I’ve come to think of this issue differently after learning more about the relationship between homelessness and unemployment. Without a job, you can’t afford a home, and without a home, you have...
I’ve come to think of this issue differently after learning more about the relationship between homelessness and unemployment. Without a job, you can’t afford a home, and without a home, you have no stable address to use in applications, for tax purposes, or to receive necessary information about employment (let alone the multitude of services you’d need to receive). A PO Box can work but uncertainty around how close and accessable this PO Box will remain if you are forced to change housing creates risk. This has made me start considering minimal housing (not a shared bunk room, but a small room / access to washroom facilities and a stable address) something that should be a basic human right to allow individuals to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s a complicated issue, but an important one.
Why are evictions happening? Massive rent increase, housing shortfall, inability of the government to control illegal evictions and reign in massive increases. Did low income renters see their...
Why are evictions happening?
massive increases in rent during the pandemic, inflation and other pandemic-era related financial difficulties.”
rent prices nationwide are up about 5% from a year ago and 30.5% above 2019 [...] estimating a 7.3 million shortfall of affordable units nationwide.
Housing advocates had hoped the Democrat-controlled state Legislature would pass a bill requiring landlords to provide justification for evicting tenants and limit rent increases to 3% or 1.5 times inflation. But it was excluded from the state budget and lawmakers failed to pass it before the legislative session ended this month.
Massive rent increase, housing shortfall, inability of the government to control illegal evictions and reign in massive increases.
Did low income renters see their employment wage increase 30%?
I don't feel too sorry for the landlords: in the article you have people holding up signs saying they're owed 60-162k. Why are low income renters subsidizing their mortgages?
But they're just barely middle class themselves, trying to find financial independence in a world where wealth inequality is higher than ever.
I posted another article yesterday about the rich: 250x million dollar plus weddings a week. Just throwing money away instead of having it be put towards education, sewers, roads, or anything that builds a strong country. It's for cakes and weekend tents. Utter and literal garbage. And that's just the "merely" rich, who are themselves likely squeezed by the ultra rich, with the obscene gap which you can visualize here
Small time landlords are stuck playing a game where they have to squeeze renters even harder for crumbs, but the real problem is who stole the entire cookie.
The obscenely wealthy have twisted this country into a pretzel of infighting and finger pointing. They are extremely overdue for a reckoning. Words cannot express the amount of anger I have for...
The obscenely wealthy have twisted this country into a pretzel of infighting and finger pointing. They are extremely overdue for a reckoning. Words cannot express the amount of anger I have for these parasitic, gold hoarding monsters.
Except that many of us are not obscenely wealthy. Nor parasitic. There are a few classes of landlords. One is the corporate Real Estate Investment Trusts that generally own large complexes, multi...
Except that many of us are not obscenely wealthy. Nor parasitic.
There are a few classes of landlords. One is the corporate Real Estate Investment Trusts that generally own large complexes, multi apartment buildings and are owned by faceless corporations with shareholders. The second are smaller groups of partners who get together and coordinate to buy smaller multifamily buildings or single family homes. And then there are thousands of us little guys, mom and pop landlords, who own a house with basement suites or single family homes, or if we're lucky maybe a duplex or two. We're the ones providing the affordable housing, generally know our tenants quite well, and live in and are actively supporting many services in the neighborhood because we live there too. We're contributors to the local economy not the ones drawing money out of it for shareholders bottom line.
The member you were referring to wasn't talking about landlords: not the wealthy, not the very wealthy, nor the overly wealth -- they were talking about the obscenely wealthy. Not doctors and...
The member you were referring to wasn't talking about landlords: not the wealthy, not the very wealthy, nor the overly wealth -- they were talking about the obscenely wealthy.
Not doctors and lawyers: the people who own entire hospital/legal firm networks as a small part of their portfolio.
Not celebrities: the people who own make or break careers of celebrities on a whim.
Not sports stars: the people who own sport stars and trade them like livestock.
The share of hoard have even further outstripped all of us combined since then.
Smaug, sitting on a literal mountain full of gold, was only worth $62.0 billion in 2012. Today there are sixteen billionaires who individually have more money than Smaug.
Tony Stark ($9.3b - 2012) is a mere peepsqueak upstart compared to Elon Musk today ($180b)
You are just as poor as I am, and you and I and millions of us add up to just a quick gamling night of fun for these people. That's who the hoarding monsters are, not one guy trying to rent out a handful of properties.
Ah, fair enough. Im quite sensitive to the criticism of being 'wealthy' coming from that other site that shan't be named, as just about every juvenile voice there assumed that if you owned one...
Ah, fair enough. Im quite sensitive to the criticism of being 'wealthy' coming from that other site that shan't be named, as just about every juvenile voice there assumed that if you owned one more house than your primary residence, you were a hoarder who deserved to be abused. More than once, I was told that I should be dead just for being a landlord, so I admit to being pretty sensitive to criticism about landlords. Also part of my reason for leaving that site.
There is a big difference between sitting on gold, and having assets. Most of that wealth is in the hypothetical market value of equity they have. It would be like if Smaug took his gold, and...
There is a big difference between sitting on gold, and having assets. Most of that wealth is in the hypothetical market value of equity they have. It would be like if Smaug took his gold, and handed it across Middle Earth for IOUs, and Smaug sat on $62b of IOUs (although that may be more comfortable). When you sit on gold, that gold may as well disappear. For equity based wealth, the money is actually "at work", so to speak, not being withhold. If you liquidated that equity, it would actually be withholding that money from the economy.
That's not to say that that Bezos or whatever is particularly poor, of course there's plenty of ways to derive money from equity, from using it as collateral in a loan to simply selling it, but I think it's a bit silly to compare having $X in marketvalue in equity as if it were liquid cash.
Thank you, yes, exactly. Realistically, I'm probably talking about a couple hundred people, IF that. The people that could cure malaria for the literal entire world and have no day-to-day...
Thank you, yes, exactly.
Realistically, I'm probably talking about a couple hundred people, IF that. The people that could cure malaria for the literal entire world and have no day-to-day lifestyle change, only arbitrary numbers on bank statements.
What a lot of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires seem to forget is that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars ... is about a billion dollars. The difference between ten...
What a lot of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires seem to forget is that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars ... is about a billion dollars.
The difference between ten million, or one hundred million, and a billion ... is still about a billion dollars.
