So we have another residual effect of Covid in the U.S. Evictions. For my international readers what happened in the U.S. in many states is the local authorities issued moratoriums on evictions because people were not allowed to work. Simply put, a landlord could not evict you from the rental property, period. Didn’t matter the circumstance, so even if you were working and chose not to pay your rent you were safe. The problem was and is the lifting of the ban. Like most government reactions they rarely think things out.
What did they think was going to happen? Landlords might not be wonderful people (although the vast majority are) but they have legit businesses to run. Property taxes stop? No, water bills? Electricity? So governments banned evictions and left themselves in the horrible position to someday have to lift them. So we are at that point now and people are of course anxious. It should come as no surprise, if you don’t pay your rent you will be kicked out. We aren’t socialist yet in the U.S. so you don’t get to live for free.
The correct solution would have been to offer relief to the landlords so they could recoup some of the rent missed, with the caveat that by accepting the money they grant an additional grace period for people to start paying rent. That didn’t happen so now landlords in afflicted areas are going to start eviction proceedings and rightfully so.
It’s one of the example of how a lockdown is bad policy. You lockdown 100% of the people you get bad economic outcomes. Sure something had to be done at the time but the months on end, in some parts of the U.S. a year or more was way too extreme. It speaks to the lack of intelligent application of policy as well. Once the vaccine became available you vaccinate the most vulnerable first and work backward. This prevents death, which is paramount and then allows companies to reopen so people can earn wages to, you know pay their bills.
The fear mongering was to profitable I suppose and in the end who is getting hurt here? The poor. They don’t have the resources to survive prolonged periods for economic shutdown imposed by a government presiding over essentially fear porn in the media. The poor are the ones who will be evicted first, they will be the ones who are destitute. It is a disservice to them as vulnerable citizens to have allowed this economic shutdown to go on for so long.
Many of them are now living in fear of homelessness. The problem is too big to solve by the government writing a check and so now the only other option is to somehow villainize the landlord for being “greedy”. You know the company or person who hasn’t been paid in a year, ya they are greedy because they want rent they are owed. It’s a huge mess and an unnecessary one. Again, had government (Local, State, and Federal) created more opportunities for landlords to get relieve there wouldn’t be this rush to evict.
This is an example of why I do not trust government and why I despise legacy media. They allowed fear to dictate good decisions and now some of our must vulnerable citizens will be harmed.
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