Area Ocho

Today is finally the day that most American landlords can begin getting rid of the people who have been stealing their property. That’s right, the eviction moratorium is finally going to be allowed to expire. The Biden administration refused to extend it and even the Communist wing of the Democrat party couldn’t muster the votes in Congress to make it a law.

For some landlords, it has been YEARS since they were paid a cent in compensation for the use of the property that they purchased and were still required to maintain, insure, and pay taxes on, while the government refused to intervene as people were living there for free, even while destroying the place.

In the beginning, it was the government who created the problem- they forced everyone to stay home, which caused businesses to shut down, some permanently. What began as “two weeks to flatten the curve” became “until there is a vaccine.” Then the government mailed out billions in free money, paid billions more in enhanced unemployment benefits, all the while telling people that they didn’t have to pay rent because evictions were prohibited.

Instead of paying their bills, many Americans went on a shopping spree. Amazon, Netflix, and other companies saw record profits. Many businesses, including landlords, were bearing the costs of this orgy of spending. A year and a half later, and people are now upset that the evictions are coming, as if landlords are the villains.

Yes, landlords are being made into the villain here. Read this piece from Politico. They claim that 12 million people are behind on rent, including 50 percent of all black families. The article blames landlords for that, pointing out that  Forty-eight percent of voucher holders are Black and 18 percent are Hispanic, so the refusal to accept vouchers is a coded form of racial discrimination, in other words, calling landlords racist. Why?

The reasons that many landlords, myself included, don’t accept government Section 8 vouchers is purely financial.

• People who are poor have poor rental payment histories and are likely to default
• People who are paying for things with someone else’s money don’t value the things that the money bought, because they didn’t have to work for it
• the government puts too many restrictions on the landlord, including more paperwork, more bureaucratic administrative burden, and more headaches. All in exchange for taking less money

All of the above increases my financial risk, my workload, and decreases my income. The only way to make money with Section 8 is to buy cheap, shitty, substandard housing. In other words, be a slum lord. I don’t want to do that, so I avoid Section 8.

The fact that most people who are receiving Section 8 housing vouchers are black has nothing to do with it. I am not in business to do people favors, I am in business to make the most money that I can by doing the least amount of work and taking the smallest risk that I possibly can. If I could make money selling goods to black people by taking little risk and expending minimum effort, I would do so. The money just isn’t there.

That isn’t enough. Some governments have made it illegal to discriminate against those who are receiving Section 8 vouchers. The latest effort is a push to get banks behind an effort to refuse loans to landlords unless they agree to rent to low income, Section 8 recipients. This will drive more landlords out of the market, especially smaller ones, leaving nothing but larger, self funded landlords in the market.

This is a push for the removal of the entrepreneur from the American experience.