The ultra-wealthy use all manner of rhetorical, messaging, and narrative tricks to get those far-less-well-to-do than them to think that they're all the same. This si simply not the case.
At the same time ...
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are better considered property managers, in the sense of providing services (upkeep and maintenance) than the straight rents-extraction (in the economic sense) of a large landholder.
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are still far better off than many of their tenants. Struggling to maintain a few properties is still a much more tenable situation than struggling to pay rent and utilities whilst living hand-to-mouth on a precarious job (or numerous precarious jobs, none of which are full-time, or pay benefits, and for which there's no predictable schedule and you're expected to be prepared to come in at any time on an hour's notice).
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are in fact tenants ... to bank loans and mortgages. You're renting the money to let your housing.
Much of the property-rental system is a machine for externalising risk, principally from banks and large corporate and private-equity property holders onto small individual property owners, and most of all, tenants. The precarity placed over "mom'n'pop" operations is forced further down on tenants, who, again, are least able to cope with such risks, or survive, in the literal sense, when unable to meet rising rents or inflexible conditions.
There are now real-estate leasing systems and software which establish uniform rents across a region and penalise property owners who don't comply with those rents, a clear case of collusion and price-fixing.
And in regions in which 1,000 tenants seek 800 housing units ... no matter how much rents rise, 200 people will remain homeless. Lack of new construction, and zoning and construction regulations which prohibit dense, multi-household, or flexible housing, are very much to blame here. And it is the banks and corporate property-holders who benefit tremendously by this entirely manufactured misery.
Oh man I have tried to explain that concept as a property holder many different times online especially in the less mature subs on that other site. You must work in the industry - that's very...
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are in fact tenants ... to bank loans and mortgages. You're renting the money to let your housing.
Much of the property-rental system is a machine for externalising risk, principally from banks and large corporate and private-equity property holders onto small individual property owners, and most of all, tenants. The precarity placed over "mom'n'pop" operations is forced further down on tenants, who, again, are least able to cope with such risks, or survive, in the literal sense, when unable to meet rising rents or inflexible conditions.
Oh man I have tried to explain that concept as a property holder many different times online especially in the less mature subs on that other site. You must work in the industry - that's very accurate. Im just the middle man. Im just the guy taking care of the bank's property so THEY dont have to do that work directly, while they get paid every month as I rent their money. And if I really mess up, they'll just take back their property, resell it and get someone else to pretend to own in for another 30 years. Meanwhile they'd love to let me borrow against the house equity to buy another one. More money for them with little risk. As long as I put 20% down even if I default tomorrow, they'll recoup their investment in short order and even make some money on the flip.
There are now real-estate leasing systems and software which establish uniform rents across a region and penalise property owners who don't comply with those rents, a clear case of collusion and price-fixing.
I dont think Ive heard of that before so Im curious what area you're referring to and what software can do that? As far as Ive experienced, everyone in my province is free to choose whatever rent they want but its quite directly tied to the cost of mortgage payment + tax payment + insurance as the minimum. Maybe we just dont have enough housing for the bigger corporate owners to bother with?
The software is YieldStar produced by RealPage, as disclosed by ProPublica: "Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why. "...
The software is YieldStar produced by RealPage, as disclosed by ProPublica:
"Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why. "
... RealPage became the nation’s dominant provider of such rent-setting software after federal regulators approved a controversial merger in 2017, a ProPublica investigation found, greatly expanding the company’s influence over apartment prices. The move helped the Texas-based company push the client base for its array of real estate tech services past 31,700 customers.
The impact is stark in some markets.
In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage....
Considerable discussion on The Site Currently Undergoing a Strike as well.
No, I don't work in the industry. Read economics at uni and I've supplemented that with a great deal of self-study since. The early economic theory on rents (Smith, Ricardo, etc.) is useful but not strongly emphasized in most econ programmes so far as I'm aware.
I'm absolutely not talking about anyone that handles their own social media, for one. I mean buy-a-yatch-to-take-to-your-other-six-yatchs, spend the GDP of a small country on an estate, obscenely,...
I'm absolutely not talking about anyone that handles their own social media, for one. I mean buy-a-yatch-to-take-to-your-other-six-yatchs, spend the GDP of a small country on an estate, obscenely, grotesquely rich.
Fair point! Okay, the people that usually have handlers for social media, and probably should if they don't want the world to know what ridiculous, spoiled, pedantic idiot man-children they are....
Fair point!
Okay, the people that usually have handlers for social media, and probably should if they don't want the world to know what ridiculous, spoiled, pedantic idiot man-children they are.
Side note, i saw a clip of Musk on Some More News yesterday and cannot BELIEVE how awkward and inelegant he actually sounds. Holy shit.
Another issue we don't really think about is how digitalization of many aspects of our services makes them even more out of reach to homeless people. I often pay with my phone, so I rarely have...
Another issue we don't really think about is how digitalization of many aspects of our services makes them even more out of reach to homeless people.
I often pay with my phone, so I rarely have any physical money on me. I wouldn't be able to give money to a homeless person.
And with the rising cost of grocery, many fidelity programs are now app-based. Guess who is unlikely to have a smartphone? And they're the ones who would benefit the most from these savings.
I'm not sure if you've had many conversations with homeless people. It's extremely common for homeless people to have cellphones because they're a valuable source of entertainment and information....
I'm not sure if you've had many conversations with homeless people. It's extremely common for homeless people to have cellphones because they're a valuable source of entertainment and information. A cheap burner phone is very affordable even when you're living on the streets. The hardest part is finding a McDonald's or some other business to chill and recharge the phone.
The problem with making it a human right is the inability to evict bad actors, which quickly ruins the entire project for everyone else. Yes, the government should offer such a service. But it...
The problem with making it a human right is the inability to evict bad actors, which quickly ruins the entire project for everyone else.
Yes, the government should offer such a service.
But it should be strictly conditional upon cleanliness and good conduct, with access to the building restricted, entrances and exits tracked, all public spaces monitored, and prompt evictions for troublemakers. No, your cousin on parole can't crash on your floor.
Doesn't that attitude just perpetuate the homeless problem though? It's incredibly difficult to find housing of any kind at any price with a felony on one's record, short of having the money to...
