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31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

nytimes.com

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Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#101

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Spooky23 wrote: post #91
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No city I'm aware of enacted a severe lockdown by our standards during the Spanish Flu. I haven't seen any record of a ban on private gatherings, or a general shutdown of non-essential businesses (as opposed to a targeted ban of bars and restaurants).

Keep reading. Here’s my city. https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-albany.html# NYC didn’t shut down, but had an active surveillance program to monitor the situation and act. That’s one of the real tragedies of the complete failure of the federal government. Their ineptitude will kill thousands and impoverish millions.

This looks consistent with what I said. The city shut schools, libraries, everywhere that involved indoor public gatherings, but I'm not seeing anything here about bans on private gatherings or general orders to not leave your house.

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#102

Post by missedthecue »

effhn wrote: post #88
dang wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop using HN for political battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. Also, while I have you, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that as well. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need s…

Stop suppressing uncomfortable opinions.

There's discourse between differing opinions and then there's spamming and rule breaking. One is encouraged. The other is something we could all do with less of.

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#103

Post by drawkbox »

gruez wrote: post #95
drawkbox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If rent collection at the very top, above the landlord, above the management company, if they have to take the hit from this the most, there will be many less recessions. If the bank, credit cards and mortgage owners have payments suspended in recessions, there would be many less recessions. If the top of the chain, that is the elusive 'trickle down' source, felt the pain for recessions the most, there would be many…

>If 'too big to fail' banks and companies were immediately broken up on commencement of recessions, there would be many less recessions. I'm curious what the justification for this is. It seems like the kneejerk reaction toward any big/powerful entity (eg. "break up the tech companies!").

> I'm curious what the justification for this is. It seems like the kneejerk reaction toward any big/powerful entity (eg. "break up the tech companies!").

Well we do need more Teddy Roosevelts that threaten anti-trust. FDR was also from wealth and took on wealth in a way that made the most secure and trusted investable market for investors and workers ever and has lasted almost a century [1].

Microsoft, even the threat of one in the 90s led to Google, Apple, Amazon, Mozilla, etc to rise. Microsoft is also better for it.

However I don't think any company should be broken up until they start to abuse a monopoly or become a single point of failure for economic disasters or national security issue.

For instance right now banks and ISPs need to be broken up.

Clearly 'too big to fail' banks are a national security issue and lend to massive value extraction events and recessions as they gain.

Also, the local monopolies of ISPs have led to rent-seeking and less innovation.

Competition is a key of capitalism and fair markets. If you do not have competition you have stagnation and monopolies make progression and innovation lazy.

Here's a great quick point by Steve Jobs about product stagnation and the managers/business side [2] and how they can run amok if not controlled to allow value creation to continue, and how monopolies or problems that arise when only the business/managers are in charge.

Essentially when monopolies/oligopolies happen they stagnate and the product/engineer/creates lose power to the business/management side, value creation is killed for value extraction and stagnation happens always, it is basically a law of the universe at this point.

The alternative is to keep sticking it to the bottom, the lower/middle and the worker in consumer economies, the service in a service economy, the small business R&D absorbing failures and proving successes for large businesses, the long investors that are 'suckers' to investment banks, and the overall quality of life we all enjoy. Or you can take some from the top and incentivize them helping to make sure recessions are rare.

[1] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/how-fdr-took-forces-wealth-an...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXO3xMfuo20

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#104

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #82
sv9 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the landlords should've been more responsible and saved for a rainy day. Isn't that what the less-well-off are always told to do? Poor planning on their part shouldn't be the fault of renters.

Would you please stop using HN for political battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. Also, while I have you, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that as well. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need s…

[deleted]

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#105

Post by kian »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32
wtvanhest wrote: post #10

Equity residential collected 93% of rent for April 1. The difference in tenants is real. Equity residential tenants are higher end rentals in big to midsized cities with strong economies. http://investors.equityapartments.com/file/Index?KeyFile=403...

I mean, extremely unsurprising. The vast majority of white caller workers I know are working from home. Of course, those who are in industries that are getting slaughtered (travel, non-emergency medicine, local business services, etc.) are having a tough time, but wouldn't expect those delinquencies to show up until May or later. Where I live, there is a huge service economy (restaurants, bars, gyms, etc.) and most o…

White Caller? That's a pretty excellent Mondegreen.

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#106

Post by jahaja »

missedthecue wrote: post #46
simonh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the economy exist to serve the needs of the people, or do the people exist to serve the needs of the economy?

The 'economy' isn't some wild and mystic beast that we must tame into subservience. It's the way we measure the flow of money, goods, and services. By definition it cannot 'serve' anyone.

Neither is it some mystic natural law?

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#107

Post by Rury »

felipemnoa wrote: post #81
aww_dang wrote: post #64

Meanwhile gov banks have been keeping foreclosed housing off-market for over a decade to prop up the price.

Way too lazy to verify this myself. Any links?

Apparently, there are a couple of mega wealthy properties ($2M-$20M) near me made over 20 years ago that have never had anyone live in them ever, as supposedly banks financed them for foreign businessmen but were never repaid the mortgages when said businessmen fled the country along with their debt obligations. At least this is the story I was given, after buying a car from a caretaker of two of such properties - one of which I was very familiar with, as it had a prominent observatory built in its roof...

But that story checks out, as when the market crashed ~2008, the FED bailed underwater mortgage assets (such as these supposedly) off banks hands to avoid bank runs via QE. You can see that mortgage-backed securities still comprise a significant portion of the FED's balance sheet:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_fedsbalanc...

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#108

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Spooky23 wrote: post #100
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you talked to many landlords that own a dozen units? It's my understanding that owning so many units is hard, requiring you to either work full time or hire a property management company, and you incur a serious risk of massive costs from misbehaving tenants.

Hard, sure you have to actually do something and hire people. It’s a pretty basic business. Watch the money going out, manage the tenants coming in.

You're right that it's not an uncharacteristically complicated business, but all businesses are hard! The idea that business owners sit there sipping whiskey, living an unburdened life like an aristocrat, is almost always false.

Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

#110

Post by gruez »

drawkbox wrote: post #103
gruez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If 'too big to fail' banks and companies were immediately broken up on commencement of recessions, there would be many less recessions. I'm curious what the justification for this is. It seems like the kneejerk reaction toward any big/powerful entity (eg. "break up the tech companies!").

> I'm curious what the justification for this is. It seems like the kneejerk reaction toward any big/powerful entity (eg. "break up the tech companies!"). Well we do need more Teddy Roosevelts that threaten anti-trust. FDR was also from wealth and took on wealth in a way that made the most secure and trusted investable market for investors and workers ever and has lasted almost a century [1]. Microsoft, even the thre…

>Clearly 'too big to fail' banks are a national security issue and lend to massive value extraction events and recessions as they gain.

I'm not too convinced whether a breakup would accomplish that. Smaller banks are less capitalized, and therefore be less able to absorb shocks than big banks. You can see that almost all the banks on the failed banks list[1] are small local banks (although this might also be because bank sizes follow a power distribution, it would be interesting if there was a bank failure rate that accounted for market cap). Also, what's preventing all the banks from engaging in the same risky behavior and all requiring a bail-out? If the government won't let AIG fail, would it let AIG01,AIG02,...,AIG99 fail?

[1] https://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

>Also, the local monopolies of ISPs have led to rent-seeking and less innovation.

The problem with ISPs aren't that they're big, it's that they hold monopolies over a geographic area limiting consumer choice. Breaking them up will do nothing, as each company post-breakup still hold a monopoly and therefore can continue to abuse consumers.

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