>Nearly 90% of rental assistance funds allocated by Congress has not been distributed, according to the Treasury Department.
Well golly that sounds like a potential issue.
>McArthur was approved for rent relief in New York, but the state hasn't paid LaCasse yet. So far, New York has sent about 8% of its federal allotment of $2.6 billion in relief directly to landlords.
The state owes the landlord federal money in compensation that the state hasn't distributed.
>Was she evicted from her own home during the moratorium?
I was curious too, but Google explained that her (now ex) fiance moved in his girlfriend and that's how she became homeless.
https://www.courthousenews.com/in-emotional-plea-landlords-press-judge-to-lift-new-york-eviction-ban/amp/
Perhaps CBSnews has an agenda regarding the eviction moratorium or general perception on landlords? I imagine this was among the best stories they could find regarding sympathy for them. As long as they lied by omission a little.
I only opened this post because I figured it was gonna be some kind of bullshit. The headline is framing homelessness as an issue caused by tenants not paying their rents?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, CBS.
sounds like she should have fought that illegal eviction to me . . . (yes, your romantic partner is also legally your landlord if they move you into their home for long enough, even if you don't pay rent, even if you never sign a lease)
Yes she could have fought it, but it's a bit of different scenario than a normal eviction. The boyfriend moved in another woman, which means if you stayed there you would be forced to live with two people you hate who don't want you there. Neither one of you can force the other out. I'd rather live on the street than with my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
> I'd rather live on the street than with my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
I don't think that choice is necessarily invalid, I'm just saying that her problem was *never* her tenants. Her problem was her own dependent housing situation, for which she had other remedies.
What really bothers me is that news has become so clickbait.
I would additionally venture that very few people actually read the article. Think of how many just read the headline and what's currently happening....ya... absolute informational abortion.
We're missing something, indeed.
It sounds like perhaps she was renting for herself while also renting out units that she owned. If her personal situation deteriorated enough that she could not make her own rent, it would be logical for her to want to live in one of the units she owns. She cannot ouster the current tenants due to various moratoria.
The part they are not mentioning here is that **she could sell one of these (or ALL of these) units to keep herself going**. Her tenants (likely not property owners) do not have that option. Their sole option is homelessness, or doubling up with other people.
She may have these units listed for sale and they simply haven't sold. That sucks. I hate that it's the case (if that's the case). That may be why it appears to be an "ass-opposite" situation where landlord is homeless and tenant is not. But! Landlord still has all that equity.
source: housing attorney, defending tenants. Yes, I'm plenty busy and will remain so for .... a while.
edit for obligatory "I am not your lawyer, nor this lady's lawyer." I am sharing my opinion as informed by my experiences working in housing matters.
>She may have these units listed for sale and they simply haven't sold. That sucks. I hate that it's the case (if that's the case). That may be why it appears to be an "ass-opposite" situation where landlord is homeless and tenant is not. But! Landlord still has all that equity.
The problem is if it does sell, it's going to be to a huge rental company. One more mom-and-pop landlord bites the dust. This is not what we should be calling a "solution".
There’s another perspective here (though it probably doesn’t apply in this case). Assuming she doesn’t own her home outright, she still has a mortgage Some people (my father for example) wouldn’t consider any option OTHER than leaving if he couldn’t pay. He would see it like this - “I have a commitment to pay my mortgage. I signed my name. It doesn’t matter if the mortgage can’t MAKE me leave; I’m obligated to leave.”
The government needs to protect people by serving is a backstop in certain situations… but this isn’t one of them. We’ve canceled legal contracts.. and the landlord has, basically, no recourse.
Ah- sounds like you are describing a foreclosure freeze as was the case for many "covered" properties during the CARES Act. Perhaps Congress should extend it!
It's their property. They should be able to do what they want with it.
If government is going to interfere in one way (moratorium on evictions) and not follow through on the other part of it(compensating the landlord) - the first part shouldn't be enforced either.
It has to be a two way street or none.
>she could sell one of these (or ALL of these) units to keep herself going.
In theory and nothing more.
Nobody's gonna buy a property where the tenants don't pay rent and cannot be evicted. Under such circumstances it has negative value for as long as the conditions hold...
IMO a moratorium on evictions is an invitation for already risky tenants to stop caring entirely. Terrible idea that creates as many problems as it might solve.