Doesn't that attitude just perpetuate the homeless problem though? It's incredibly difficult to find housing of any kind at any price with a felony on one's record, short of having the money to outright purchase one, something very few parolees are going to be capable of. How many of these parolees have a job lined up.upon release? From what I've seen, that's generally not a thing, so without money and without housing, how is a parolee supposed to get a job in order to afford a place, assuming there is housing that will accept a person with a record?
I'm in the process of moving to a new place myself, and the sheer amount of places with ridiculous hoops and restrictions is mind-blowing, and I'm just someone who is currently employed and has no felonies on their record. Places that outright refuse people if they don't meet income requirements even if they have the cash on hand to pay the whole lease term upfront, places that demand that each individual person on the lease make 3X the rent, not just across everyone applying, places that will reject you for not having a long enough rental history with zero breaks (one of our roommates ran into this problem because she had to move back in with her parents for a few months a year ago when her living situation became unexpectedly unsafe, never mind that she wasn't evicted and was able to break the lease early with consent of the landlord!), it's obscene. Add the restriction of having a record and being a parolee, and it's easy to see how there's nowhere for these people to go.
Any housing of last resort would necessarily have to have options for these people, otherwise it's not going to solve the problem. Human rights just don't go away when it's inconvenient, nor do people lose them for being distasteful.
I agree with you. Wife and I just left our condo to move in with family because we can't live on a single income anymore. I highly doubt we'd qualify to rent anywhere. My brother is a felon that...
I agree with you. Wife and I just left our condo to move in with family because we can't live on a single income anymore. I highly doubt we'd qualify to rent anywhere.
My brother is a felon that struggled with opiate addiction. He's years clean now, works as a drug counselor & is finishing his education, but he went through withdrawal on my living room floor a few times.
I didn't want to be in that situation, but i can only imagine how much harder it would have been if i lost my housing because I couldn't put my little brother out.
The reality is humans and their families are messy and commit crimes and fuck up, and rules that say 'Don't do this OR ELSE!' just do not work long term in practice.
We need a safety net that catches everyone, or those that keep falling will take people with them. Just like with covid spread, you can't only treat people that 'deserve' it, because it still spreads.
Yes, human 'rights' DO go away when they are abused. Let me share on that issue from the other side. A few years ago, I decided to deliberately rent to anyone who needed a hand up. I felt that we...
Yes, human 'rights' DO go away when they are abused. Let me share on that issue from the other side.
A few years ago, I decided to deliberately rent to anyone who needed a hand up. I felt that we had been pretty fortunate over the years, and since I had a background in social services, I wanted to give back to the community. So I went to a social agency in town and asked who needed a decent, clean, safe basement suite at a reasonable cost.
They put me in touch with a single mom. I worked with her and her worker to get her into the suite, lent her furniture, TV, appliances and got her settled. When she screwed up a few times and broke expensive things that should never break I swallowed the cost and just kept going. I met with her social worker and her family supporter and we coordinated plans to keep her working, and keep her rent affordable. After two years she did so well that she graduated out of the social program, clean, sober, working and functioning well.
And then the sh*t hit the fan. I got a call from a neighbor at 2 am that my rental was on fire. To make a long story short, I later found out that she had been smoking (meth) with her brother in the basement, and lit the house on fire, Her irresponsibility meant the renter upstairs nearly died - thank god she didn't but she lost two pets and all of her belongings and it traumatized her for months.
My house was a total write off. $360,000 damage. It took 16 months to rebuild. It cost me $20,000 out of pocket over and above the insurance to get everything back in rentable condition. My insurance premium doubled to an astronomical rate. And then this (I'll leave out the most accurate adjective) tenant went to our local housing authority to complain that I had not returned her damage deposit(!), which led to a multi month accusatory investigation before I was obviously cleared. She also went to the local press with her sob story and got a gofundme going and walked away with several thousand dollars for the 'unfortunate' fire that she was responsible for. The stress from the entire debacle left me with panic attacks and felt like it was taking years off my life.
The sick part is that there is nothing stopping her from walking down the street and renting from any other landlord in town who doesnt know her. And Im not allowed to publish her name - according to our law her 'privacy' is more important. I cant keep her from her "right" to be housed.
Im part of a province wide landlord group and every couple of weeks a landlord will share pictures of their house that has been absolutely trashed. Dog sh*t on the floor, cat urine odor invading the whole house, cabinet doors torn off, holes punched in walls, drugs left openly in bathrooms, tenants who crap in 5 gallon buckets because the toilet was plugged months ago, and garbage. SO much garbage. Many of my friends have had to rent big dumpsters and take days just to haul out the mountain of garbage thats been left to rot in the house... its incredibly disgusting
So I have VERY strong views on people's "right" to be housed. That "right" doesnt mean that someone has a right to rent even if they have the money. It might mean the right to live in a government shelter, but people who are that irresponsible LOSE their right to be housed by me or any other landlord in town. If they go homeless because no one will rent to them, that is a natural consequence of their abuse. If they abuse their spouse they lose the right to live with their spouse, if they abuse a business they lose the right to use that business, and if they abuse their landlord, they lose their right to get a rental.
And now? I still have rentals, but I am SUPER picky about who goes into my house. Criminal record? Not a chance. Dont have 3x the rent in income? Nope. Not in stable job for at least a year? Not likely. Credit score really low because of outstanding debts? Nope. Ive been abused enough by plenty of tenants over 35 years. Im not a punching bag or a rich man with bottomless pockets. Enough is enough.
I was referring to a landlord of last resort (aka the government), which you clearly are not, so I don't know why this would be an issue for you. This tenant you speak of wouldn't be your problem...
I was referring to a landlord of last resort (aka the government), which you clearly are not, so I don't know why this would be an issue for you. This tenant you speak of wouldn't be your problem anymore regardless, but they also wouldn't end up permanently on the streets either because they don't meet requirements.
Why would it matter what yours (or any other private landlord's) requirements were, if people have a fallback that is required to find them shelter? Is it fear of competition, from the contingent of landlords who are verging on slumlord status? (I'm not claiming that you yourself are a slumlord, by the way)
I will say in my time renting housing, the private mom and pop landlords I've dealt with have either been some of the best people you could hope to interact with, or the absolute worst scum imaginable, pulling out every trick (both legal and not) to screw over their tenants time and time again. The giant REITs? They've been consistently mediocre, never going above and beyond, but not pulling blatantly illegal shit either. I'm at a point in my life where knowing what I'm getting into is worth dealing with corporate landlords over the crapshoot small time ones are. Starwood Capital never set up skeevy always-on cameras hidden on our porch and timed how long anyone who came over stayed, but one of my private landlords in college did, as an example.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that there's a level of fucking up one can do that means they deserve to be unsheltered. I'm not saying you or any private landlord would have to be that provider (but I would say, why stay as a landlord if it's such a hassle, instead of selling the property onwards and taking your profit that way?), but at the very least, the state should have that covered at a basic level.
