Posted on 07/29/2020 3:40:46 AM PDT by Libloather
Massachusetts landlords in need of rent payments are hoping a federal judge will soon end the state’s eviction ban amid the coronavirus pandemic, a lawyer representing property owners tells the Herald.
Landlords in a federal lawsuit in Boston’s U.S. District Court are arguing that the eviction moratorium is unconstitutional, said attorney Richard Vetstein, lead counsel for the property owners.
The suit is against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
“The state has never taken this drastic step,” Vetstein said of the eviction freeze on Wednesday.
“Our main thrust is there’s never been a whole moratorium on the filing of evictions in the history of the Commonwealth,” added Vetstein, who also has a state lawsuit pending in Suffolk Superior Court.
Vetstein is representing Marie Baptiste, a nurse who owns rental property in Randolph. Her tenants owe her about $20,000 in back rent, and that figure is expected to climb to $25,000 by October when the moratorium would expire at the earliest.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Well, when you reward bad behavior, you get more bad behavior. The bad behavior underlying this matter is deciding not to go back to work. Why should one do so if your are making more on unemployment than when you worked, and you can live rent free? When the government mandated that landlords can’t evict anyone due to nonpayment of rent, why didn’t that same government mandate that mortgages cannot be foreclosed on because the same landlords cannot pay? The landlords are never going to get the unpaid rent, yet they will be expected to pay the mortgage payments or lose their property. Many of those people that are choosing to ignore their rent payments because of the non-eviction edict, could have continued to pay their rent but played the system to avoid doing so.
When you are ordered (by those who have a monopoly of force) to provide the fruits of your labor (or capital) to others for free—you become a slave!
(see my tagline)
The government has no right to invalidate a valid contract. It has told renters they don’t have to pay rent. The government has not compensated owners.
What’s really happening is that the democrats could hardly wait. As soon as the epidemic started, they gleefully cut the feet off private property, as they have always wanted to do. They hate private property. They do everything they can to seize it, like the property tax, by which they take 3% each year, so that after about 33 years they have taken the entire value of the property, and no one even realized it.
With people getting $600 over what they made when working wh is there a rent moratorium?
On the other hand, I'm putting myself in the position of a tenant who has just lost his job because the governor issued a shutdown order and forced my employer's business to close. In that case, I'd probably feel absolutely no legal or moral obligation to pay a single bill to anyone. The more people and businesses I owe money to, the more people and business owners there will be getting all over the governor's ass to lift the stupid shutdown orders. The state would probably be better off in the long run under this scenario.
I'd be interested to see what measures landlords are starting to take to deal with this situation moving forward. For one thing, an "eviction" only takes place when a tenant stops paying rent. When there's a moratorium on evictions, the tenant has all the leverage in the world against the landlord. But the landlord gets a lot of the leverage back again when the term of the tenant's lease ends. The day after the lease ends, the landlord can change the locks and take possession of whatever is inside the premises.
I fully expect landlords to start adopting strong defensive measures to protect themselves from similar disasters in the future. The most obvious one I can envision is to demand payment for all the rent up front for the entire term of the lease. If you are a tenant signing a one-year lease on an apartment for $1,000 per month, then you must pay $12,000 up front just to get in the door. The landlord might even be creative and lay out the lease terms so it shows you paying $12,000 for the first month and then $0 per month for the next eleven months.
Most people I know that got in the rental business got out of it. Even the short-term vacation rental house on my street is going up for sale despite having a very good streak of renters.
My former neighbor and her business partner once owned 85 rental units.
I live in Florida, which has the highest percentage of lowlifes in the USA.
One can not beat governmental power.
It is easier for government to create a law than for people to build a business.
This country is going communist and millions of AR-15s over 200 miles from DC won’t be in the right places to save our republic.
“The day after the lease ends, the landlord can change the locks and take possession of whatever is inside the premises.”
That’s not correct where I live and probably anywhere else. You still have to go through the eviction process and they still have plenty of notice to get their property out of the house. If you start taking action before they are evicted you’re going to be in trouble. Been there and done that.
As long as the bills for the landlords are delayed. Oh wait...they aren’t.
You can “almost” feel the antisemitic tone. In almost every interview I’ve seen on TV about this issue the term “greedy landlord” is spewed with vile contempt. You can just about hear them rant, “greedy jew landlord.”
Telling people they do not have to pay rent is a dangerous precedent. Lots of people could pay, and they have chosen not to. That puts the landlords at risk, it puts the banks at risk.
But renters don’t care—because the landlords MUST be rich.
It is disgusting if you really stop to think about it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.