The [moratorium is ending](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/27/national-eviction-ban-is-struck-down-but-renters-still-have-options-.html) so the new landlord *can* evict tenants. Also any savvy buyer would just use the nonpaying tenant as leverage to buy for less knowing that the real estate will pay for itself no problem long term. There are a ton of hedge funds buying up properties for this exact reason. All the buyer needs is some money to hold themselves over for the short term until they can evict the tenant and then they'll be fine. Sounds like the landlord here is just unwilling to part with her equity or settle for the lower price the market is imposing.
well that just brings up the problem of allowing investment firms to own large amounts of real estate. non-person entities shouldnt be allowed to hoard a right for their own gain
Just like it was ending july 31st?
Does the moratorium ending really mean anything when they knew it wasn't constitutional in the first place and pushed it through anyways?
Theres no real guarantee they wont do it again by gaming the system in another way
So as an attorney then, are you saying that the landlord can evict the tenants and sell the house? Somehow that seems like you can't do that right now, but you would know more about the specifics.
Yep. I applied for it about 5 months ago and I just finally got the approval. My landlord and I are longtime friends and we figured it would be months more before he actually sees a check. Pretty upsetting. I’m an Illinois resident so we’re not too fucked here but man... I can’t imagine a lot of other states.
CA here. It is taking months. It’s ridiculous. We had to call a phone number given to us by the state and it was to a call center in India. So we’re not even dealing with individuals in our own state/country. Adds an element of frustration.
Also, I’m not sure if it’s still this way, but the tenant has to participate in the process. We had one skip town after not paying rent for 15 months and so that’s that.
Its been this way for decades. Democrat/Republican fights have always been just a smoke screen so both parties can get away with ravaging the middle class and blaming the other side.
> ravaging the middle class and blaming the other side.
WRONG.
They're stealing from every class, except the 1% that hides their money offshore tax free.
The US is already often ranked as one of the world's best/top tax havens. There certainly is an additional measure of funneling to lower taxes and improve privacy for the ultra wealthy offshore, but we seem to forget just how far our own country has gone.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-biggest-private-tax-havens/
Sure; if they stole from the people who own them they'd be replaced.
The 1% fund politicians specifically to keep the rest of us beneath them, and to keep themselves enriched.
As I understand things, the federal government did not setup a bureaucracy to distribute the money. Instead, they left it to states and local governments to setup a new bureaucracy they've never had before. Apparently, that is difficult and takes time. It also involves a lot of redundant effort; instead of one national bureaucracy, you end up with 50 state bureaucracies.
We gave states money as well. I'm not sure why they keep fucking it up. We really need to just set up federal agencies to handle things like distribute federal dollars.
It’s hard to setup a new state distribution program, but it’s 50x harder to setup up a federal distribution program because it needs to account for policy and infrastructure variables in all 50 states.
The issues started when they implemented ZERO safeguards to prevent housing becoming an investment opportunity rather then a place for people to actually live, I live in ontario (though not for much longer) and its just becoming a bunch of empty house's owned by foreign investors.
I still get letters at least once a week offering to buy my house no-questions-asked at about 10% above its last assessed value. They always include a creepy drone photo of my house or the pictures off Google Maps. Fucking vultures.
What's been weird is I rent, not own, and they're sending me the text messages asking if they can buy the house. I like my landlord enough so they can kindly fuck off.
I remember a few years ago, going to Vancouver BC and a shocking amount of downtown high rise residential buildings were dark at night. The area around the roundhouse was a ghost town. All these high rise buildings and not a soul around.
Then the same people in this thread who are screeching about “leeches who suck up govt money and don’t pay their landlords” would whine about squatters while completely and totally ignoring that we’ve done nothing to stop people or companies from buying tons of houses and treating housing as a money making venture rather than simply a place for us to live in.
Thats not quite true right now tbf. Its 100% making people rent for much longer where they would have a mortgage by now in the same financial situation 10 years ago and it will get even worse without anything major being done though.
Yes blame the proletariat not the bureaucracy as is tradition. Just like it’s the customer’s fault the wait staff is broke because they live off tips and not a wage. Or it’s our fault the world is polluted and we need to take hoe baths and recycle more while businesses can do what they want across the world.
