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Baker doesn't want to extend eviction moratorium, offers some money to renters facing eviction
By adamg on Mon, 10/12/2020 - 3:48pm
WHDH reports Gov. Baker has proposed letting the state's current moratorium on evictions expire next week.
In its place, Baker has proposed spending $100 million on a program to help renters - and landlords - make up some of the rent backlogs, roughly $50 million to help people who are evicted find new housing and $15 million for legal assistance for tenants facing eviction and for landlords willing to try mediation to come up with payment plans for tenants.
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Comments
Aren't the banks too big to fail?
Surely the banks can absorb the recent losses that have been caused in part by their decades-long wholesale manipulation of people, markets, and society.
Why should a normal person be on the hook when its a governmentally created mandate totally beyond their control that stopped their income in the first place?
Shoot, why not cut out the middle man and have the state pay for my housing too, while I remain without purpose and starving?
Send the check directly from Beacon hill to Enron, or Freddie Mac, or Welles-Fargo, or whoever runs the state and world now. Its simpler and begets the same effect.
It is not 2008. The big banks
It is not 2008. The big banks are not failing and causing this mess. The shutdown, for better or worse, has resulted in people being out of work. Some of those people are unable to pay their rent, some of those people are opportunists using an eviction moratorium to take advantage of their landlords.
Landlords are not charities. When rent goes unpaid sure at the big towers and complexes a corporates entity gets to deal with it, but in the massive numbers of triple deckers etc? Often small timers getting squeezed.
You have to have a whole lot of guts to be a landlord in this state. For me, there are way better places to invest.
Banks should take the loss -- not landlords or tenants
Enact a nationwide moratorium on residential mortgage debt. Let the big national banks fail and let the FDIC liquidate them. Only bank stockholders (who are members of the 1%) will suffer. This will solve several problems at once.
That's insane.
That's insane.
Insane?
What’s more insane is kicking 100,000+ real, living people on to the street just so some imaginary numbers don’t get smaller. What’s the point of an economy if it doesn’t actually improve people’s lives?
So in other words
You’d like a credit crunch and 2008 style economic crash to be added to everything else we’ve dealt with this year.
Direct aid to renters/homeowners
1.) It keeps families and individuals off the street
2.) It maintains land lords’/homeowner credit
3.) It
launderspasses money into banks keeping them liquid and ready to lend.(This should be done by the federal government, but I know that is too much to ask of the Republican-controlled Senate. God forbid they act like adults who are supposed to manage the crisis.)
So... what Baker purposes?
Okay.
Also, any landlord who has tenants who were good investments a year ago would be wise to hold on them if the tenants are facing tough financial times. Better getting some money than dealing with a vacant apartment.
Maybe?
Maybe Baker has a good plan given the Federal circumstances? If Baker is a Republican but has no pull with the GOP administration or the GOP Washington congressional leadership, then what is the point of maintaining his party affiliation? Dude had to have the Patriots fly a secret mission to China for masks/PPE. Who is working the Feds for the benefit MA citizens in the Republican Party right now?
Maybe this plan is the best Baker can do; I’m not a financial guru. But, as a moral and policy calculus, I do agree with Ron insofar as the banks/corporations with mountains of leverage-able assets should hurt well before tenants, homeowners, small landlords and other *people* should hurt.
And if this is the best Baker can do without Federal help, what is his plan to mobilize said federal help? Run out the clock and hope for Biden in January? If so, have the courage to say it out loud.
There’s one thing to remember about Baker
He may be a Republican, but his job is to govern the Commonwealth. Anything else, including partisan politics, is a distraction.
I like Baker.
I’m a progressive Democrat and have never and probably will never vote for Baker, but I like him. I appreciate the (mostly) non-partisan way he has managed the COVID crisis. However, I don’t think the Commonwealth alone can do enough for this impending housing shit show.
He did have enough time to dip his toe into partisan politics to endorse Susan Collins. Maybe he should be working her and perhaps our old friend Mitt to lead on this issue? He is a Republican in MA and should be leveraging his party affiliation harder; if he isn’t why stay in the GOP?
Good thing
partisan politics have zero impact or effect on the citizens of the Commonwealth and we're just completely isolated from them here, huh?
When is the country going to
When is the country going to say we are bankrupt. This check and bank loans are on a limited time frame.
When 60K.continually get laid off and businesses go bankrupt, there's not alot to grasp.
I must not have been paying
I must not have been paying attention when they passed the law saying you have to be a 1%er to buy stock in a national bank. Citigroup is still right there on the NYSE, symbol C, about $43 per share, well within the price range of a 2 or maybe even 3%er.
And while this would help landlords, it's still no guarantee that tenants would be protected from eviction.
I think the phrase was coined decades ago in different context
but this sounds like some voodoo economics
If I ever have any thoughts
If I ever have any thoughts about becoming a landlord in this state all I will need to think back to is Covid.
Nope!
Good.
People would do well to remember that buying and renting out real estate isn’t the risk-free investment all those seminars promised you. Most of the time you make money holding a valuable asset while it appreciates. Sometimes you take a bath when the goddamn plague wipes out the economy, despite the best efforts of the GOP to protect rentiers from the consequences of their own decisions.
"Renting out real estate isn
"Renting out real estate isn’t the risk-free investment"
Indeed. However reasonable people should not expect the legal system to be closed to them for months on end.
Higher rent for the renting class I guess. *shrug*
$50 million
To help people find new housing.
Craigslist costs $0.
Now, I'm not so naïve as to believe that every single member of this community can and will use a free-to-the-end-user website to find new digs, and that some folks might have trouble with the English language, but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that that costs 50 million (expletive) dollars.
As for the other two expenditures, $15 million for legal aid feels a little closer to the truth. $100 million for a program to help renters make up rent backlogs? You mean...pay their rent?
What part of "end zoning laws" isn't clear, Chuck? Only a Republicrat would see this problem, and propose $165 million to fix it without a nickel of that openly stated to be earmarked for building more places for people to live. Only a fool will elect him again.
We need to slowly move to the new normal
I completely agree with a previous comment that the federal government should be the ones helping here, but since the states have been sent out on 50 icebergs to fend for themselves, Charlie gets to choose how to move forward. Allowing people to live rent-free for an indefinite period is not a workable solution. Kicking people to the curb who are out of work and simply can't pay is JUST as unworkable. I can't judge the details of this proposal, but something that helps those who truly can't pay while at the same time making sure that mom and pop who own one or two units don't get wiped out either is a noble goal.
Imho,
Had a mandatory 2-3 month lockdown been implemented on a national basis, rather than leaving it up to individual State governors to implement lockdowns individually, as they saw fit, we would've been back to normal, or at least close to it, by now.