Free Republic

Tenants and advocates across the country are begging the federal government to implement a permanent rental assistance program and permanent eviction protections.

Earlier this year, Denver City Council passed a property ordinance that requires all rental houses, units and apartments to be licensed. The deadline for some landlords is around the corner and the FOX31 Problem Solvers are finding out that only 1% of owners have complied. Eric Escudero, spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses said they’re concerned about a “slow” and “disappointing” start. “There are obviously a lot of people who are procrastinating to get this required licensing to be a landlord in the city and county of Denver,” Escudero said. The city council passed the “Healthy Residential Rentals...

A proposal by a New York politician was to fine Landlords $1000 if they check a tenant’s credit history during the application process. The politician believes that credit checks aren’t fair to tenants, however it never occurs to her that it isn’t fair to landlords to not have the opportunity to put the best possible tenants in their property.

John Oliver on Sunday pointed out that housing is now “the thing a 16-year-old TikTok millionaire can afford and you can’t.” (Watch the video below.) On “Last Week Tonight” the host took aim at skyrocketing rents and some of the greedy attitudes behind them.

Krystal Guerra’s Miami apartment has a tiny kitchen, cracked tiles, warped cabinets, no dishwasher and hardly any storage space. But Guerra was fine with the apartment’s shortcomings. It was all part of being a 32-year-old graduate student in South Florida, she reasoned, and she was happy to live there for a few more years as she finished her marketing degree. That was until a new owner bought the property and told her he was raising the rent from $1,550 to $1,950, a 26% increase that Guerra said meant her rent would account for the majority of her take-home pay from...

Landlords and residents in California’s Bay Area are being asked to take in vagrants as homelessness continues to spiral out of control. Several nonprofits and a mayor in the area are prodding residents and landlords to take in one of the nearly 30,000 homeless individuals in the five-county area, the Mercury News reports. Existing affordable housing developments do not have adequate room to accommodate the homeless population.

The St. Paul City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved the wording of a rent control ballot measure residents will consider at the polls in November. Now, groups for and against the initiative are gearing up to lobby for votes on the proposal to cap rent increases at 3% annually. A coalition of housing advocates gathered about 5,600 signatures in the spring and early summer, more than enough to place the policy decision in the hands of the electorate. St. Paul voters will be asked: "Should the city adopt the proposed ordinance limiting rent increases? The ordinance limits residential rent increases...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday issued a moratorium on evictions targeting areas of the country with high levels of COVID-19 transmission, extending an eviction ban for much of the nation just days after a blanket moratorium had expired. The CDC order applies to counties experiencing significant levels of virus spread, which is defined by the agency as 50 to 100 cases per 100,000 people. A congressional source said the order will likely apply to roughly 90 percent of the renter population in the U.S. The order will expire on Oct. 3. It was issued after...

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said Friday night that she would sleep outside the US Capitol in an effort to persuade Congress to extend the nationwide moratorium on evictions set to expire Saturday. “Many of my Democratic colleagues chose to go on vacation early today rather than staying to vote to keep people in their homes,” Bush tweeted. “I’ll be sleeping outside the Capitol tonight. We’ve still got work to do.” Bush, 45, who experienced a period of homelessness nearly two decades ago, sent a letter to her colleagues earlier Friday calling on them to stay in Washington DC a little...

A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request to block a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order that prohibits landlords nationwide from evicting certain tenants who fail to pay rent amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The court's order means the moratorium will remain in place until July 31. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court's three liberals to keep the moratorium in place. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett said they would have granted the request.

The majority of the nation’s landlords are individual investors. They own about 23 million units in 17 million properties, according to the U.S. Census. More than 6 million renter households are behind on rent. The one-month extension of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium was welcome news for tenants but another nail in the coffin for some struggling landlords. Groups representing landlords had been lobbying hard to end the moratorium and now warn even another month will put some of those landlords out of business. “Each passing month further escalates the risk of losing an ever-increasing amount...

There’s an epidemic of abysmal job growth, gas shortages, government money everywhere and spiking inflation. But CBS appeared more upset that landlords were desperate to pay their bills in a recent broadcast. CBS Evening News whined over the “epidemic of evictions” during its May 19 episode. The network ran a chyron for 154 seconds that propagandized how “Tenants Facing Eviction Place Last Hope In Court Hearings.” CBS News correspondent Omar Villafranca’s segment on evictions repudiated how landlords “filed over 300,000 evictions during the pandemic,” despite a federal ban. Villafranca specifically targeted evictions in Texas, and complained that the state has...

A federal judge Wednesday vacated a nationwide freeze on evictions that was handed down by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help some renters remain in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The moratorium had been implemented as millions of people lost work due to lockdowns caused by the pandemic. The move, which was first implemented in the March 2020 CARES Act, was seen as a temporary fix for renters who were at risk of going homeless. U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled on the side of the plaintiffs, saying that the CDC exceeded its authority...

The nationwide eviction moratorium is being extended through June 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday. The protection was scheduled to expire in two days on March 31. The CDC says the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health. Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings — like homeless shelters — by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19. Around 20% of adult renters said they didn’t pay last month’s rent, according to a survey published in March by the...

Tenants continue to take advantage, abuse GTA landlordsHarpreet Kaur rented out the two-bedroom basement apartment in her Mississauga home to a tenant in December of 2019 with rent paid up until September of last year.That’s when things started to fall apart.First the tenant — a WestJet employee who lost his job during COVID — moved in a friend and both refused to pay the $1,700-a-month rent. Kaur, an optician, said the tenant promised to pay “something” by Oct. 7 and when he didn’t, the friend answered the door ordering her to get in touch by text from that day forward....

The rolling wipeout of beloved New York City restaurants, which claimed the fabled 21 Club two weeks ago, might only be getting started. And as painful as it would be to food lovers, it would hurt landlords even more as retail vacancies of all kinds mushroom in each of the five boroughs.

New York City apartment tenants are more than $1 billion in debt from missed rent payments during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey measuring the depth of the rent crisis brought on by Covid-19. The debt figure is the most recent indicator that unemployment benefits and federal stimulus packages have so far been inadequate to alleviate the growing financial burden of missed rent payments across thousands of city households. Both landlord and tenant advocacy groups have lobbied heavily for more government rental assistance during the pandemic. The survey, conducted by the Community Housing Improvement Program, a landlord trade...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and President Trump made sure to protect tenants by banning evictions during the pandemic, but public officials have done almost nothing for property owners. That’s inviting disaster. Many of these landlords, particularly mom-and-pop small-building owners, have been struggling for months to make ends meet as the COVID crisis drags on. Thousands of tenants haven’t paid full rent. Others, looking to escape the virus, violent crime and plunging quality of life, have fled, pushing up the vacancy rate and forcing owners to grant concessions.

Some of America’s largest residential landlords have moved to boot thousands of tenants from their homes during the coronavirus pandemic despite federal eviction protections, a new report says. Big corporate landlords have filed nearly 10,000 eviction actions in courts across five states even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has barred them from kicking out many tenants who can’t pay rent because of the COVID-19 crisis, NBC News reported Monday.

Amazon has rolled out a whole-building version of its Alexa AI voice assistant for landlords, billing ‘Alexa for Residential’ as extending smart-home functionality to renters – tenants’ consent apparently not required. The e-commerce giant announced Alexa for Residential on Thursday, describing it as a feature “that makes having an Alexa-enabled home accessible for anyone, regardless of whether they rent or own their home.” Tenants can link up their own Amazon account, but if they don't have one, no problem – they'll be placed on the building's system. Landlords, Amazon explains, will have the option to provide “custom voice experiences for...