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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’

#91

Post by Spooky23 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47
simonh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A study of the Spanish Flu pandemic indicates that an early severe lockdown actually minimises the long term economic impact. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/pandemic-economy-less...

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.

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

#92

Post by PakG1 »

130 tenants? People at that level, I would have considered them to be corporations collecting rent, not individual landlords. Well, he probably collects everything through a corporation too, I imagine. My point is that I've never put a face to a corporate landlord before. It's always been a faceless corporation, even for corporations where the founding face is famous. Reading this was weird for me. He behaves like an individual landlord too, personally answers all the emails, doesn't have a secretary? Maybe 130 tenants is too low a number to justify hiring help. Blows my mind.

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

#93

Post by roel_v »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #61
enraged_camel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying that not paying rent is "okay". These people would continue to pay rent if they could.

There is florist in the article that is introduced as someone who could pay rent from her savings. However, she has decided she would "rather conserve her money than pay bills now."

And even worse, there is a guy in there who still has a job, has the money, and isn't paying rent because of "solidarity" with the florist! What sort of weirdness is that? I feel sympathy for those in precarious finances who really can't pay, but then articles like this come with examples of people who can pay but don't because... theoretical "social injustice"? That surely doesn't make me sympathetic to any cause...

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

#94

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

gruez wrote: post #74
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people see a vast moral difference between failing to pay a debt you owe and taking something that doesn't belong to you in the first place. If you broke into an unoccupied apartment and squatted there, that'd be at least as stealing food from a grocery store.

If an apartment is unoccupied, chances are it's used for speculation and/or short term rentals. If that's the case, I'd rank squatting better than stealing and failing to pay your rent. I'm sure others share this position, given posts like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852570 .

Or it's being renovated, or someone's due to move in next month, or all kinds of legitimate reasons. I'm definitely on board with the idea that people should be structurally discouraged from owning housing they don't plan to put to use, but enforcing that by allowing people to steal non-compliant housing seems pretty bad.

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

#95

Post by gruez »

drawkbox wrote: post #79
jacknews wrote: post #25

Rents will have to come down or be waived. Almost by definition "rent" is simply extracting value from the productive economy through ownership. If the productive economy takes a dive or disappears, the amount you can extract must do likewise.

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!").

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

#96

Post by nradov »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #84
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Not at any scale. Once you own about a dozen units the principal risk is not getting over your head in debt.

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.

Every landlord who owns more than few units is fully aware of those realities.

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

#97

Post by wilbo »

_bxg1 wrote: post #58
shubidubi wrote: post #33

I don't get why it's not ok to steal food from a grocery store but it is ok to not pay rent. Both are basic necessities and in both cases you hurt someone else by not paying for service (food/shelter).

People without incomes right now can probably afford food, even if they can't afford rent. The fact is that a significant fraction of society is in an impossible situation right now, through no fault of their own. And probably very few rentiers are in that group.

Very few rentiers is likely true. However, very few landlords are rentiers. The average investor owns 2 rental units [1]. And the vast majority of property investors have full time jobs and mortgages on their rental properties (I can't link directly to a source, but Buildium regularly conducts surveys to understand property investors).

To paint landlords as rentiers who can easily afford to go without rent or with greatly reduced rent is wrong. It mischaracterizes the problem in a way that will lead to bad solutions.

If there is to be rent reductions or forgiveness, there must also be reductions, aid or forgiveness on mortgages, property taxes and utilities. Somebody needs to pay for these things. Yes, profits will be reduced, but losses cannot be sustained for as long as social distancing measures are expected to last.

[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-frm-asst-sec...

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

#98

Post by jmcgough »

lykr0n wrote: post #18
monadic2 wrote: post #11

Now is the time for landlords to prove their value.

You're living in a place that you couldn't afford on your own or won't buy for economic reasons (wanting to move, temporary job). That's value.

In cities where prices have risen because Airbnb has reduced long-term rentals, it feels more like rent-seeking behavior creating problems than actually providing value because so few can afford to buy.

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

#99

Post by drawkbox »

dbcurtis wrote: post #86

Let's follow the money. Tenant fails to pay rent because of economic hardship. Building owner get in a cash squeeze and can't pay vendors like plumber, snow clearing, landscaping, and eventually can't make loan payments. Mortgage holders see a rise in troubled loans, eventually writing a large number of them off for large losses. REITs take losses on investments they must write off. Your own retirement plan or person…

> I see a lot of simplistic "landlords must suck it up" comments in this thread.

Your answer is for the rent payer, with no economy, to "suck it up".

If the top felt the pain of recessions more than the bottom, you can bet there would be less recessions where massive wealth value extraction happens. You have to align the market incentives right. Make the top feel the pain, at the bank level even, and you are gonna have better ratings agencies, better leverage ratios, and less pump and dump bubbles setup. Right now if the top always gains, even in pain, there will be more and more pain as they look for gains guaranteed.

If we truly are in a trickle down system, shouldn't emergency hits to the recession start at the top, the trickle source?

Money trickles up and down and all around, but money only trickles where other money is found.

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

#100

Post by Spooky23 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #84
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Not at any scale. Once you own about a dozen units the principal risk is not getting over your head in debt.

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.

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