Rising rents and diminishing aid fueling a sharp increase in evictions in many U.S. cities

I don't know what the answer is but it is clearly isn't further moratoriums or rent controls. Housing has to be paid for by somebody.

There are already more than 500,000 homeless and the problem will grow. More affordable housing is needed.

Is this really the best model country for the world to follow?

Liberals think if they just have a permanent moratorium on evictions and paying back student debt that everything will be seen as fine and they won’t have to actually solve anything.

No, owners and companies and institutions need to get paid what they are owed.

People need a roof over their heads. They wont go away and they wont just die. When society stops working to ensure everyone is safe, fed, employed and able to pay basic services and buy food, they are forced to steal to survive.

It costs much more to imprison someone trying to survive than to just house them. They do everything they can to follow the law and the rules but when they are cut loose with no support they must still find a way to survive.

Increasing homelessness will increase crime and increase prison populations, in the end costing two or three times what it would have to simply provide housing.

Governments must understand basic needs must be met or it is creating problems for its people, both those above the poverty line as well as those below it.

With homes, people can go out and find work or have it allocated by the government to cover unemployment wages, that must cover all basic needs from food, to transport to medications etc.

America has a terrible social safety net, and no universal health care. Price gouging on medicines is allowed to continue and worse. It used to be the nation that would take the worlds refuse and give all hope for a better life. Not any more.

America could and should do better by its people, currently it is failing them badly. Not a matter of who is in government as both have failed and continue to fail. Until they get good people in both parties and work together the US like others will continue to go downhill.

Is this really the best model country for the world to follow?

Nope. There are many things that the US gets right. There are also many things that it gets wrong. At the core, the US is about self-sufficiency. For people who aren't and don't have family to fall back on to weather the hard times, they are lost.

Without knowing the details, it is hard to say what each person's solution should be. I'm inclined to fit anyone on govt assistance with a 10 yr contraceptive as the first step. Next, I'd setup child care worked by some of the people on assistance, overseen by professionals who provide training so they can get a childcare license after 1-2 yrs. We need to stop poor people who can't afford their own costs from having more poor. Training for viable jobs is needed for anyone in govt assistance too. If the person can't do it well for the first semester, drop them from the program and effectively put them into a group home. I have a friend who was raised by a mother who's always been on welfare her entire life. She had 6 kids. - 3 are on welfare today. 3 others got university educated and have done well. Not sure who could have predicted which would fail and which would succeed. When I worked in midtown, walking between work and the parking garage, I'd be hassled by the same homeless people daily. I turned it into a joke and they'd play back. For a while I'd offer them an apple, left over from my lunch. They never wanted it. They wanted $10 to buy alcohol. Every few months, a "guest-homeless" person would try a new hard-luck story on me trying to get money. Some were inventive, but never true. About 80% had mental issues, that was clear. They didn't want anyone telling them what to do or where to live. They'd found ways to survive and were basically happy. I know 1 guy emptied the trash of a local bar in exchange for a daily meal. The owner had been doing that for 10 yrs for this single man. The guy also watched the area around the bar and prevented others from mischief nearby, so it wasn't just carrying out 5 garbage bags to a dumpster. Anyway, the man got the satisfaction of having "a job" and being paid for that small effort.

Everyone has a mortgage/rent to be paid. It isn't fair when the end people in the chain get special treatment and the state, who taxes the property still demands property taxes be paid, much less the banks and insurance that must be retained, along with monthly maintenance, water, electricity all need to be addressed. For everyone's benefit, each need to pay their part.

Even out where I live, I see people working street corners asking for free money. I have no idea how they even get to some of these places. We aren't near a highway. There's no bus service. It makes no sense for someone really poor to walk 10 miles to get here. There aren't any big employers or parks that allow overnight stays.

People need a roof over their heads. They wont go away and they wont just die. When society stops working to ensure everyone is safe, fed, employed and able to pay basic services and buy food, they are forced to steal to survive.

No doubt, this is why communism works so very well. And if you believe that, you probably believe that China doesn't have any homeless or poor too. That isn't true. There are millions of very poor people in China. Communism with Chinese Characteristics just means keeping homeless out of flagship cities, putting them on a slow train to rural China where someone else gets to deal with them.

Blacklabel

Liberals think if they just have a permanent moratorium on evictions and paying back student debt that everything will be seen as fine and they won’t have to actually solve anything.

> No, owners and companies and institutions need to get paid what they are owed.

