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It doesn't make sense that having people have their own space as opposed to crowded homeless shelters, increased density at friends/family's places, or on the streets unable to wash or maintain yourself regularly could lead to disease?
I said I'd like to see hard evidence. When one intends to make a financial proposal at a company, they should expect to furnish evidence that the expenditure would provide some kind of return and that there is a factual basis for the need of whatever it is the money is being spent on.
... which we can't get without a live test. And then a localized test wouldn't be enough data. So we need to see massive suffering before we can follow common sense. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in rental assistance remain undispersed.
There must be some data, or at least people knowledgeable about, how often eviction actually leads to homelessness, and how corona has spread amongst homeless. For instance, I was evicted once, but I didn't end up homeless on the street. I would guess this is pretty common for evictions- people have to move someplace cheaper or back in with friends or family temporarily.
I think some suffering alleviated now is likely just being postponed in another form (common among social welfare programs imo). The moratorium isn't sustainable in the long run and will discourage people from renting/maintaining property leading to less housing eventually.
Not the OP, but I can't help but somewhat agree with them. I think we should absolutely have eviction moratoriums in place during the pandemic, and I think it kept a lot of people from losing their homes or going into severe financial distress, but it feels like a huge stretch to me that the CDC (or any executive branch agency) should have that authority. This is something that should be enacted by Congress. (Of course, the situation in the Senate makes it likely difficult to get an eviction moratorium passed, so I'm glad in general that it was allowed to stand as long as it has.)
I agree with you that this should be a congress thing, but you gotta recognize that our government is currently structured to deflect as much decision making from congress as possible and place responsibility in the hands of opaque "process" and the imperial presidency. It's not gonna happen any other way.
The less democratic the system seems, the less people protest.
I 100% agree with you that this should be Congress's job.
Unfortunately, the people's branch has been acquiring job security by avoiding power and responsibility for a long time, leaving others to make decisions. Given that's the world as it is (and not the world as written), I think the Center for Disease Control is the least worst option for making edicts about public health.
I think it would be worse if another department did it. The only possibly better solution I can think of involves leaving it to states plenary power, but on the other hand a public health emergency crosses state lines and impacts interstate commerce.
I believe that's taking a pretty narrow view of it. So if I own more than one house I must house people for nothing, simply because I have property? How is the maintenance going to be paid? Property tax? Insurance? Amortization? Mortgage? Accounting?
I guess I'd have to figure out how to pay for all that but luckily I can live in someone else's house rent free so it wouldn't be too hard.
> not all landlords are big evil corps... half of the rental stock is owned by small ones.
Which isn't much better, really. Large companies may have undue, negative influence on society at scale, but individually, it's the small businesses and individuals that screw you over the most. A large company can't afford to casually break the law or generate bad PR, the way a small business can.
Why does it even matter how it will impact the life? Why can CDC even decide such a thing? Do you know any other country where a national health agency can ban evictions and intrude into a contract law like that?
The number of mortgages in forbearance has dropped to pandemic lows. I think it’s obvious that we don’t need to extend the moratorium at this point. Yes some people might get evicted but definitely many landlords are getting screwed as well.
This was the old “interstate commerce” argument - growing extra crops for my own consumption ripples through the supply chain and impacts interstate commerce… basically a CDC power grab.
> Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said in a dissenting opinion that the outcome of the case was not as clear cut as the majority suggested and that the court was not justified in ending the moratorium so quickly at a time when COVID-19 cases are surging.
> "The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90 percent of counties are experiencing high transmission rates," Breyer wrote.
When courts want to make political decisions, not judicial ones.
That doesn't seem political. Weighing whether an infringement of personal rights have a legitament purpose and are justified is the court's job. The "public good" is a huge part of that calculus
Edit: as an aside, the upvotes/downvotes on this post are wild. One moment its +3 the next moment its -3.
No, it's not. "Public good" is some evolving, tenuous, emotional standard, not a legal definition. If you want to renegotiate property law, we have a branch for that: your state's legislature.
> Weighing whether an infringement of personal rights have a legitament purpose and are justified is the court's job.
No it's not; the court's job is to determine if the matter brought before them is legal and constitutional or not. It's Congress' job to decide where the line between property rights and the public interest is.