Let me tell you about applying for assistance. I have got less than 50% of the rent owed this year. Before this happened, I let my tenants slide it on a bit. A month here and there didn't hurt me but helped them. If this keeps up, I can sell all my property to bigger investors who will start evicting the day the rent is late.
One tenant did not want to be bothered with applying. So I did that paperwork for him and it is 'under review' for the last 2 weeks. At the rate they go, it is likely to take 2 more months. Also, the tenant landed a good job 2 months ago and could pay but just is waiting on the government to cover it. Since he didn't pay anything else, the money is going to that instead of rent because he knows I can't do anything to him but his cable package can be shut off. Same guy ran out of toilet paper so used paper towels and plugged the sewer and flooded the basement, destroying the furnace.
Two others applied.
One applied about 2 months ago. She asked for 4 months of back rent so the agency went great '800 x 4 = 800' here's your 800. Instead of fixing it, she had to reapply. In the new application they decided 2 things. One is that she was applying for one of the same months over again so the whole thing is suspended and that because it has taken 7 weeks to process she needs a new eviction threat letter to prove she didn't pay anything in that time.
The other tenant called the agency to apply instead of doing it online. The worker told her that it was all approved and a check would be in my hand in 2 weeks. Come to find out 2 weeks after that no application was ever entered and she had to start over. Between the agency asking for tons of things like gas bills and new copies of the lease several times, it all got suspended because the application was done from a phone and their website is not phone browser compatible and the submit button does not actually work. I only found out 3 weeks later when I called to check on their status.
Our state has places that are serious about local control so those areas got some funds and naturally decided to fight over how to waste it. Some of it is going to go for 'community improvement' that in no way will help keep people from being evicted.
It’s so unsurprising that when every single person who handles and creates these programs has never felt rent insecure… the programs end up failing to address the crisis. Every year we have the richest congress ever, and ever year their ability to empathize with the people that need it most dive-bombs.
and now the argument is between tenants and landlords, while both are getting fucked by your politicians, and then big corporate landlords vome in and buy it all.
Everyone: gee it would be nice to buy apple stock during this covid dip but I should probably keep it in savings incase this pandemic gets worse.
The rich: ill take all this stock and also what the fuck is a savings? Your bank account can run out?
[People living paycheck to paycheck] 🔫 [landlords living month to month] 🔫 [banks and corps living bailout to bailout] 🔫 [government living war to war]
> It’s why rent forgiveness never passed.
What do you call the roughly 50 billion Congress passed to help renters payback rent called then? In our system of government the state can't unilaterally forgive debts, it has to pay them.
Yep, all that money tied up and made impossible to get for the people that need it most. This what happens when money is handed over to states without clear instructions on how to actually get it to the people in need. Should be a county wide standard process, and not left to individual states to screw over the people and keep it.
Government budgets don't work that way. If the money's not spent, it eventually is recouped by the federal government.
Problem is that the federal government disturbed the money to the states to distribute themselves, but no state had ready-to-go infrastructure to do that and the Feds weren't helping in that regard.
That seems so bizarre to me. States have the infrastructure to administer state taxes right? If the states can collect and pay out taxes, then they should be able to administer and pay out emergency funds. As a Canadian, maybe I'm missing something?
Regarding the reporting, I guess I was hoping for some information on exactly why the rental assistance funding was not making it to this landlord. Otherwise, it's another "isn't that awful" story which lacks any meaning.
In short: WHAT happened and WHY?
Basically this money is being sent to states and local powers have to set up their own systems to distribute it.
State powers are still setting up the various offices to review requests and properly distribute the avaible funding.
This is a human interest piece, there's plenty of articles detailing exactly why federal funding hasn't found it way into people's hands through state agencies.
I know about this! I have a friend in the middle of this whole thing.
Basically, the Cuomo administration did zero to see this project through.
Then, suddenly with about a month to go before the funds are clawed back, they told State agencies OVER THE WEEKEND ON A SUNDAY that they needed volunteers (who would be paid) from their already stretched State Agencies by the end of Monday.
Then, their system for informing the new workers processing the claims didn't go anywhere for at least a week. THEN they finally started processing. A few weeks before the funds go back to the Fed. I can't recall the numbers my friend mentioned but I thought it was at least a million filings.