Im not sure where you live but the state DOES have basic housing covered here in Alberta, its just in high demand and not easy to get into. Its very basic housing, in not very attractive...
I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that there's a level of fucking up one can do that means they deserve to be unsheltered. I'm not saying you or any private landlord would have to be that provider (but I would say, why stay as a landlord if it's such a hassle, instead of selling the property onwards and taking your profit that way?), but at the very least, the state should have that covered at a basic level.
Im not sure where you live but the state DOES have basic housing covered here in Alberta, its just in high demand and not easy to get into. Its very basic housing, in not very attractive buildings. And the waiting lists to get in could take a year. The problem is that no one wants to own them or maintain them even if the government is paying most of the rent and eventually they get run down or the owner gets sick of dealing with difficult tenants and they sell off. The new owner doesnt want to take over a beat up old building with less than stellar tenants, he wants to renovate the entire place and sell it off as condos so one more building gets lost to the subsidized pool and it slowly gets even harder to get into the remaining ones.
The only other housing lower than that I know of is 'step up' housing from shelter programs. Basically someone coming off the street can stay based on a portion of their income, something around 25%. But the conditions are that they have to be employed, they have a curfew, they cant use alcohol or drugs, cant have people stay overnight, and they have to attend counselling/addiction treatment and they are supervised all night. IF they can keep to that, they can stay in housing til they're stable enough and have enough of a track record they can apply for a regular rental. If they cant keep those rules, they're evicted and have to go back onto the street.
That's not quite the same thing as what I believe the other user is talking about. Lots of people envision the government using government funds to hire government workers to build...
That's not quite the same thing as what I believe the other user is talking about. Lots of people envision the government using government funds to hire government workers to build government-owned housing. No middle man private owners and no volunteer or donation-funded programs. Guaranteed housing. No charities involved because there's no need for them. Whether or not such a thing is possible or practical is another matter and my opinion on it is probably boring and not worth talking about. To clarify I'm just clearing up the semantics here. What you're talking about isn't guaranteed housing, if it were then conceivably you could lose your house tomorrow and be sheltered by that night. Under this hypothetical, landlords like you wouldn't have to worry about anything. In fact, you would have less to worry about since most decent working people would rather live somewhere other than a glorified shed. Those who can't maintain themselves would fall into the government system, keeping them out of your hair. I imagine it would just turn out to be prison lite in practice.
That's exactly what I was going to say as I read this - it just sounds like jail. Realistically thats where tenants who have burned all their bridges and refuse to follow any rules end up. They...
I imagine it would just turn out to be prison lite in practice.
That's exactly what I was going to say as I read this - it just sounds like jail. Realistically thats where tenants who have burned all their bridges and refuse to follow any rules end up. They cant even stay in a shelter if they wont follow some basic rules... and I dont know about your city but NO ONE is going to want a guaranteed government run housing development built in their community for people who have been kicked out of every other option.
Yep, that essentially sums it up. Everyone wants the problem solved and some even want to help everyone regardless of circumstances. But nobody wants to do the actual work, foot the actual bill,...
Yep, that essentially sums it up. Everyone wants the problem solved and some even want to help everyone regardless of circumstances. But nobody wants to do the actual work, foot the actual bill, or put up with the actual problems that arise.
No. I'm talking about a service for people who are either not yet homeless or have their shit together despite being homeless — the guy who sleeps in his car and showers at the gym but manages to...
No. I'm talking about a service for people who are either not yet homeless or have their shit together despite being homeless — the guy who sleeps in his car and showers at the gym but manages to hold down a job or the guy who just got fired and can't make rent but doesn't have any substance or mental health issues, yet.
I'm not trying to help the parolee, I'm trying to help the guy who doesn't have to turn to crime and become a parolee himself.
Add the restriction of having a record and being a parolee, and it's easy to see how there's nowhere for these people to go.
Any housing of last resort would necessarily have to have options for these people, otherwise it's not going to solve the problem. Human rights just don't go away when it's inconvenient, nor do people lose them for being distasteful.
I don't think housing is a human right.
I'm also not thinking of "last resort" housing, more like a "second last resort" — people who are about to end up homeless but otherwise relatively have their shit together and will probably be okay if they don't have to worry about a roof over their head.
So, where are people on parole supposed to sleep? If they are going to get a job and straighten up and fly right, where can they get a permanent address so they can get employment? And you cannot...
So, where are people on parole supposed to sleep? If they are going to get a job and straighten up and fly right, where can they get a permanent address so they can get employment?
Specifically, the report criticizes the Minneapolis police for: using “dangerous tactics and weapons” — including neck restraints and Tasers — against people for petty offense or no crimes; punishing residents who criticized the police; patrolling neighborhoods differently based on their racial makeup; and discriminating against those with behavioral health disabilities.
It's all part of a systemic problem in our society - we have barriers everywhere to prevent "the wrong people" from getting a leg up, and of course this means plenty of fine and upstanding folks...
It's all part of a systemic problem in our society - we have barriers everywhere to prevent "the wrong people" from getting a leg up, and of course this means plenty of fine and upstanding folks get caught in the crossfire.
Somewhere else. Wherever they'd currently be sleeping, since this theoretical housing program does not exist. Trying to be all things, trying to be for all people... Ensuring people don't fall...
So, where are people on parole supposed to sleep? If they are going to get a job and straighten up and fly right, where can they get a permanent address so they can get employment?
Somewhere else. Wherever they'd currently be sleeping, since this theoretical housing program does not exist.
Trying to be all things, trying to be for all people... Ensuring people don't fall through the cracks is an easier problem to solve than people who have already fallen. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
And by excluding parolees, you're just ensuring that they return to crime since it's the only place that will take them. The majority of people who end up in jail will be released at some point,...
And by excluding parolees, you're just ensuring that they return to crime since it's the only place that will take them.
