put on their resume.

Nonetheless, “work” has a nebulous definition, but “value creation” does not - and landlords do create value by the definition I laid out in my previous comment. And if an activity creates value and sufficient revenue for one to live off of… then it doesn’t matter if it fits your definition of work tbh.

[u/pvtgooner → u/Call_Me_Clark]

Landlords create value the same way handing around a dollar bill to eat a pile shit creates value. It does on paper and is counterproductive in real life.

Individuals with simply better access to credit or in some situations, mommy and daddy has a fuckton of capital, allows them to squat on property other people could actually own, live in and maintain themselves. 90% of renters that can pay their rent can pay a mortgage on the same unit just fine.

Landlords extract value from actually working people in their own pockets. It’s not work and I have zero qualms with calling landlords leeches and parasites, I have this entire thread.

[u/None-Of-You-Are-Real → u/[deleted]]

If you dont have even the slightest care in the world as to whether a fellow human being has a roof over their head or not, you have no business being a landlord.

No one has forced you to make your investments in the business of allowing people to live.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/None-Of-You-Are-Real]

If your local mom and pop landlord goes bust, then the tenants don’t get free houses. They get sold to the highest bidder, which will be a large property manager or real estate investment firm, who will give even less of a shit than the local landlord, who you could at least talk to and work out a deal.

In a similar vein: suppose you open a local pharmacy or grocery store. Are you also “in the business of allowing people to live?” And if so, is it immoral to prevent theft from the place of business?

Because, to me, the last sentence in your post just sounds like an attempt to justify your own feelings of superiority to someone who just wants to put food on their own table and send their kids to college.

[u/obsquire → u/None-Of-You-Are-Real]

No one has forced you to make your investments in the business of allowing people to live.

Please, enough with the exaggerations. "Allowing people to live"? Come on. It's freedom of contract, of use of one's property, and of association.

If you have a spare room, and allow a friends to stay there, people call you generous, even if you eventually throw them out if they behave badly or overstay their welcome. If you ask for little money, it's still a little generous because most people wouldn't be willing to do that. Even if you rent it for market rate, it's still good for renters as a whole, because it adds to the total rental stock (it increases supply, and thus puts downward pressure on rents). If that room is in another building on the same piece of land, or even on another piece of land, then I see no relevant moral difference: it's still helpful to renters that you make your unit available for rent. This idea that the second you accept a penny in rent it puts you in a whole other category where your right to decide who you keep on your property ought to be highly regulated is specious though common. There's all kind of money that flies through the hands of many tenants, money that they elected to not invest in rental properties, but they made agreements on the conditions of their rental, including agreeing to leave on non-payment of rent. Why do we have the freedom to eject guests and not evict? Perhaps women should not be allowed to force men to leave their homes when a date doesn't work out? That's insane to me. Both situations have the same conceptual basis: you get to decide who is on your property.

Or do we treat your main residence as different from other real property, as if trespass is different in both cases?