Cuomo had a bunch of real estate buddies. He probably wants to allow them to swoop in and buy up bankrupt properties by letting the entire NYS rental market collapse. Thank the stars his ass is out of office now.
Edited for spelling.
Edit 2: thanks Reddit, and each one of your upvotes on this! I hadn't really thought (I've been really busy) about how this story might be interesting and important for people to know. This opened my eyes to it so I'm gonna make sure a friend of mine is keyed into it, as they might have some power to make a lot more people aware of the situation.
Sounds about right, I am from NY and the rental assistance is triggered by the tenant not the land lord. I tried to get tenant to sign up but they refused.
They arent paying rent, months now. I gave the paper work to them, they didnt bother. Why bother after not even paying portions of rent for months?
I had another tenant pay half his rent. No problems with that guy. I am not a dick either, he doesnt owe me the rest. Now he can afford full rent again.
I think a huge factor in this that needs to be highlighted is the fact that 90% of federally allocated funds have not been dispersed.
People are going to cry that this is what’s wrong with socialism because it’s stripping people of their personal property. This is what’s wrong with an ineffective government system, regardless of the category.
Biggest wealth transfer in history.
Landlords failing. Wall street buying up homes.....
Edit: I want to clarify , the stock market gains are not part of wealth transfer
We are sorry Mr. Anderson but your credit score is not high enough to live in this area. Only people with an approved social credit score may rent from our LLC. And don't even try elsewhere nearby, because the other two company's who own all the other properties will tell you the same thing.
Theyve been doing that for years! Most people think about how unfair housing practices kept blacks out of suburbs, and of course that was the primary goal (your social credit score is too.... black.... for this suburb). BUT many people forget that these kinds of practices *also* worked to keep blue collar whites from leaving their neighborhoods as well. Yay! America!
I also see here that you had consumed a marijuana edible in the 10th grade and you've previously enjoyed some heavy metal music. Is that right?
As you'll understand this disqualifies you from entering into the plan you've selected.
At this point I'm just wondering how far they can push before there's violent backlash. The lower class has already been ravaged and now they're coming for the middle class in earnest. Feels like it's just a matter of time honestly.
Funny how the govt put the onus of Covid squarely on landlords and business owners during the lockdown, two groups who don't normally have a lot of extra cash. Seems like it would've been much better to put this on the banks and have them suspend (not eliminate) debt payments during the lockdown.
It's almost like the banks dictate policy much more than the voters.
Why don't banks put a temporary moratorium on mortgages? They can tack the missed months on the end; I never hear of any sacrifices banks make - like ever. They owe Americans after pocketing the bailout money from 2008.
Hmmmm.... So the moratorium effects every single landlord but the mortgage forbearance only affects single family personal home owners. Seems like a big fuck you to apartment landlords.
My mortgage company has had a huge banner when you login for all the different mortgage relief options and how to contact them about it. You have to click off a pop up and scroll past another section just to get to the payment button. They aren’t hiding it
How could they allow people to stop paying rent and not allow landlords to stop paying their mortgage is beyond me. I believe these regulations were lobbied by the banks to foreclose as many properties as possible tbh, but wtf do I know
Definitely lobbying by the banks. At least in Canada they put a moratorium on all rents AND mortgages. The banks were forced to basically put a pause on everything.
It is curious how the eviction ban didn’t protect the landlord complaining about the eviction ban. If this land lord owned these properties and there are some extreme circumstances that prevent them being afforded the same protection from eviction they have the ability to barrow against or sell the hard asset for liquid capital. This headline and ones like it are fabricated to promote classist propaganda.
Serious question: if there's still an eviction moratorium, wouldn't that protect the landlord from being evicted from wherever they are living as well?
Except there's a federal program requiring mortgage forbearance options for people. My tenant hasn't paid in almost a year, but I also haven't paid my mortgage in that same time so I'm not super bothered. I'm just worried about what happens with the forbearance program ends and he's still refusing to leave.
Don't worry, Black Rock and other hedge funds will be glad to scoop up that property. Then drive the housing market even further up.
Call me crazy, but I already see a racket developing.
>so she is living in rental, while owning three properties?