While I'm very much in favor of an eviction moratorium right now, it does feel like the CDC exceeded their legal authority here.
Get used to it my friend, that ship sailed long ago.
The court effects changes elected officials are too timid to effect themselves (to say nothing of whether those changes are good or bad). It is a site of politics.
The court is why gay people can get married in our country, to pick but one example.
A nation of homeless people or increase in housing insecurity would be worse for the economy, wouldn’t it? And the effective IQ would drop as well…
This is a case where enforcing private property rights has a negative effect on the economy, while a UBI would have a positive effect. It runs counter to the free-market theories for the same reason as abolishing debtors’ prisons in favor of bankruptcy protections and limited liability companies increases people’s ability to take entrepreneurial risks.
And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy?
I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory.
This super-welfare scenario we have been in for the past 1 1/2 years can't possibly continue.
What's good for the economy is the exchange of goods and services produced by the people that make up said economy.
And people can't survive on slave wages. The people running the country (USA) are out of touch with the current reality many people live in. This isn't the ,1950s where a part time job can sustain anyone.
I hear you, and I agree that there are definitely problems with wages in this country. But the thing to really understand is that the value of money is the collective value of the goods and services exchanged in the economy. It's really just that simple. You need to produce, personally, real value in order to get enough money to acquire the services of another (room and board of some kind). There are exceptions to this rule of course (stock market, currency market and commodities speculators, looking at you). Think about this long and hard and anyone can see the connections between value traded for value. This is why a free market is the best possible solution to a large economy. When government gets involved, their authoritarian solutions (take money from one person and give it to another, without the exchange of true value) will never have long term workability.
If someone wants to work a minimum wage job in America, they should not expect to be able to acquire luxury goods or anything of great value other than being able to subsist. It's nothing against them, it's just that the value being provided by the worker is not generally that valuable. This is in itself a UBI of sorts. Nobody inherently has the right to simply take from another (food, shelter, healthcare) simply for being alive and providing nothing in return. But showing up to a job and clocking in and clocking out every day, and doing one's job will bring in some return and you can then go out and exchange that for survival needs.
Now if you want to live a little better you're going to want to provide more value than is expected and you will get more return on that. A simple example is waiting tips. I have definitely tipped bigger for service people who put in extra value. And above all else, morale and general happiness of a culture goes up when people are producing and exchanging HIGH VALUE.
This is not the economy taught in schools. "Economics" as a subject has been mired down so thoroughly in complexity, trapdoors and dead ends nobody can agree on anything, and socialism and communism emerge as great concepts. It's just that "nobody has quite implemented socialism [which is communism] correctly" and thus resulted in untold suffering, misery and death throughout the ages. If communism is so great then why do so many people flee socialist and communist countries and try to make it to the USA? Because we have a FREE MARKET. Not total government appropriations and grants, yet.
It's hard to take this seriously, since no economy in the world (that we know of) in reasonably-modern times has been a free market.
I feel like the opposite of what you say is true: as economies grow past a certain point, market regulation is essential to avoid monopolistic practices and winner-take-all situations.
If the US was a true free market, our income inequality problems would be even worse, and we'd live in a de-facto corporatocracy. No thank you.
I think that if the US were a true free market we would have seen certain banks go bankrupt in 2008 and a more honest (or at least less stupid) system of banking take its place. Yes there would be pain, but there is already pain in other forms. You can't spray perfume on a rotten steak to make it any less of a problem. How about regulation that's supposed to protect consumers from big evil corporations are the same that prevent smaller players from getting a substantial foothold in the game and posing any kind of threat to the big players.
Look, I don't have all the answers but I do know that without the exchange of value for value as the basic unit of economic strength there will be confusion, waste and contraction in a society.
50B has been allocated but some states have actually distributed as little as 5% of the money allocated to them.
The total cost to the economy of the disruption of millions of households is probably more than 20B especially considering we have already allocated funds for the matter.
>I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory.
Theory is often different from reality.
Someone may not possess the skills needed for a reasonably paying job and may not even be able to make ends meet on what is in the offing. Even if they can make ends meet they may only be able to barely do so while owing several months worth of rent ensuring eviction when this becomes possible. They may be unable to earn more than the cost in child care they will incur given present conditions. This is especially true if they don't feel safe sending their kid to in person education.