The majority of people who end up in jail will be released at some point, is it really fair to keep imposing what amounts to a punishment for a crime after their sentence is served? I do not, and it's counterproductive to the mission of reducing crime to boot. I also refuse to accept longer or harsher sentences as a solution, as we have some of the longest and harshest prison sentences in the developed world, but it hasn't done a damn thing for our crime rates, just our incarceration ones.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a solution for parolees. I'm saying that a solution for people who haven't yet gotten that desperate should be optimized, not broaden to try to account for all...
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a solution for parolees.
I'm saying that a solution for people who haven't yet gotten that desperate should be optimized, not broaden to try to account for all people and problems.
Remember, this is a new category. It doesn't exist yet, so anything is progress. Think of it less as a homelessness solution than a backlog of public housing solution that will halt a rise in homelessness.
I read this article earlier, and this part always struck me as odd: They earn only $1700/mo but are renting a $940 2-bedroom apartment They didn't pay their rent for a year After not paying their...
I read this article earlier, and this part always struck me as odd:
Although sympathetic, the judge said state law required him to evict Williams and his 25-year-old daughter De’mai Williams in April because they owed $8,348 in unpaid rent and fees on their $940-a-month apartment.
They have been living in limbo ever since.
They moved into a dilapidated Atlanta hotel room with water dripping through the bathroom ceiling, broken furniture and no refrigerator or microwave. But at $275-a-week, it was all they could afford on Williams’ $900 monthly social security check and the $800 his daughter gets biweekly from a state agency as her father’s caretaker.
They earn only $1700/mo but are renting a $940 2-bedroom apartment
They didn't pay their rent for a year
After not paying their rent for a year, they moved somewhere more expensive but NOW they are ok with paying the more expensive cost
I know its probably more complicated than that but it just makes me ask, if they can pay for the more expensive hotel why didn't they pay their rent for a whole year? And if a 2 bedroom apartment is under $1k, why didn't they find a 1 bedroom or studio, wouldn't that be more affordable? I'm sure there's a reason, I just wish it was included in their story.
This whole "you don't have to pay rent to the private landlord you signed a contract with" law as a way of coping with the pandemic is such a scam to me. What people needed was an actually functioning social safety net. But instead small time landlords got shafted with the bill and I'm sure had to sell their assets so big management companies could snatch them up. Instead of taxing the rich to house the poor, the US gov went the usual route of taxing the middle class to fund a shortsighted temporary stopgap that would inevitably blow up on the poor and middle class only.
I feel like they should have paused mortgages for landlords who housed unpaying tenants. Add the duration of the pause to the end of the mortgage and pause the interest. Oh, but that would hurt bank CEOs and put a dent in a small part of their cocaine fund, so it's off the table.
I think you hit the nail on the head: if the landlords themselves didn't have to pay the price of homelessness and economic disparity, they would have a lot more compassion on their renters...
I think you hit the nail on the head: if the landlords themselves didn't have to pay the price of homelessness and economic disparity, they would have a lot more compassion on their renters falling behind.
Re: math not adding up
Obviously there will be people abusing the system, BUT without further information I will assume that the extremely common and mundane "Sam Vimes Boots Theory" can adequately explain what happened to them. Briefly, that it is extremely expensive to be poor.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. (Men At Arms - emphasis STP's)
They could probably come up with the weekly cheap but not a month in lump
My mortgage payments were about a quarter of what monthly rent would cost if I were to rent my own home. Some friends of mine sold their house because they couldn't afford the interest hike, but are now paying much higher monthly rent at a smaller place and can no longer get back in the buying game either. They should have instead took out a second mortgage and bet it all on a rental property so they can extract rent from another poor family to keep themselves afloat.
It's utter Insanity: the obscenely rich have altered the rules of society so much that we're left to cannibalize each other
I’ve come to think of this issue differently after learning more about the relationship between homelessness and unemployment. Without a job, you can’t afford a home, and without a home, you have no stable address to use in applications, for tax purposes, or to receive necessary information about employment (let alone the multitude of services you’d need to receive). A PO Box can work but uncertainty around how close and accessable this PO Box will remain if you are forced to change housing creates risk. This has made me start considering minimal housing (not a shared bunk room, but a small room / access to washroom facilities and a stable address) something that should be a basic human right to allow individuals to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s a complicated issue, but an important one.
Why are evictions happening?
Massive rent increase, housing shortfall, inability of the government to control illegal evictions and reign in massive increases.
Did low income renters see their employment wage increase 30%?
I don't feel too sorry for the landlords: in the article you have people holding up signs saying they're owed 60-162k. Why are low income renters subsidizing their mortgages?
But they're just barely middle class themselves, trying to find financial independence in a world where wealth inequality is higher than ever.
I posted another article yesterday about the rich: 250x million dollar plus weddings a week. Just throwing money away instead of having it be put towards education, sewers, roads, or anything that builds a strong country. It's for cakes and weekend tents. Utter and literal garbage. And that's just the "merely" rich, who are themselves likely squeezed by the ultra rich, with the obscene gap which you can visualize here
Small time landlords are stuck playing a game where they have to squeeze renters even harder for crumbs, but the real problem is who stole the entire cookie.
The obscenely wealthy have twisted this country into a pretzel of infighting and finger pointing. They are extremely overdue for a reckoning. Words cannot express the amount of anger I have for these parasitic, gold hoarding monsters.
Except that many of us are not obscenely wealthy. Nor parasitic.
There are a few classes of landlords. One is the corporate Real Estate Investment Trusts that generally own large complexes, multi apartment buildings and are owned by faceless corporations with shareholders. The second are smaller groups of partners who get together and coordinate to buy smaller multifamily buildings or single family homes. And then there are thousands of us little guys, mom and pop landlords, who own a house with basement suites or single family homes, or if we're lucky maybe a duplex or two. We're the ones providing the affordable housing, generally know our tenants quite well, and live in and are actively supporting many services in the neighborhood because we live there too. We're contributors to the local economy not the ones drawing money out of it for shareholders bottom line.
The member you were referring to wasn't talking about landlords: not the wealthy, not the very wealthy, nor the overly wealth -- they were talking about the obscenely wealthy.
Not doctors and lawyers: the people who own entire hospital/legal firm networks as a small part of their portfolio.
Not celebrities: the people who own make or break careers of celebrities on a whim.
Not sports stars: the people who own sport stars and trade them like livestock.