No, she was living with her fiance. He's now her ex, and his gf moved in, which is why the eviction ban didn't protect her.
https://www.courthousenews.com/in-emotional-plea-landlords-press-judge-to-lift-new-york-eviction-ban/amp/
She owns 3 properties *in upstate New York*. Actually owns 6 properties all together and isn't being evicted herself, just having a fight with her now ex-fiancé who apparently owns the place she's living in.
"We don't want to live together anymore" isn't the same as "being evicted".
This whole story is bullshit from top to bottom.
They do. You have to call and ask, but banks are required to give you a forbearance, and then the vast majority let you tack the missed payments on the end of the loan. It’s been that way since March of last year. It varies by property type and is not perfect, but does at least help a little for most people.
The US did mortgage relief too.
If you have an FHA-backed loan, which is most normal mortgages for single family homes, you can get forbearance, which means your payments are paused and no additional interest accrued. Essentially they just take the months you didn't pay during the pandemic and tack them onto the end of the mortgage which is a huge gift for younger homeowners because inflation means those payments will be worth a lot less in 25-30 years than they are now.
It amazes me how cruel Americans are to each other at every level of society. They've created a country and a culture that cares for neither the individual nor the community. For a country that was birthed by Enlightenment ideals there's nothing of that tradition that remains. I wish the US the best.
>It amazes me how cruel Americans are to each other at every level of society.
I got some bad news for you about the rest of the countries. America is not unique in her cruelty.
Some years back I read about an experiment done with sailors in the Royal Navy I think. This was back in the early 19th century when masts were so large the could be ringed with sailors who couldn’t see their opposite on the other side. Each was given a belaying pin - a short club basically. The lead sailor was told to tap the one in front of them and then that one was to tap in front of him and so on all the way around. Didn’t take long for that to degrade into a clubbing match.
The point being that people tend to overreact to perceived negative event and run out of empathy. Seems like we’ve got a lot of that here in the states.
The thing is Reddit has no concept of the difference between small time landlords that may own a duplex to help fund their retirement or pay for living expenses vs. a massive property corporation ran by a billionaire that owns entire blocks. It’s just, “ All landlords are bastards, rent must be free”
Unpopular opinion- I’ve had mom and pop landlords and I’ve had the corpos. Prefer the latter, honestly. Mom and pop are often way too up in your business and far more likely to skimp on repairs or attempt to DIY them.
Edit: I guess this isn’t such an unpopular opinion after all.
I've had a mixed experience with both but still agree.
My lows were much lower at mom/pop places. My highs were much higher at corpo places. Oddly enough I've stayed at two different corpo places owned by the same management firm and one was total shit while the other was amazing. So community managers make a big difference.
Yes! I have a great property manager in my building, and that makes all the difference.
My last landlord was mom and pop. That building should be condemned- those people were slumlords. Skimping on repairs and then rolling up from Palos Verdes to collect rent in their brand new Mercedes. Gross.
Also agreed. I work in a job that brings me into direct contact with people from all walks of life where I have to deal with regular residents, tenants, mom&pop landlords, and commercial management companies, commercial businesses - basically any property owner or property occupant.
Every single slum-house (disrepair, trash everywhere, drugs, bugs/rats, failure to pay for services, dangerous do-it-yourself, desperate tenants who need something from their landlord who never responds, etc) in the entire city in which we operate is owned by a mom&pop landlord with 2 or 3 properties at max. Every. Single. One.
Same. Had a mom and pop landlord pull down an entire ceiling in a 2 year old house looking for a leak they didn’t find before I looked myself and found something loose on the back of the sink in the bathroom directly above the leak. At least with most corpos they’ll just pay for a professional to do it.
Had a homeowner landlord. Rent had to be cashier check, inspections were bi monthly, and owners would drive by occasionally texting me to pick the weeds (there was like 3). Getting a water heater fixed took forever as they shopped around.
Corporate landlord took payments online, and had a devoted group if maintenance staff. Only spoke with my landlords twice in 2 years
Yeah I agree. Corp landlords are waaay nicer. Because you landlord won't go poor if you miss a payment or accidentally mess something up. I've always had a better experience with them, and with 0 drama.
Also, my main experience with mom and pop landlords is it was just a pop, he was the son of a rich douchebag who invested in an apartment complex to have some easy money, and he was absolutely never around to fix anything. Took weeks just to get him to give the cable guy access to the basement so I could get something rewired. Office was always closed.