Obviously you don't intend something as silly as why can't Samantha go back to work for 400 a week while paying 340 a week in day care and somehow use the 60 a week to pay not only the 1500 rent but the 6000 backlog but if you really zoom in on people's lives you might find your assumptions fall short more than they fit.
The idea that people of modest means are just milking the government while not bothering to pay rent because clearly this gravy train will never end is ill founded.
People like that either trying to stay afloat and pay their bills or are puking up their cheerios worrying about being homeless and having nobody willing to rent to them even if they can pay.
We shouldn't evict anyone who is presently applying for funds and paying in good faith and we ought to figure out a way to distribute the funds that are already agreed upon.
> And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy?
Exactly. The economy is strengthened by money being exchanged for goods and services. When people can't pay their rent, the pain goes to the mortgage servicers, and eventually the bond market.
I don't want a market collapse. I think all of us don't want a market collapse. A market collapse would likely negatively affect the affluent commenters here whining and complaining about others not being forced to be homeless.
Yes, some will be able to turf out a tenant and replace them with a higher paying one, and those landlords will be glad.
But many will not be able to; now, instead getting the rent check from the government,* they will get nothing. Yes, the hiring market is hot, but only for certain sectors. Others, for example service sectors servicing office staff, have yet to recover.
And the realtor association: they just want transaction volume: each eviction, they hope, will generate a future commission event. For the reasons above: I doubt it.
* though the government has been derelict so far in making these payments.
The money has been allocated, payment has been slow. Which is both in law and in practice different from “pays no money”. This is like the first round of COVID support forgivable loans: didn’t manage to start up right away.
Even if you assume that the money will come, you would have lost the opportunity cost of the money. Also in the meantime, if you had a mortgage on the property, you would have to make up that income on your own which is a double opportunity cost. In the meantime, inflation is running over 5%.
If you look at SF apartments, you will see many landlords who are selling at what seem to be low prices. Of course, SF and the surrounding Bay Area are affected by remote work as well. It doesn't seem to be a good time to be a landlord in this area?
Why exactly are so many people not paying rent between the enhanced amount of unemployment that was given out and the labor shortage and rising wages that come with that? Who is this population of people who are not paying and why?
Did a lot not manage to get unemployment benefits in the first place? Are landlords evicting tenants who owe back rent even if they are paying now? Is it just a matter of waiting for school to start up again so they can work?
That is what I am trying to figure out. Are there actually millions of people unable to pay or do they just see this as an easy way to have more money and get housing for free?
A friend of a friend did this though. Went from $0 to 6 figures in assets just by investing his rent money as he kept his job.
Yes but you likely have to sue them and spend a ton of money trying to collect. I am not sure if it is considered worth it, especially given that many would have just spent the money.
A lot of people are in debt to their landlords due to non-payment of rent from when the economy shut down and the subsequent recession. Sure, they may have jobs now, but the "rising wages" due to the current "labor shortage" aren't significant enough to be generating an extra $10-20k for back rent for average-wage workers.
But I'm sure there's also plenty of people scared of COVID and/or using COVID as a reason to not work or pay rent and hope the whole thing works it self out.
People getting evicted for back rent, even if they are paying the current month, could explain this. Although given enhanced unemployment, I am still curious why they would owe that much.
Are you asking why the law was put in the first place. You are living in a bubble where you (and your family/friends) respect your obligations. Surprise, most of society doesn't.
I have a theory: It’s compariable to the early days of credit cards. Suddenly you have this money you can spend, and you reason that you can put off worrying about it until later. Suddenly people think hey why should we pay the mortgage or the rent, let’s use that money for other things. Just like its credit. The next thing you know you’ve maxed out the card, gone six months without paying rent, and suddenly have this thing due.
> "The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90 percent of counties are experiencing high transmission rates," Breyer wrote.
I wonder if the Supreme Court doing their job and weighing in on the legality of executive branch actions is also in the public interest?
