Posted on 07/27/2021 10:54:57 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Over the course of the pandemic, Washington allotted a lot of money to help tenants who couldn’t keep up with the rent: $46.6 billion. That’s almost twice as much as, and on top of, what the government usually spends each year helping low-income renters through the Housing Choice Voucher Program, better known as Section 8. The number was at least in the right ballpark to cover the payments missed by the country’s roughly 43 million renter households, many of whom lost jobs when the economy contracted last year.
But a safety net only works if you can get it set up where it needs to be, and all these months into the crisis, local jurisdictions are still not doing a very good job. As Annie Lowrey puts it, writing about government benefits more broadly, “little attention is being paid to making things work, rather than making them exist.” Of the $25 billion the U.S. Treasury doled out this February for rent relief, local partners had delivered just $3 billion by June 30.
That’s particularly important this week because the eviction moratorium enacted by the Centers for Disease Control last September expires on Saturday, July 31. That public-health order has not given tenants ironclad protection, but it does appear to have kept evictions below prepandemic rates in jurisdictions without their own moratoriums, including cities like Cincinnati and Dallas and states like Indiana and Missouri, according to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
In other words, beginning next week, millions of families may face evictions that should have been avoided.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
paying other peoples rent is NOT my problem.
I kept my bills paid..
I am left wondering.. why? government seems to always come to the rescue of the lazy.
Yep. We COULD have done a LOT of things differently these past 2 years, but what do I know? ;)
FWIW, ‘solutions’ from the article:
First, software problems. Nearly a decade on from the healthcare.gov debacle, most institutions of government remain unacceptably behind the times in all matters related to computers. Tenants and social workers have described challenges navigating cumbersome, glitchy online portals.
Second, application design. Long and complicated applications for rent assistance apparently discouraged many tenants in need, especially immigrants without documents. In a January survey of 2020 rent relief programs, the National Low Income Housing Center identified this as a problem—nearly half of surveyed programs required social security numbers, for example. Eighty percent of programs said incomplete applications made it hard to hand out cash.
Third, landlords. Specifically, the money is supposed to go to landlords—often in exchange for some kind of assurance they will not evict the tenant for the delay for a certain period of time. Getting landlords and tenants to work together, even for a common goal, hasn’t always been easy.
Fourth, outreach. Unlike homeowners, who have regular contact with banks that can tell them about federal mortgage forbearance, more than half of the nation’s tenants don’t even know there is a federal relief program. That’s according to a survey conducted in May and published by the Urban Land Institute last month, which notes that less than 6 percent of landlords and 11 percent of tenants had applied for federal relief—a fraction of those who say they’re behind.
Fifth, local incompetence. How else to explain why New York State—facing one of the worst renter-household crises in the country—has waited so long to get money to people who need it?
Sixth, existing disinvestment. Washington turned on a fire hose of cash, but just like state unemployment systems, local housing agencies and nonprofits who help low-income tenants apply for help got swamped. A high-functioning social welfare program takes practice, and even 18 months in, many organizations are having trouble scaling up to get the job done.
maybe sending the owners the STIMULUS checks to pay the rent that the renters never paid would have been a better idea...
We could have simply not shut down the economy to hurt Trump’s reelection.
Government Dependency = VOTES!
We aren't exactly boom city, USA. We are a ring county near Pittsburgh with a slowly shrinking population which voted to re-elect PDJT by a 2-1 margin.
You can still rent a basic flat here for about one week's minimum wages or roughly 25% of a minimum wage job. And almost nobody here pays minimum wage because they wouldn't get any takers.
But that still isn't enough for a druggie or professional bum who wants to be supported by the rest of us.
I've got a solution for that. . .
“We could have simply not shut down the economy to hurt Trump’s reelection.”
I’d LIKE to say that the Socialist Democrats will rue to day they did that, but their voters are so stupid, they’ll probably keep voting us all over the cliff!
Also - VERY glad I’m not a Landlord these days. VERY!
My deadbeat nephew has been out of work for almost 6 years and living in I think Venice Beach, CA.
Our tax dollars are paying for his 28k rent bill of the last year.
I don’t care, I paid my rent the whole time. Pay or get out.
I think housing prices have shot up, in part, due to the lack of normal turnover in sales and rental inventory.
The squatters have stayed in place where normally those homes would have been processed in an orderly, normal market cycle.
A big reckoning is about to hit and everyone will be affected. A flood of sales and a glut of rentals will drop prices. All the people who took cash out refi loans because of the low interest rates and high home values are going to wind up under water.
"Immigrants without documents" = illegal aliens who should not be here sucking our tax dollars off FedGov's tit.
Yea, my car meter is broken. Twice in my life I was laid off permanently. Both times resulted in being unemployed for six months. (one included moving the family 600 miles away)
I scrimped, saved, busted my tail to earn enough to continue paying my bills. Never missed or was even late on a house payment.
Living debt free except the mortgage helps too
Good! I’m up to date on all my payments with no help from the gov!
Good! I’m up to date on all my payments despite the gov!
cuz they sure as hell are not helping us.
This was inevitable. It was used to cover the true cost of the lockdowns and the bloodletting will be very ugly. All at once.
D’oh!
You’re 100% right. I know multiple people who have been sitting on properties that they had intended to sell but haven’t because they need to get the deadbeat tenants first.
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