Or just do the same as the Republican Trump and declare bankruptcy 5-6 times.

No doubt, this is why communism works so very well. And if you believe that, you probably believe that China doesn't have any homeless or poor too.

Yeah not a communist and dont believe in it.

But community and equality and ensuring everyone gets a fair go and has the means to be self sufficient is a necessity. Simply blaming the unfortunate and the marginalized who fall upon hard times for being poor or those who get ripped off by employers, medical companies, lawyers and doctors, all while themselves doing everything the law requires of them, is not a solution. You cant ignore them and locking them all up costs taxpayers much more than training and housing does.

So some want to brush them under the carpet or lock them up rather than create cheap housing, training, and finding a way for them to better their lives and futures and be self sufficient citizens adding to the community.

As stated, America should be doing much better. It could if it had the will, but It does not.

A quick google search on largest landlords in the US shows private equity firms owning 100s of thousands of apartments/houses. Add in to the mix all of the Airbnb properties and you can see the problem. The average low to mid wage earner is a commodity to be exploited until they are no longer useful. Never able break out of the rent cycle and with interest rates rising due to corporate debt, those lucky to have bought a house must keep finding extra money to pay the banksters. The system is broke.

40 million Americans cannot afford basic healthcare and many who need urgent medical treatment discover their health insurance does not cover the costs incurred leading to medical bankruptcy which is the largest sector of it.

Blacklabel

The rich can renegade their debts, but the poor are expected to pay theirs.

If you rent an apartment owned by someone else, well yes you should pay rent.

as you are a renter in name and in fact. Why would you not have to pay the owner? Also in name and fact.

People should pay their debts but when the poor do not they will too often end up on the street while the rich will declare bankruptcy and continue on.

Not “debts”.

rent.

you don’t pay rent, you get evicted. Which is the topic of this article, evictions.

When you can't pay your rent it becomes a debt. Many had difficulties during the covid.

"evictions" only affect the poor. People need more help.

@LegrandeJune 17 06:35 pm JST

Is this really the best model country for the world to follow?

We haven't collapsed into poverty (on average) or authoritarianism yet, so we do offer more than the authoritarian brigade.

I would think that $8000 in unpaid rent is a good enough reason for an eviction. Would you walk out of a supermarket without paying until you had munched your way through $8000 worth of food?

If you let people stay in properties without paying, landlords will sell up and walk away from the sector.

As with most post pandemic stats, this is just a backlog clearing.

Doesn't America have social housing?

Interesting fact: the Chinese ratio of the richest 20% to the poorest 20% is higher than the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

I’m so glad to see the gun rights crowd excited to use their second amendment rights to prevent innocent people from being threatened with eviction.

Oh? They’re not doing that? Because actually “muh tyranny” is less important to them than watching black people suffer? Okay.

If you let people stay in properties without paying, landlords will sell up and walk away from the sector.

Not so easy to do. First you have to find a buyer. If the rental market looks unattractive that might be hard to do. Second you have to be willing to accept paying 15% of any capital gains in taxes if you just sell and walk away. You can't just roll the proceeds into another investment unless that investment is another property of greater value than the one you just sold using what is called a "1031 Exchange". But those have strict and narrow time limits so you basically have to have the new property and a buyer for your existing property lined up at the same time before you pull the trigger. There are real estate agencies that specialize in this but if owning rentals looks unattractive there won't be much action in the 1031 Exchange market.

you don’t pay rent, you get evicted.

It is generally not that easy even without Covid restrictions. Because of the way the laws are written you basically have to forego rent for at least 60 days to declare "illegal detainer" then file in court to get the county sheriff to evict the tenant. It might be another month before you go to trial. Most courts will force the landlord to pay the tenant, yes pay the tenant, typically two months rent to get them to agree to leave in another 60 days. I have been on both sides of an eviction btw so I know the drill. In the case where I was evicted, for objecting to the on site manager letting her gawdawful chickens run free in the complex (calling in animal regulation and code enforcement is what got me booted and the court frowned meaningfully on the landlord). In the other case the tenant's live in girlfriend got a restraining order that forced our tenant out and now she was living in his, our, rental unit. Sigh. We were a year evicting her.

The moral of the story is that I have worked with tenants to keep them when they had difficulties paying the rent. It is cheaper to forego a rent increase than to raise the rent and have the unit unoccupied for a month or two while you find and screen a new tenant then get them moved in. So far my tenants have been honest with me and caught their rent back up, but I am a lot nicer landlord than some big corporation is. But you can lose serious money from a delinquent tenant and it isn't always easy to boot them out.