... he comments under the Supreme Court doing exactly that. (and yes, a justice having a different opinion is part of that, and no, he didn't just say that public interest overrides, but specifically argues why he thinks the modified moratorium could be legal. But cherry-picking quotes is fun I guess)
It's been a year and a half. The emergency justifications are gone, so it's time for congress to act. It's the judicial branch's job to act as a check on the power of the executive branch.
Note that it is also the judicial branch's job to act as a check on the power of the legislative branch. (For example, if Congress passed a bill that said that nobody could collect rent for the next two years, that would probably be an unconstitutional "taking".)
Probably. It gets into eminent domain law. It would also mean you could sue the government for what it seized from you.
Amusingly, if there's someone in the military who wasn't paying rent because of covid, the policy might have been a Third Amendment violation in that particular case.
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I'd like to see hard evidence that "a surge of evictions could lead to more infections of the coronavirus".
I'm happy to see the Supreme Court finally coming out of it's post election turtle shell and doing it's job.
... which we can't get without a live test. And then a localized test wouldn't be enough data. So we need to see massive suffering before we can follow common sense. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in rental assistance remain undispersed.
I think some suffering alleviated now is likely just being postponed in another form (common among social welfare programs imo). The moratorium isn't sustainable in the long run and will discourage people from renting/maintaining property leading to less housing eventually.
The less democratic the system seems, the less people protest.
Unfortunately, the people's branch has been acquiring job security by avoiding power and responsibility for a long time, leaving others to make decisions. Given that's the world as it is (and not the world as written), I think the Center for Disease Control is the least worst option for making edicts about public health.
I think it would be worse if another department did it. The only possibly better solution I can think of involves leaving it to states plenary power, but on the other hand a public health emergency crosses state lines and impacts interstate commerce.
jobs also are available, so the economic side of the memorandum is moot.
At this point, keeping the restrictions would be absurd. not all landlords are big evil corps... half of the rental stock is owned by small ones.
I guess I'd have to figure out how to pay for all that but luckily I can live in someone else's house rent free so it wouldn't be too hard.
Which isn't much better, really. Large companies may have undue, negative influence on society at scale, but individually, it's the small businesses and individuals that screw you over the most. A large company can't afford to casually break the law or generate bad PR, the way a small business can.
Glad it was struck down.
(Neither can a surge of bancrupt landlords, but that's a separate problem)
> "The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90 percent of counties are experiencing high transmission rates," Breyer wrote.
When courts want to make political decisions, not judicial ones.
Edit: as an aside, the upvotes/downvotes on this post are wild. One moment its +3 the next moment its -3.
No it's not; the court's job is to determine if the matter brought before them is legal and constitutional or not. It's Congress' job to decide where the line between property rights and the public interest is.
While I'm very much in favor of an eviction moratorium right now, it does feel like the CDC exceeded their legal authority here.
The court effects changes elected officials are too timid to effect themselves (to say nothing of whether those changes are good or bad). It is a site of politics.
The court is why gay people can get married in our country, to pick but one example.
This is a case where enforcing private property rights has a negative effect on the economy, while a UBI would have a positive effect. It runs counter to the free-market theories for the same reason as abolishing debtors’ prisons in favor of bankruptcy protections and limited liability companies increases people’s ability to take entrepreneurial risks.
I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory.
This super-welfare scenario we have been in for the past 1 1/2 years can't possibly continue.
What's good for the economy is the exchange of goods and services produced by the people that make up said economy.
If someone wants to work a minimum wage job in America, they should not expect to be able to acquire luxury goods or anything of great value other than being able to subsist. It's nothing against them, it's just that the value being provided by the worker is not generally that valuable. This is in itself a UBI of sorts. Nobody inherently has the right to simply take from another (food, shelter, healthcare) simply for being alive and providing nothing in return. But showing up to a job and clocking in and clocking out every day, and doing one's job will bring in some return and you can then go out and exchange that for survival needs.
Now if you want to live a little better you're going to want to provide more value than is expected and you will get more return on that. A simple example is waiting tips. I have definitely tipped bigger for service people who put in extra value. And above all else, morale and general happiness of a culture goes up when people are producing and exchanging HIGH VALUE.