Take this 2012 article: More Money Than Imaginable: Fictional Billionaires Versus Real Ones (and archive)
The share of hoard have even further outstripped all of us combined since then.
Smaug, sitting on a literal mountain full of gold, was only worth $62.0 billion in 2012. Today there are sixteen billionaires who individually have more money than Smaug.
Tony Stark ($9.3b - 2012) is a mere peepsqueak upstart compared to Elon Musk today ($180b)
You are just as poor as I am, and you and I and millions of us add up to just a quick gamling night of fun for these people. That's who the hoarding monsters are, not one guy trying to rent out a handful of properties.
Ah, fair enough. Im quite sensitive to the criticism of being 'wealthy' coming from that other site that shan't be named, as just about every juvenile voice there assumed that if you owned one more house than your primary residence, you were a hoarder who deserved to be abused. More than once, I was told that I should be dead just for being a landlord, so I admit to being pretty sensitive to criticism about landlords. Also part of my reason for leaving that site.
There is a big difference between sitting on gold, and having assets. Most of that wealth is in the hypothetical market value of equity they have. It would be like if Smaug took his gold, and handed it across Middle Earth for IOUs, and Smaug sat on $62b of IOUs (although that may be more comfortable). When you sit on gold, that gold may as well disappear. For equity based wealth, the money is actually "at work", so to speak, not being withhold. If you liquidated that equity, it would actually be withholding that money from the economy.
That's not to say that that Bezos or whatever is particularly poor, of course there's plenty of ways to derive money from equity, from using it as collateral in a loan to simply selling it, but I think it's a bit silly to compare having $X in marketvalue in equity as if it were liquid cash.
Thank you, yes, exactly.
Realistically, I'm probably talking about a couple hundred people, IF that. The people that could cure malaria for the literal entire world and have no day-to-day lifestyle change, only arbitrary numbers on bank statements.
What a lot of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires seem to forget is that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars ... is about a billion dollars.
The difference between ten million, or one hundred million, and a billion ... is still about a billion dollars.
The ultra-wealthy use all manner of rhetorical, messaging, and narrative tricks to get those far-less-well-to-do than them to think that they're all the same. This si simply not the case.
At the same time ...
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are better considered property managers, in the sense of providing services (upkeep and maintenance) than the straight rents-extraction (in the economic sense) of a large landholder.
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are still far better off than many of their tenants. Struggling to maintain a few properties is still a much more tenable situation than struggling to pay rent and utilities whilst living hand-to-mouth on a precarious job (or numerous precarious jobs, none of which are full-time, or pay benefits, and for which there's no predictable schedule and you're expected to be prepared to come in at any time on an hour's notice).
Most "mom'n'pop" landlords are in fact tenants ... to bank loans and mortgages. You're renting the money to let your housing.
Much of the property-rental system is a machine for externalising risk, principally from banks and large corporate and private-equity property holders onto small individual property owners, and most of all, tenants. The precarity placed over "mom'n'pop" operations is forced further down on tenants, who, again, are least able to cope with such risks, or survive, in the literal sense, when unable to meet rising rents or inflexible conditions.
There are now real-estate leasing systems and software which establish uniform rents across a region and penalise property owners who don't comply with those rents, a clear case of collusion and price-fixing.
And in regions in which 1,000 tenants seek 800 housing units ... no matter how much rents rise, 200 people will remain homeless. Lack of new construction, and zoning and construction regulations which prohibit dense, multi-household, or flexible housing, are very much to blame here. And it is the banks and corporate property-holders who benefit tremendously by this entirely manufactured misery.
Oh man I have tried to explain that concept as a property holder many different times online especially in the less mature subs on that other site. You must work in the industry - that's very accurate. Im just the middle man. Im just the guy taking care of the bank's property so THEY dont have to do that work directly, while they get paid every month as I rent their money. And if I really mess up, they'll just take back their property, resell it and get someone else to pretend to own in for another 30 years. Meanwhile they'd love to let me borrow against the house equity to buy another one. More money for them with little risk. As long as I put 20% down even if I default tomorrow, they'll recoup their investment in short order and even make some money on the flip.
I dont think Ive heard of that before so Im curious what area you're referring to and what software can do that? As far as Ive experienced, everyone in my province is free to choose whatever rent they want but its quite directly tied to the cost of mortgage payment + tax payment + insurance as the minimum. Maybe we just dont have enough housing for the bigger corporate owners to bother with?
The software is YieldStar produced by RealPage, as disclosed by ProPublica:
"Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why. "
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Doesn't seem to have been discussed on Tildes, I've just submitted it as a topic.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33224502
Considerable discussion on The Site Currently Undergoing a Strike as well.
No, I don't work in the industry. Read economics at uni and I've supplemented that with a great deal of self-study since. The early economic theory on rents (Smith, Ricardo, etc.) is useful but not strongly emphasized in most econ programmes so far as I'm aware.
I'm absolutely not talking about anyone that handles their own social media, for one. I mean buy-a-yatch-to-take-to-your-other-six-yatchs, spend the GDP of a small country on an estate, obscenely, grotesquely rich.
Except for Musk, who handles his own social media to the dismay of many and glee of others.
Fair point!
Okay, the people that usually have handlers for social media, and probably should if they don't want the world to know what ridiculous, spoiled, pedantic idiot man-children they are.
Side note, i saw a clip of Musk on Some More News yesterday and cannot BELIEVE how awkward and inelegant he actually sounds. Holy shit.
Another issue we don't really think about is how digitalization of many aspects of our services makes them even more out of reach to homeless people.
I often pay with my phone, so I rarely have any physical money on me. I wouldn't be able to give money to a homeless person.
And with the rising cost of grocery, many fidelity programs are now app-based. Guess who is unlikely to have a smartphone? And they're the ones who would benefit the most from these savings.
I'm not sure if you've had many conversations with homeless people. It's extremely common for homeless people to have cellphones because they're a valuable source of entertainment and information. A cheap burner phone is very affordable even when you're living on the streets. The hardest part is finding a McDonald's or some other business to chill and recharge the phone.
The problem with making it a human right is the inability to evict bad actors, which quickly ruins the entire project for everyone else.
Yes, the government should offer such a service.
But it should be strictly conditional upon cleanliness and good conduct, with access to the building restricted, entrances and exits tracked, all public spaces monitored, and prompt evictions for troublemakers. No, your cousin on parole can't crash on your floor.
