CA to Pay Off All Past Due Rent Accrued During Covid, Giving Renters Clean Slate

https://www.newsweek.com/california-pay-off-all-past-due-rent-accrued-during-covid-giving-renters-clean-slate-1602556

by koolba • 5 years ago

26 44 5 years ago

newsweek.com

danboarder• 5 years ago

Out of fairness then, how about a credit to those who struggled and made it a priority to still make rent every month?

analyst74• 5 years ago

The primary goal of this is to make landlords whole, not to help renters.

geoduck14• 5 years ago

The primary goal is for Newsome to get reelected

bejelentkezni• 5 years ago

I think that even if this were about renters and not landlords that would never happen due to being so much harder to measure. Investigating who really struggled and who was fine or who gamed the system and who really couldn't pay would probably end up costing more than it was supposed to save people even ignoring how it's paid for out of federal debt if I'm reading the article right.

All that said I think if any state really wanted to help renters they'd make real renting illegal and mandate all the contracts change to lease agreements. Nobody likes to pay their landlord's mortgage, that's not fair whether you made rent payments a priority or not. But seeing as big landowners and politicians always seem to be buddies that's about as likely as as what you originally proposed so I digress.

Afforess3• 5 years ago

Crabs in a bucket mentality. Pull down others because you didn't benefit too.

How about compassion?

esyir4• 5 years ago

How about incentives.

Incentivizing bad behaviour for a feel good doesn't tend to end well.

tdfx• 5 years ago

The idea of this makes me shudder. Not because of any sense of fairness about the idea, but rather that government never seems to understand that their well-intentioned ideas always have unintended consequences. Cue the footage of politicians patting themselves on the back for passing student loan legislation.

esyir4• 5 years ago

This really does feel like nobody seems to understand second order effects.

Either that or somebody up there in power is really invested in the current dysfunctions.

patrick451• 5 years ago

Putting a moratorium on evictions was tantamount to stealing from landlords. We should have been concerned 12 months ago when the housing market was effectively nationalized.This seems but a feeble step towards correcting that egregious overreach.

ivraatiems• 5 years ago

Can you elaborate on what those unintended consequences are in this case?

musicale• 5 years ago

Canceling student loan debt seems like a nice idea. Student loans were basically a corrupt bargain between universities (who got to raise tuition with impunity), banks (who collected the interest on the loans) and the federal government (which made student loans standard operating practice, made them hard to discharge, and turned them into a guaranteed money spigot that universities and banks milked in ever-increasing amounts, for half a century or more.)

Even better would be if universities and banks offered refunds for their excessive tuition and student loan charges for the past 50 years. ;-)

More realistically, perhaps we should make student loan debt the same as all other unsecured debt, since it's paid off with the same dollars. And universities should be subject to antitrust laws.

sagarm2• 5 years ago

This is a bailout more so for landlords than renters.

IMO this should be done via a non-refundable property tax rebate. Don't pay property taxes? Then you already get your subsidy on an ongoing basis.

deep-root2• 5 years ago

I wonder if renters will know their back-rent was made whole, or if shady landlords could attempt to "double dip".

koolba• 5 years ago

IMO this should be done via a non-refundable property tax rebate. Don't pay property taxes? Then you already get your subsidy on an ongoing basis.

Even better, let them make a deal with the landlords that to opt in you have to allow for a reassessment to “fair market value” based upon the back rent. That will allow pushing the revenue can down the road for another 25 years.

google234123• 5 years ago

Property taxes are already way too low in CA. Though given how high all the other taxes are... I don't know.

sagarm2• 5 years ago

Raise land value tax rates, lower property tax rates, tax on assessed values, and end income tax.

The end result should be a healthier and more dynamic economy that rewards productive activity without subsidizing slumlords.

Afforess3• 5 years ago

Good! Given that the mortgage interest rate deduction exists, and it handsomely benefits wealthy homeowners, it's nice to see impoverished renters win for once.

We should do more Jubilees.

iJohnDoe• 5 years ago

Don’t fool yourself. It’s not “handsomely”. There is a cap. It also usually doesn’t even come close to offsetting property taxes.

Go buy a house. Then I’m guessing you won’t take the deduction on your taxes because you’re thinking of the impoverished renters, right?

proc0• 5 years ago

This is so authoritative. Did people vote on this? They throw money at everything while they make millions of dollars for themslves. Just redistribute the peasant's money, and experiment with the market.

quantified• 5 years ago

Why did I bother paying rent then? Feels like being fiscally responsible is just a fool’s game here.

matt-attack• 5 years ago

Same with the student loan repayment. Why did I bust my ass for 10 years and forgo: home ownership, travel, dinners out, etc.?

dragonwriter3• 5 years ago

Why did I bother paying rent then?

Because the state was under no legal obligation to do this, and even perceiving the problem and having a government that wanted to solve it, is unlikely to have done so (or even have beem able to do so, given Constitutional balanced budget rules) if it hadn't ended up with an enormous unexpected budget surplus to throw at it, so acting based on the assumption that it would do so if you had the capacity to pay rent would be an unacceptable risk of eviction once the emergency moratorium ended, which it was certainly going to at some point.

pope_meat• 5 years ago

Beats letting a ludicrous amount of people become homeless.

But let's not kid ourselves here, if they just lifted the rent moratorium and let it sort itself out everyone here would be complaining about how the homeless are out of control, destroying property values and the "my family has to feel SAFE! The neighborhood has gone to hell!"

I'm glad people are keeping their shelter, we can handle the rest.

We need a huge natural disaster that destroys everything, a lot of you need to be reminded of the importance of community, the cushy gigs and thought bubbles have poisoned the humanity in a lot of y'all.

decremental2• 5 years ago

This is bullshit! I paid my rent this whole time and now I'm going to pay for everyone else's rent too? This state is run by unbelievable bastards.

reportt• 5 years ago

I know, right? I mean, I paid my rent on time for the entire pandemic due to having a job. All those people who have back rent and possibly lost their jobs and only now are getting them back should also have to meet the same financial burden!

Or, ya know, accept that people need a place to stay and recognize that the pandemic was a global disaster that many places were unable to handle, and kicking people out now might be a bigger second order problem.

decremental2• 5 years ago

So just make them pay it off later on or in small chunks monthly until it's paid off. There's no reason whatsoever for making other people pay for it for them. I'm tired of other people being so damn generous with my money.

nly3• 5 years ago

Why should landlords maintain their profit margins over this period while tenants who lost their jobs lose all their savings and disposable income?

Landlords, even if, as a business, they don't have an 18 month cash buffer, have equity. If a landlord is hard-up they can attempt to refinance, or go bust and sell their assets (the property) to another more successful (perhaps less levered up) landlord. Rental yields are something like 3-5%, so 18 months of lost income is only an additional 5-8% LTV.

The state should have decreed that anyone who can show hardship (tenant or landlord) be granted interest-free payment holidays for the duration, and made it illegal for leveraged landlords not to pass these on.

snicker7• 5 years ago

Great. Abolish all debt (student loan debt, mortgages, credit cards, business loans, bonds). Make it proactive too. Have the government automatically pay off everyone's credit cards every month. Infinite wealth for everyone. True justice and equity.

CA to Pay Off All Past Due Rent Accrued During Covid, Giving Renters Clean Slate

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