Posted on 07/06/2017 6:39:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
As Washington DC’s 2018 mayoral election takes shape, one of the early battleground issues will be housing, particularly low-income housing. It’s a perennial favorite in every major Democratic-controlled city and the District is no exception. To date, the salvos launched by the field of candidates makes it clear the old narrative will still hold – tenants are always victims, and landlords are always guilty. The reality, often times, is very different.
When liberals seek to discredit someone they often label them with a derogatory term. In the case of rental property, no label carries more weight than the term “slumlord.” Liberals love to toss it around, because like being called a racist, it can destroy reputations, livelihoods and even families. There are, no doubt, horrible landlords out there. But what gets ignored is the fact that there are some really irresponsible, horrible tenants out there too. In my life, I’ve witnessed this firsthand.
When I lived in Baltimore I rented a basement apartment in an old row house. One of my building-mates was, shall we say, not a nice individual. He was also the person I suspect of ruining several of my bathroom rugs. How? Thanks to his penchant for using t-shirts as toilet paper, he continually overflowed every commode in the building.
When I was roofing in Detroit in college a large part of what we did was find roof leaks and fix them. Part of locating a leak is seeing where it’s coming in, which means going into apartments. I can assure you, I set foot in many apartments that were filthy, totally unkempt and generally had at least one recently produced hole in the wall.
My point is, like everyone else, there are good and bad tenants. Yet tenants, in the field of politics, receive a pass from the media and politicians no matter where they fall on that spectrum. It’s easy to demonize the haves over the have-nots; it’s one of the media’s favorite narratives. It’s also smart politics because there will always be more people with less. Which brings me back to the current political situation in Washington, DC.
Today, we have the current Mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, planning to run for reelection in 2018, and the current Attorney General, Karl Racine, considering an effort to topple Bowser in the Democratic primary. In DC, the Democratic primary is essentially the general election. Since both are ultra liberal Democrats, with very little actual policy disagreement, in order to differentiate themselves, they have both sought the mantel of being the most “concerned” with affordable housing and eradicating homelessness in the District.
But defeating homelessness -- and suspending the laws of economics in DC, where rental prices are through the roof thanks to the existence of the federal government – are hard, if not impossible tasks. Hence, both candidates have decided that in order to demonstrate they care about these persistent issues, they have both decided to try and outdo each other by attacking the owners of the properties and, yes, calling them slumlords.
Perhaps the most attacked of the property owners in Washington, is a company called Sanford Capital, that provides more low-income housing than any other single landlord in the District. The Mayor attacked them in her State of the District address. Not to be outdone, the Attorney General is suing Sanford Capital using every legal trick in the book to try and inflict pain on the landlord, while at the same time generate positive headlines for himself. Combined, their attacks on Sanford Capital – have according to media reports – blocked the company from being able to sell their properties. How does that make sense? If either Bowser or Racine wanted to actually help the people living in Sanford Capital’s properties, wouldn’t they be encouraging a sale? Or, would they rather keep Sanford Capital around as a convenient punching bag?
What neither politician is willing to acknowledge is that many of the tenants living in Sanford Capital properties are living rent-free or paying less than what they would be paying if Sanford Capital sold the property to another owner that would, you know, actually like to make a profit on their investment.
Finally, what liberals also must accept, is that when you allow people to live rent free, or in subsidized housing, that many residents will treat them as such, and do things like flush t-shirts down their toilets. When that happened to me, I didn’t blame the landlord. I blamed the person flushing the t-shirts. Yet, heaven forbid a politician actually scolds the noble tenant and not the “slumlord.” That would be, you know, honest, which is something that all politicians – both Democrats and Republicans – struggle with.
Maryland encourages bad tenants.
Like the author, I also learned my home improvement skills in the welfare houses of Detroit. We did “weatherization.” What a joke. We’d come in, do $1000 in repairs and bring the value of the neighborhood up $20,000.
Windows, doors, porches, some roofing.
We go yelled at, shot at, chased by dogs and everything else you can imagine.
The nice part was, if your hammer missed the nail and put a hole in the wall, nobody noticed.
I once broke a window I was trying to repair, so I drove the the nearest abandoned house, grabbed a window and replaced it in the house we were fixing.
These homes were all occupied by multiple generations of welfare rats. They were laying around and gaming the system. In the two years I did this work, There was one man who I believed deserved our help. He retired from his job and the pension was in-funded leaving him broke.
That’s what the system is for.
Many years ago, I hired a local lawyer for a straightforward real estate transaction (house).
We got to talking, and he said that early in his career, when he was more idealistic, he mostly represented tenants in landlord/tenant cases. But, he soon observed that for the most part, his tenants were unreasonable jerks who were complaining in order to shirk their financial obligations, and switched over to mostly representing the landlords.
That’s why it’s so easy to spot housing projects. The older they are, the easier they are to spot. The newer ones aren’t so hard either. Especially during the day on weekdays. Just look for groups of people milling around many of whom are able bodied, young adults.
D.C. should have long ago been “eminent domained” into federal property. All the businesses there, including the Watergate hotel complex, would be leased properties. All the slums could be bulldozed, so new buildings could be built from below the ground up. New infrastructure.
And while they’re at it, close most surface streets to most vehicular traffic. By going mostly for public transport, more people could easily move into and out of the city on a daily basis. For areas where crowds assemble, the judicious use of covered “moving sidewalks”, as are used in airport concourses, would really get pedestrian traffic going.
Supplies going in and garbage leaving would have their own dedicated truck byways. Otherwise, subways, light rail, buses and trams.
In short order there would be an abundance of space, lots of old and decrepit federal buildings could be rebuilt and enlarged; but plenty of room for monuments and public park. Security would be substantially easier and street crime (if not white collar), would likely plummet.
D.C. land area is just 61 square miles.
First hand experience, I would give almost any landlord the benefit of the doubt.
My late uncle had some rental property. He got “bad” tenants into one of his places. Basically they paid their rent irregularly if at all. Being schooled on how to scam the system they were able to secure the free services of a Legal Aid attorney and tie him up in court. He on the other hand had to pay his attorney. Took him years to get them to move out, and when he finally regained access to the unit he found they had cut multiple holes in the walls that were used for hiding drug stashes.
So does Oregon.
I recently had to go to my rental because the dishwasher “lock” button was stuck. I tripped the breaker, waited a few seconds, turned it back on, and turned the lock button off. Took about three minutes and cost me an hour of driving time. I only have this house because I’m about $25000 upside down on it. I do not enjoy being a landlord.
Yep. Being a landlord, in this day and age, can be torture.
One of the items in the bill is if you evict when you want to remodel or sell you have to pay them relocation costs and then give them FFR to move back in when done with the remodel!
The Dems have majority in the State House and Senate, they just passed a bill requiring all abortions be paid by insurance companies and taxpayers, including illegals. There will be a tax on my insurance premium, to pay for the abortions, because $1275 a month for insurance that covers nothing is not enough.
Just when I breathe a sign of relief, Oregon goes wayyyy left.
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