Doesn't that attitude just perpetuate the homeless problem though? It's incredibly difficult to find housing of any kind at any price with a felony on one's record, short of having the money to outright purchase one, something very few parolees are going to be capable of. How many of these parolees have a job lined up.upon release? From what I've seen, that's generally not a thing, so without money and without housing, how is a parolee supposed to get a job in order to afford a place, assuming there is housing that will accept a person with a record?
I'm in the process of moving to a new place myself, and the sheer amount of places with ridiculous hoops and restrictions is mind-blowing, and I'm just someone who is currently employed and has no felonies on their record. Places that outright refuse people if they don't meet income requirements even if they have the cash on hand to pay the whole lease term upfront, places that demand that each individual person on the lease make 3X the rent, not just across everyone applying, places that will reject you for not having a long enough rental history with zero breaks (one of our roommates ran into this problem because she had to move back in with her parents for a few months a year ago when her living situation became unexpectedly unsafe, never mind that she wasn't evicted and was able to break the lease early with consent of the landlord!), it's obscene. Add the restriction of having a record and being a parolee, and it's easy to see how there's nowhere for these people to go.
Any housing of last resort would necessarily have to have options for these people, otherwise it's not going to solve the problem. Human rights just don't go away when it's inconvenient, nor do people lose them for being distasteful.
I agree with you. Wife and I just left our condo to move in with family because we can't live on a single income anymore. I highly doubt we'd qualify to rent anywhere.
My brother is a felon that struggled with opiate addiction. He's years clean now, works as a drug counselor & is finishing his education, but he went through withdrawal on my living room floor a few times.
I didn't want to be in that situation, but i can only imagine how much harder it would have been if i lost my housing because I couldn't put my little brother out.
The reality is humans and their families are messy and commit crimes and fuck up, and rules that say 'Don't do this OR ELSE!' just do not work long term in practice.
We need a safety net that catches everyone, or those that keep falling will take people with them. Just like with covid spread, you can't only treat people that 'deserve' it, because it still spreads.
Yes, human 'rights' DO go away when they are abused. Let me share on that issue from the other side.
A few years ago, I decided to deliberately rent to anyone who needed a hand up. I felt that we had been pretty fortunate over the years, and since I had a background in social services, I wanted to give back to the community. So I went to a social agency in town and asked who needed a decent, clean, safe basement suite at a reasonable cost.
They put me in touch with a single mom. I worked with her and her worker to get her into the suite, lent her furniture, TV, appliances and got her settled. When she screwed up a few times and broke expensive things that should never break I swallowed the cost and just kept going. I met with her social worker and her family supporter and we coordinated plans to keep her working, and keep her rent affordable. After two years she did so well that she graduated out of the social program, clean, sober, working and functioning well.
And then the sh*t hit the fan. I got a call from a neighbor at 2 am that my rental was on fire. To make a long story short, I later found out that she had been smoking (meth) with her brother in the basement, and lit the house on fire, Her irresponsibility meant the renter upstairs nearly died - thank god she didn't but she lost two pets and all of her belongings and it traumatized her for months.
My house was a total write off. $360,000 damage. It took 16 months to rebuild. It cost me $20,000 out of pocket over and above the insurance to get everything back in rentable condition. My insurance premium doubled to an astronomical rate. And then this (I'll leave out the most accurate adjective) tenant went to our local housing authority to complain that I had not returned her damage deposit(!), which led to a multi month accusatory investigation before I was obviously cleared. She also went to the local press with her sob story and got a gofundme going and walked away with several thousand dollars for the 'unfortunate' fire that she was responsible for. The stress from the entire debacle left me with panic attacks and felt like it was taking years off my life.
The sick part is that there is nothing stopping her from walking down the street and renting from any other landlord in town who doesnt know her. And Im not allowed to publish her name - according to our law her 'privacy' is more important. I cant keep her from her "right" to be housed.
Im part of a province wide landlord group and every couple of weeks a landlord will share pictures of their house that has been absolutely trashed. Dog sh*t on the floor, cat urine odor invading the whole house, cabinet doors torn off, holes punched in walls, drugs left openly in bathrooms, tenants who crap in 5 gallon buckets because the toilet was plugged months ago, and garbage. SO much garbage. Many of my friends have had to rent big dumpsters and take days just to haul out the mountain of garbage thats been left to rot in the house... its incredibly disgusting
So I have VERY strong views on people's "right" to be housed. That "right" doesnt mean that someone has a right to rent even if they have the money. It might mean the right to live in a government shelter, but people who are that irresponsible LOSE their right to be housed by me or any other landlord in town. If they go homeless because no one will rent to them, that is a natural consequence of their abuse. If they abuse their spouse they lose the right to live with their spouse, if they abuse a business they lose the right to use that business, and if they abuse their landlord, they lose their right to get a rental.
And now? I still have rentals, but I am SUPER picky about who goes into my house. Criminal record? Not a chance. Dont have 3x the rent in income? Nope. Not in stable job for at least a year? Not likely. Credit score really low because of outstanding debts? Nope. Ive been abused enough by plenty of tenants over 35 years. Im not a punching bag or a rich man with bottomless pockets. Enough is enough.
I was referring to a landlord of last resort (aka the government), which you clearly are not, so I don't know why this would be an issue for you. This tenant you speak of wouldn't be your problem anymore regardless, but they also wouldn't end up permanently on the streets either because they don't meet requirements.
Why would it matter what yours (or any other private landlord's) requirements were, if people have a fallback that is required to find them shelter? Is it fear of competition, from the contingent of landlords who are verging on slumlord status? (I'm not claiming that you yourself are a slumlord, by the way)
I will say in my time renting housing, the private mom and pop landlords I've dealt with have either been some of the best people you could hope to interact with, or the absolute worst scum imaginable, pulling out every trick (both legal and not) to screw over their tenants time and time again. The giant REITs? They've been consistently mediocre, never going above and beyond, but not pulling blatantly illegal shit either. I'm at a point in my life where knowing what I'm getting into is worth dealing with corporate landlords over the crapshoot small time ones are. Starwood Capital never set up skeevy always-on cameras hidden on our porch and timed how long anyone who came over stayed, but one of my private landlords in college did, as an example.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that there's a level of fucking up one can do that means they deserve to be unsheltered. I'm not saying you or any private landlord would have to be that provider (but I would say, why stay as a landlord if it's such a hassle, instead of selling the property onwards and taking your profit that way?), but at the very least, the state should have that covered at a basic level.