This is not the economy taught in schools. "Economics" as a subject has been mired down so thoroughly in complexity, trapdoors and dead ends nobody can agree on anything, and socialism and communism emerge as great concepts. It's just that "nobody has quite implemented socialism [which is communism] correctly" and thus resulted in untold suffering, misery and death throughout the ages. If communism is so great then why do so many people flee socialist and communist countries and try to make it to the USA? Because we have a FREE MARKET. Not total government appropriations and grants, yet.
I feel like the opposite of what you say is true: as economies grow past a certain point, market regulation is essential to avoid monopolistic practices and winner-take-all situations.
If the US was a true free market, our income inequality problems would be even worse, and we'd live in a de-facto corporatocracy. No thank you.
Look, I don't have all the answers but I do know that without the exchange of value for value as the basic unit of economic strength there will be confusion, waste and contraction in a society.
Yes. It’s a liquidity crisis, and that’s how you fight them. Channeling cash to landlords allows the landlords to spend; an empty building does not.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
50B has been allocated but some states have actually distributed as little as 5% of the money allocated to them.
The total cost to the economy of the disruption of millions of households is probably more than 20B especially considering we have already allocated funds for the matter.
>I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory.
Theory is often different from reality.
Someone may not possess the skills needed for a reasonably paying job and may not even be able to make ends meet on what is in the offing. Even if they can make ends meet they may only be able to barely do so while owing several months worth of rent ensuring eviction when this becomes possible. They may be unable to earn more than the cost in child care they will incur given present conditions. This is especially true if they don't feel safe sending their kid to in person education.
Obviously you don't intend something as silly as why can't Samantha go back to work for 400 a week while paying 340 a week in day care and somehow use the 60 a week to pay not only the 1500 rent but the 6000 backlog but if you really zoom in on people's lives you might find your assumptions fall short more than they fit.
The idea that people of modest means are just milking the government while not bothering to pay rent because clearly this gravy train will never end is ill founded.
People like that either trying to stay afloat and pay their bills or are puking up their cheerios worrying about being homeless and having nobody willing to rent to them even if they can pay.
We shouldn't evict anyone who is presently applying for funds and paying in good faith and we ought to figure out a way to distribute the funds that are already agreed upon.
Exactly. The economy is strengthened by money being exchanged for goods and services. When people can't pay their rent, the pain goes to the mortgage servicers, and eventually the bond market.
I don't want a market collapse. I think all of us don't want a market collapse. A market collapse would likely negatively affect the affluent commenters here whining and complaining about others not being forced to be homeless.
What???
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-h...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/poverty-intellige...
Yes, some will be able to turf out a tenant and replace them with a higher paying one, and those landlords will be glad.
But many will not be able to; now, instead getting the rent check from the government,* they will get nothing. Yes, the hiring market is hot, but only for certain sectors. Others, for example service sectors servicing office staff, have yet to recover.
And the realtor association: they just want transaction volume: each eviction, they hope, will generate a future commission event. For the reasons above: I doubt it.
* though the government has been derelict so far in making these payments.
So why would landlords prefer a program which pays no money? Better to be rid of the tenant to at least reduce wear and tear.
Now it won’t be available at all.
If you look at SF apartments, you will see many landlords who are selling at what seem to be low prices. Of course, SF and the surrounding Bay Area are affected by remote work as well. It doesn't seem to be a good time to be a landlord in this area?
Did a lot not manage to get unemployment benefits in the first place? Are landlords evicting tenants who owe back rent even if they are paying now? Is it just a matter of waiting for school to start up again so they can work?
A friend of a friend did this though. Went from $0 to 6 figures in assets just by investing his rent money as he kept his job.
Most people do not have the money.
But I'm sure there's also plenty of people scared of COVID and/or using COVID as a reason to not work or pay rent and hope the whole thing works it self out.
My impression (from internet sources) was that many businesses were unwilling or unable to raise wages even if this meant vacancies.
E.g. there were various stories about fast food joints that would rather reduce service or close altogether than to raise wages.
I can't say if those places are representative of the general trend or just extremes though.
I wonder if the Supreme Court doing their job and weighing in on the legality of executive branch actions is also in the public interest?
Apparently not.
Amusingly, if there's someone in the military who wasn't paying rent because of covid, the policy might have been a Third Amendment violation in that particular case.