[marris]

If they were evicted and living on the streets, then they would not have accrued a rent liability for those months. So the total liability now would be less.

You could argue that the current state of large accrued rent liabilities is better than the alternative world of smaller liabilities, more homeless, more deaths, etc, but the OP is not making the inverse claim.

Further, IIRC the moratorium relied on self-reported hardship. Is it so hard to imagine that people who could have actually afforded their rent decided to game the system a bit and accrue (rather than pay) their liability? Such behavior would also cause the current liabilities to be higher.

[rsj_hn]

Almost all people who are evicted find a cheaper place to live. They do not live on the streets. That is why there is a large range of places in this country with a large range of rents. They may need to move in with friends or family, they may need to move out of SF and into Oakland, or even out of California and to Arizona, etc, but they can find some place.

This idea that if you can't afford a meal in a restaurant then you must immediately go begging for food is just odd. People have agency. They plan out their lives according to what they can afford.

One drawback of trying to keep people who experience an income loss from living within their new (lower) means is that it prevents more rental units from coming online and thus rental prices from falling. A unit occupied by someone not paying rent is one taken out of the market, propping up prices for those that remain, and thus making it more expensive for the household to find a cheaper place to live. Many of the business that shut down during covid aren't coming back. They will be replaced by other businesses, and at some point you have to recognize that life has knocked you down a bit and it might take some time to get back to your previous spending level. When that happens, you don't move to the streets, you move to a place you can afford. The last thing you want to do is tell everyone to keep living in their old place and pretending as if nothing has changed.

[sofixa]

But during a pandemic when lots of businesses were impacted, lots of jobs were lost. Many companies had hiring freezes, even in sectors that didn't care( e.g. Google).

If someone lost their job due to this, and gets evicted, there was no guarantee they would be able to find any job, anywhere. So moving to a cheaper place wasn't really an option.

I find it weird that Americans still argue about the eviction moratoriums and the money given to people to avoid mass homelessness and hopefulness. Nobody in France is arguing against the "partial unemployment" scheme that was implemented here that allowed employers to not lay off people and instead the government paid their salary( to an extent of course), or eviction moratoriums.

If anything, the criticism was that many people fell through the cracks.

[rsj_hn]

> there was no guarantee they would be able to find any job,

Yes, there are no guarantees - ever.

> So moving to a cheaper place wasn't really an option.

Woah. How does that follow, now? While it's true that there are no guarantees in life, you always have options. But living in a place that you can't afford is not really one of them. Life is full of all sorts of crazy things that happen to you unexpectedly, and absolutely none of them entitle you to live beyond your means once your savings are exhausted. Now there are safety nets for income like unemployment insurance or SS disability, and with covid additional tax refunds were given, but none of these income insurance programs will be enough to make up for a lost job, so if you are one of those who lost their job due to covid, then your means will be reduced. And whatever those lower means are, you need to be able to pay rent from those means. It doesn't matter whether your means were reduced by covid or foreign competition or rising interest rates or going through a divorce.

Moreover the alternative view, that you don't need to pay your bills because covid happened, is a truly toxic form of entitlement.

[chii]

whilst all of that is true, temporary support from society for dealing with natural disasters (of which a pandemic is one) is justified.

[rsj_hn]

the support by society are the checks that were mailed out. Not a "I shouldn't have to pay my bills" waiver, or general waiver from all resposibility.

[sofixa]

If you have no revenues and don't know when you'll have any, moving to a cheaper place is a temporary "fix" you don't know for how long you could afford.

[rsj_hn]

yes, but that's what you still need to do. I got news for you -- we are all gonna die and sometimes life sucks. Yet we still have to pay for things.

[throwawayboise]

I'm pretty sure that eviction for non-payment of rent does not relieve the renter of the debt that they owe.

[gkop]

Landlord will settle for less than 100%. Much less than 100%, in California.

[rsj_hn]

Landlords almost never "settle" with the renter in this way, they keep the deposit and if they are a corporate landlord they sell off the debt to a collection agency and move on to the next tenant. If they are an individual landlord, then it really depends -- California has a lot of accidental landlords holding onto property because of Prop 13, and they can themselves be pretty incompetent in running their business. Negotiating with them is worth a try.

Part of the reason it doesn't happen is that if a tenant is not savvy enough to move to a cheaper unit when their income declines, they are unlikely to be savvy enough to try to negotiate with the landlord for a reduced debt obligation in exchange for quickly vacating.

The responsible tenants move out promptly to a place they can afford (or move in with family) and the irresponsible ones wait to be evicted. Unfortunately there isn't much middle ground.

[gkop]

I honestly can't tell if you're just being pedantic or have a point. At the time that a landlord sends the debt to collections, they are no longer expecting to recoup 100%. As a degenerate example, say the renter offers to pay money owed minus one dollar, prior to sending to collections. Any rational landlord will accept this offer - which is settling for less than 100%. So alright yea, a landlord may not settle directly, but sending to collections is conceptually the same thing as settling, inasmuch as it means the debt will be resolved with the landlord receiving less than 100% and the debtor paying less than 100%.