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by vosper 1778 days ago
There's some mindblowing stuff in this story

>[...] the end of the federal moratorium means evictions could begin Monday, leading to a years' worth of evictions over several weeks

...

> More than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20 billion to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

...

> The crisis will only get worse in September when the first foreclosure proceedings are expected to begin. An estimated 1.75 million homeowners — roughly 3.5% of all homes — are in some sort of forbearance plan with their banks, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. By comparison, about 10 million homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure after the housing bubble burst in 2008.

> The Biden administration had hoped that historic amounts of rental assistance allocated by Congress in December and March would help avert an eviction crisis.

> But so far, only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed through June by states and localities. Another $21.5 billion will go to the states. The speed of disbursement picked up in June, but some states like New York have distributed almost nothing. Several others have only approved a few million dollars.

...

> Studies have shown evicted families face a laundry list of health problems, from higher infant mortality rates to high blood pressure to suicide. And taxpayers often foot the bill, from providing social services, health care and homeless services. One study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Innovation for Justice Program at the University of Arizona found costs could reach $129 billion from pandemic-related evictions.

The TL;DR appears to be that the moratorium will not be extended long enough to allow states to distribute $25 billion dollars in rental assistance. A whole lot of people could end up homeless, which will be bad for them and society in general, and this could cost taxpayers up to 6x as much as the rental assistance program.

Way to go, government.

1 comments

“Way to go, government” in placing a moratorium in the first place or letting it expire?

The moratorium is meant to protect good tenants from evil landlords but it doesn’t protect good landlords from evil tenants. So it is another special interest group that gets something, that only ends up hurting them.

The government gave what the people desired. “Way to go government”? Is like saying “government why did you give these children what they asked for?”

I meant “way to go” in ending up a situation where a grant from the government can’t be delivered in time, so a more expensive and damaging alternative becomes likely. It’s just poor organisation or coordination. I didn’t mean anything about the validity or appropriateness of the moratorium, or the ending of it. That wasn’t clear from the way I wrote my comment.

It’s a pity the article doesn’t go into more detail on the distribution. I felt that they kind of hinted that states had been slow to distribute the money to their constituents, but it doesn’t go any further.