Posted on 07/06/2021 5:06:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
I'm no lawyer, that's for sure, and so I don't have expertise on the intricacies of the law, but I am angry as a hornet by the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal "eviction moratorium."
On Tuesday, the high court in a divided 5-4 opinion will allow the moratorium to continue until August. This moratorium allows people to stay in their apartments and other rental units and not pay the rent they agreed to.
This policy started more than a year ago when the pandemic was in full force. But the policy is unconstitutional -- an affront to basic property rights and the sanctity of contracts. It should have never been allowed and implemented in the first place and certainly has no place in the law now that COVID-19 is over and there are 9.1 million open jobs in the country.
Since when can the government tell a private enterprise that it can't collect its rightful payments from its customers? What's next? Politicians promising to end hunger in America by allowing poor people to go into a grocery store or 7-Eleven and taking whatever food they want without paying? This law puts all the cost of achieving a social objective -- not having people lose the roof over their heads -- during tough times on businesses and individuals. Amazing how humanitarian the political class is with other people's money.
This is also a case where the left's do-gooder edicts defy basic common sense. I am friends with several owners of apartment buildings and rental units. Guess what happened the day after these local, state and federal waivers on paying rent are implemented? Over half the tenants and, in some cases, as many as 90% of the occupants stopped paying their rent.
The latest national estimate is that landlords are losing about $13 billion A MONTH in rental payments. But as one apartment owner tells me: "If I can't collect the rental payments, I can't pay the bank the mortgage on the property. I may have to default on the loan." The latest estimates from CNBC are that more than 11 million Americans have stopped paying their rent on time -- or have just stopped paying entirely.
What is especially galling about this story is that we are creating another new de facto federal entitlement: free rent. Now apartment dwellers are indignant when the landlords try to get their monthly payments. Many hang signs outside their windows that say, "No justice, no rent" -- as if the apartment owners are responsible for the social ills in our country.
The signs used to say, "No jobs, no rent," but no one is sympathetic to that view now that jobs are aplenty from coast to coast.
Speaking of justice: How do edicts like this help in the left's crusade of increasing affordable housing? If apartment and rental housing owners can't legally collect rental payments, they aren't going to build more units. They will build less.
In the court case, the losing plaintiffs argued -- persuasively -- that "Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it now claims." Who elected the bureaucrats at the CDC? These are the same people who were caught asleep at the switch when the pandemic hit these shores. They were too busy studying gun violence and LGBTQ issues. These kinds of dictates should be rarely imposed, and when they are, they should come from Congress, not from a federal agency that is completely separated from the voters and thus the will of the people.
The government's argument was that the CDC believes the regulations are necessary to "prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases." Never mind that the pandemic is over and that anyone who wants to be protected against COVID-19 has ready access to the vaccines.
This country really is headed down the road of tyranny when the government tells our citizens they don't have to pay their bills.
Don’t have time to read now, but I have to say they’re gone.
Look at “crime”. The only thing cops really bother with is murders. They basically don’t do anything about burglaries and mugging and anything ultimately involving “just” property.
This is the attitude of our lousy liberal take-over. “Property” isn’t important. The only thing important is that you got away with your “life”.
Never mind that Rush brilliantly stated once that life and body is really just the ultimate property.
Likewise, people on an every-day basis don’t respect property. They let kids run all over people’s yards and come and go on their property as they please, without any appeal to the owners (parents, usually). Just an expectation that they can play anywhere they want.
It’s been inculcated as part of the mindset.
When property rights are gone, there will be no point in the existence of a middle class trying to accumulate wealth. Only the elite and strong-arms will have protected property. There will be left only the haves and the have-nots, no middle class. That is the objective. Everything the leftists do is done to achieve the destruction of the middle class. Everything.
https://www.amazon.com/Noblest-Triumph-Property-Prosperity-Through/dp/0312210833/
“The Noblest Triumph” by Tom Bethell. An excellent book on the subject of property.
Worse than Kelo.
Sure glad we have a 6-3 majority of the Supremes.
“What is especially galling about this story is that we are creating another new de facto federal entitlement: free rent.”
Rule number one of social science:
“You better think 10 times before you give out a bennie because you will pay the price of hell if you ever try to take it away.”
So what doesn’t belong to the government. You sound like a true Marxist - “to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities.”
Very informative. I didn’t consider that angle. I know several landlords who have evicted tenants during this strong armed theft of property rights and didn’t ask how they did it. More to know when borrowing money. Best post of this thread. Thanks.
Not at all. I’m just not a crackpot. I know that the only way an individual can buy land and have enough stability to be profitable is to be in a country which backs up those rights and values. If you don’t like radical globalist libertarians running their stupid experiments on us and then doing f*** all when the predictable happens, then the battle to wage is with the people who caused the problems. Nobody is sovereign.
AND I can't pay the income tax on what should have been a profit, but now is a loss. That's the only message that politicians would understand.
” I know that the only way an individual can buy land and have enough stability to be profitable is to be in a country which backs up those rights and values.”
Not “to be in a countrh” but to create, through many personal sacrifices, a country that does not infringe in those personal rights of freedom and private property.
Such a country does not just come out of thin air nor does it long last without constant vigilance.
Oh, well that makes it all better then. If you are Bill Gates your tenants can't get out of paying their rent. But if you are like 99% of the rest of us and you had to get a loan to buy your property and you have to make payments to keep that property then your tenants can screw you over. Screw the little people but leave the rich out of it. Makes perfect sense! /s
Very true
Except no, it is to be in a country where millions of people have for generations fought, plotted, and died to give their children a better life. You and I are the recipients of that, we have benefitted for battles fought and won that have disappeared in the history we no longer learn. America is an exceptional country because being able to have the freedoms we have is the exception to the rule for the great majority of human history. Those freedoms are not unconditional however, and they never have been.
“Those freedoms are not unconditional however, and they never have been.”
Exactly, and as somebody famous once said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” and we on the right have done a miserable job of that.
They might have showed that renter was self employed, may had a business. I had a friend renting from me... Only one who didn’t pay. Not friends anymore... He thought he was protected until my lawyer said on he’ll no he’s running a business out of the garage.... About ten old classic car, parting out and restoration projects. Couldn’t pay rent but the car count increased. Ya he’s a lib too.
Yup
How does apartments have anything to do with any property rights?.
You OWN something or you don’t.
To add to this, in NYC a census will be conducted this summer throughout buildings to find out how many vacant apartments, The rents, if tenants are happy with landlords, services, etc.
NYC is demanding that LANDLORDS make sure that the buzzers work, that the doormen let these census takers in...
I read the letter and gave it a big middle finger.
It sure is a fake way to create jobs.
It also is a great way to force section 8 and have illegals forced into ones building.
Oh, and landlord has to provide notices in a tenant's preferred language.
“What’s next? Politicians promising to end hunger in America by allowing poor people to go into a grocery store or 7-Eleven and taking whatever food they want without paying?”
This is the exact state of the law in San Francisco right now.
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.