Im not sure where you live but the state DOES have basic housing covered here in Alberta, its just in high demand and not easy to get into. Its very basic housing, in not very attractive buildings. And the waiting lists to get in could take a year. The problem is that no one wants to own them or maintain them even if the government is paying most of the rent and eventually they get run down or the owner gets sick of dealing with difficult tenants and they sell off. The new owner doesnt want to take over a beat up old building with less than stellar tenants, he wants to renovate the entire place and sell it off as condos so one more building gets lost to the subsidized pool and it slowly gets even harder to get into the remaining ones.
The only other housing lower than that I know of is 'step up' housing from shelter programs. Basically someone coming off the street can stay based on a portion of their income, something around 25%. But the conditions are that they have to be employed, they have a curfew, they cant use alcohol or drugs, cant have people stay overnight, and they have to attend counselling/addiction treatment and they are supervised all night. IF they can keep to that, they can stay in housing til they're stable enough and have enough of a track record they can apply for a regular rental. If they cant keep those rules, they're evicted and have to go back onto the street.
That's not quite the same thing as what I believe the other user is talking about. Lots of people envision the government using government funds to hire government workers to build government-owned housing. No middle man private owners and no volunteer or donation-funded programs. Guaranteed housing. No charities involved because there's no need for them. Whether or not such a thing is possible or practical is another matter and my opinion on it is probably boring and not worth talking about. To clarify I'm just clearing up the semantics here. What you're talking about isn't guaranteed housing, if it were then conceivably you could lose your house tomorrow and be sheltered by that night. Under this hypothetical, landlords like you wouldn't have to worry about anything. In fact, you would have less to worry about since most decent working people would rather live somewhere other than a glorified shed. Those who can't maintain themselves would fall into the government system, keeping them out of your hair. I imagine it would just turn out to be prison lite in practice.
That's exactly what I was going to say as I read this - it just sounds like jail. Realistically thats where tenants who have burned all their bridges and refuse to follow any rules end up. They cant even stay in a shelter if they wont follow some basic rules... and I dont know about your city but NO ONE is going to want a guaranteed government run housing development built in their community for people who have been kicked out of every other option.
Yep, that essentially sums it up. Everyone wants the problem solved and some even want to help everyone regardless of circumstances. But nobody wants to do the actual work, foot the actual bill, or put up with the actual problems that arise.
No. I'm talking about a service for people who are either not yet homeless or have their shit together despite being homeless — the guy who sleeps in his car and showers at the gym but manages to hold down a job or the guy who just got fired and can't make rent but doesn't have any substance or mental health issues, yet.
I'm not trying to help the parolee, I'm trying to help the guy who doesn't have to turn to crime and become a parolee himself.
I don't think housing is a human right.
I'm also not thinking of "last resort" housing, more like a "second last resort" — people who are about to end up homeless but otherwise relatively have their shit together and will probably be okay if they don't have to worry about a roof over their head.
So, where are people on parole supposed to sleep? If they are going to get a job and straighten up and fly right, where can they get a permanent address so they can get employment?
And you cannot ignore the fact that a lot of people end up on parole because of systemic targetting and police violence, an example of which is this week's official report from Minneapolis (Archive here) and Tildes discussion ere
It's all part of a systemic problem in our society - we have barriers everywhere to prevent "the wrong people" from getting a leg up, and of course this means plenty of fine and upstanding folks get caught in the crossfire.
Somewhere else. Wherever they'd currently be sleeping, since this theoretical housing program does not exist.
Trying to be all things, trying to be for all people... Ensuring people don't fall through the cracks is an easier problem to solve than people who have already fallen. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
And by excluding parolees, you're just ensuring that they return to crime since it's the only place that will take them.
The majority of people who end up in jail will be released at some point, is it really fair to keep imposing what amounts to a punishment for a crime after their sentence is served? I do not, and it's counterproductive to the mission of reducing crime to boot. I also refuse to accept longer or harsher sentences as a solution, as we have some of the longest and harshest prison sentences in the developed world, but it hasn't done a damn thing for our crime rates, just our incarceration ones.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a solution for parolees.
I'm saying that a solution for people who haven't yet gotten that desperate should be optimized, not broaden to try to account for all people and problems.
Remember, this is a new category. It doesn't exist yet, so anything is progress. Think of it less as a homelessness solution than a backlog of public housing solution that will halt a rise in homelessness.
I read this article earlier, and this part always struck me as odd:
I know its probably more complicated than that but it just makes me ask, if they can pay for the more expensive hotel why didn't they pay their rent for a whole year? And if a 2 bedroom apartment is under $1k, why didn't they find a 1 bedroom or studio, wouldn't that be more affordable? I'm sure there's a reason, I just wish it was included in their story.
This whole "you don't have to pay rent to the private landlord you signed a contract with" law as a way of coping with the pandemic is such a scam to me. What people needed was an actually functioning social safety net. But instead small time landlords got shafted with the bill and I'm sure had to sell their assets so big management companies could snatch them up. Instead of taxing the rich to house the poor, the US gov went the usual route of taxing the middle class to fund a shortsighted temporary stopgap that would inevitably blow up on the poor and middle class only.
I feel like they should have paused mortgages for landlords who housed unpaying tenants. Add the duration of the pause to the end of the mortgage and pause the interest. Oh, but that would hurt bank CEOs and put a dent in a small part of their cocaine fund, so it's off the table.
I think you hit the nail on the head: if the landlords themselves didn't have to pay the price of homelessness and economic disparity, they would have a lot more compassion on their renters falling behind.
Re: math not adding up
Obviously there will be people abusing the system, BUT without further information I will assume that the extremely common and mundane "Sam Vimes Boots Theory" can adequately explain what happened to them. Briefly, that it is extremely expensive to be poor.
They could probably come up with the weekly cheap but not a month in lump
My mortgage payments were about a quarter of what monthly rent would cost if I were to rent my own home. Some friends of mine sold their house because they couldn't afford the interest hike, but are now paying much higher monthly rent at a smaller place and can no longer get back in the buying game either. They should have instead took out a second mortgage and bet it all on a rental property so they can extract rent from another poor family to keep themselves afloat.
It's utter Insanity: the obscenely rich have altered the rules of society so much that we're left to cannibalize each other