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What’s in the Bill:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/rep_omar_introduces_agenda_21.html

Essentially, the bill says that real property tenants can stop paying their landlords. Our country was not founded on the moral code that one is not responsible for one’s obligations and debts. However, these socialists would make it so.

Unsurprisingly, this bill is full of problems. It provides for a COVID suspension period ending April 2022 (Sec. 8(3)), but the landlord relief fund runs for five years (Sec. 5 (c)(1)). It seems as if it’s planning to extend for up to five years a tenant’s freedom from rent obligations, should the bill become law.

Under H.R. 1847, tenants may simply stop paying their rent, without restriction, for a period of one year (for now). There is no means-testing to determine if rent relief is warranted. In fact, the bill doesn’t even require that the tenant notify the landlord.

However, our taxpayer money will go to notify every renter in the country of this provision (Sec. 3(c)). No mention is made of notifying every landlord, yet landlords can be held responsible, to the point of forfeiting their property if they ignorantly, but in accordance with their lawful contract, pursue their tenants for rent (Sec. 4).

While tenants can just withhold money, landlords must apply for relief of unpaid rent (Sec. 5). The requirements are onerous and include freezing the rent for a period of five years regardless of the market – a provision that could cut both ways. The owner must agree to rent vacant units to HUD and other tenant-assistance grantees, even if it is apparent that the tenant cannot afford usual utilities. In some localities, landlords are on the hook for unpaid utility bills in occupied dwellings.

Potential tenants cannot be rejected for their arrest and conviction history, presumably including a history of arson, running a brothel, destroying rented housing, cooking meth at home, drug dealing, or pedophilia even if the unit is across the street from a school. Too bad, landlords, when your insurance rates triple due to this law, but your ability to charge rent is still frozen.

Applications for rent relief must include Personally Identifiable Information for any person with any ownership interest in the property, except for shareholders in a publicly-traded company; an unrestricted list of all their assets and liabilities; and comprehensive info on all rentals in which they have an interest, not just the one on the application. This, of course, is specifically designed to give the federal government a complete listing of all rental housing in America, and a basis for implementing a wealth tax.

The communism begins to sneak in in Sec. 5(e), where priority for landlord reimbursement is tiered based on income. Non-profit owners and those with the fewest assets get the highest priority.

Rental property owners get totally trashed if they own a multi-family (five or more dwelling units) structure (Sec. 7). For five years, they cannot sell or transfer their property — presumably, this includes transfers via a trust to one’s heirs — without the permission of HUD, which will notify all eligible purchasers that the property is available. This is a prima facie violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.