After a lull during the pandemic, eviction filings by landlords have come roaring back, driven by rising rents and a long-running shortage of affordable housing.

It is human rights abuse. And it is caused by hyper-financialization of the housing market, especially after the 2008 banker bailout and fueled by private equity and hedge funds.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/blackstone-group-accused-global-housing-crisis-un

While PE does these human rights abuses they are accused from the right of being "woke capitalism" because they try for high ESG and DEI scores.

It is more pushing of the Overton Window towards corporate fascism.

What a decadent third world country..

TokyoLivingToday 09:28 am JST

What a decadent third world country..

And yet we're still not 73rd in GDP per capita. So sad...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

40 million Americans cannot afford basic healthcare and many who need urgent medical treatment discover their health insurance does not cover the costs incurred ...

What? ObamaCare solved that. Didn't you learn that? If you are on govt assistance, you get ObamaCare. If you earn $14K-$25K (approx) as a single person, you get subsidized ObamaCare. I know people who pay $10/month for a "Silver" plan under ObamaCare. Of course, if you earn too much, then you are expected to pay the $800/month like me. Pre-ObamaCare I was paying $150/month for health insurance. Now I pay over $800/month. Lots of people take jobs in their 60s, before they can get on Medicare (age 67) just for the health care. Was talking with the meat-man at the grocery a few days ago. He's 69 and worked as a travel guide around the world. COVID (thanks China!) killed his job and he was forced to work as a butcher in a grocery chain to get health care. Most companies cover 50-100% health care costs for their lowest paid employees. I worked at a place where the company paid 75% of the costs for health insurance. They wanted to encourage individuals to take some responsibility for their own health - eating better and getting exercise 3-5 times a week.

When landlords can't pay the mortgage, they default on the loan or are forced to sell to anyone willing to buy. If they default, then the bank is stuck with it and also seeking a buyer. There are buyers around the world. The sub-prime problem in 2008 hurt a bunch of Europeans who didn't understand the risks in their USA real estate investments. It also hurt the people who over extended and were buying homes they really couldn't afford.

We've all been renters at some point. What I remember about renting was that $500-$700 month was just gone. Then I bought a house and was paying a little more, but effectively paying myself since the money was an investment in the house and land. While other people were leveraging their equity and putting more and more money into stocks, I was slowly paying off the house as quickly as possible. It was a guaranteed ROI as the fixed interest rate. Sure, the stock market was going up 2x faster than the mortgage interest, but when the house was paid off 10 yrs early and there weren't anymore mortgage payments, then the mortgage payments were put into other investments - mainly stocks.

I'm not going to feel bad for everyone who can't pay their rent. I'm not going to feel bad for people who get evicted. They knew it was coming. If they didn't take steps to avoid it, that isn't exactly my fault. I will feel bad for people with mental challenges who can't hold a job and don't have family to help them. For everyone else, they should be smart enough to figure out a solution. That could mean living with family or living in cheaper housing or moving to cheaper parts of the country. If you live in California and are paying $2000/month for rent, but can't keep doing that due to your job. MOVE. There are places where rent is less than $1000/month, sometimes less than $700/month. MOVE. Figure it out.

In U.S., An Estimated 46 Million Cannot Afford Needed Care

https://news.gallup.com/poll/342095/estimated-million-cannot-afford-needed-care.aspx

In U.S., An Estimated 46 Million Cannot Afford Needed Care https://news.gallup.com/poll/342095/estimated-million-cannot-afford-needed-care.aspx

This survey was conducted by web from Feb. 15-21, 2021, with 3,753 adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia via the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel of about 120,000 adults nationwide.

Web polls are self-selecting and don't work. That's a given. Believing you can't afford needed care and what is actually true are two different things. Often, people make assumptions without doing any research.

Just because people have health insurance, that doesn't mean they can afford the co-pays for medications. If you don't pick the right plan under ObamaCare, you can easily end up with $5000 out of pocket expenses yearly. OTOH, if you do, there's usually a monthly cap for how much out-of-pocket you see before insurance pays for everything else. There are people whose job it is to help normal people pick a health care plan for their situation. It is a free call. If people don't make that call once they are determined eligible, that's their own fault. It isn't like they don't have a free Govt cell phone (don't get me started about that).