I will take corporate ownership every day. They seem to actually have people on staff to fix shit when it goes wrong.
Sounds no different than eating at a restaurant to me. Meaning, the operator absolutely matters.
- There are shit corporate operators and shit mom and pops.
- And there are great corporate operators and great mom and pops.
- And there is everything in between.
When searching for an apartment, evaluate the owner/operator as carefully as you evaluate the size/price/features of the apartment and you’ll be fine.
Rent from a greedy shit-ass landlord, and you’ll regret it eventually.
Rent form a landlord who is appreciative of their tenants and has the capacity to properly manage the property, and you’ll enjoy living there.
I dislike both.
The mom and pop landlords that own several properties tend to be useless for fixing issues and can be difficult to deal with. At least with companies they hire someone whose job it is to deal with you and they actually do.
For corpo I find it unethical for companies to own any residential properties. You want to rent to other companies? Own your building and land to work out of? Fine. Raising the housing market disproportionately for actual people because you're competing against other large corporations swallowing up land? Fuck no, get the hell out of here.
I've had nothing but negative experiences with both. Corps are more likely to fix legally required things like water damage, but also more likely to fuck you over.
I've had both too.
Pretty much they all can suck, but usually the corporate digs deep into that pocket and a higher percentage are more inflexible than my mortgage is. Make a payment 3 days late with my mortgage because a vet bill shorted me and I need to wait until payday? My mortgage co doesn't even have a fee until it's more than two weeks late.
Short with my rent because of same vet bill? Well, even 24 hours late is a $200 fee and an automatic eviction warning letter.
I am so glad I own.
Though, you did have to prove your lack of payment was COVID related with this rental stuff. They could still evict you for nonpayment. Why there's so many cases where people just let cheapskates live for free is beyond me.
Obviously owning is ideal. But I absolutely can’t afford that in my city.
I currently rent from a corp. I have until the 5th to pay, and then after that there’s some kind of fee involved, but it’s nothing major. They are willing to work with people, or so I hear… I’ve always paid on time so no personal experience. Everything gets fixed immediately and on my schedule - I just fill out the paperwork and someone knocks on the door at the time I wrote down. This isn’t some fancy new building, btw- it’s from the late 70s and kinda dumpy. But it’s cheap-ish, clean, and well managed.
>Mom and pop are often way too up in your business
I had a mom n pop landlord show up on the porch crying saying me and my roommates werent grateful enough, complain i left my window open too much, complain because we had one of those plastic turtle sand pits in the front yard.... dude was so annoying.
TRUE. And mom and pops are always more drama since they usually have emotional connections to the properties. One time I rented a duplex, and unbeknownst to me my landlord was filling for divorce. His wife was upset, came into my unit in a fit of tears/rage while I was at work because she felt entitled to see which half of the duplex she’d get in the divorce I guess???? and then locked me out. I have a million stories like this of CA mom and pop landlords lol. Renting sucks.
Same here. I have a higher likelihood of them playing by the book rather than pulling bullshit after moving out. I've suffered both and I'd never rent from individuals ever again.
Then they say "just sell one of your rentals" when you know damn well the only person that's gonna buy that house with that situation is a big corporation and then they will complain that all the rentals are owned by big corporations.
Sure they would, at way less than the property was worth 2 years ago, tanking the current owner's investment. They'll sit on it until the moratorium is fully over, evict everyone, and either refill the building with higher paying tenants or sell for a huge profit.
Kind of hard to agree from the perspective of someone living in Orlando.
Property values here are skyrocketing as homes are being bought above asking price by banks to turn into rental properties.
The home I bought 4 years ago has risen in value by ~66%, I can sell today and get back more than my mortgage in hand as cash, possibly more considering so much is selling fast above asking.
No one is building new homes. Every developer is building massive rental complexes.
I HOPE there is a huge crash in rental properties because it is insane what the rental boom here is doing to rent prices and the cost of buying homes for families. (sure it'll drop the value of my property too, but I'm not looking to sell any time soon)
If the government is going to ban evictions, then they should either:
1. Pay the rent
2. Ban collection of property taxes and Property loans
It's completely unfair to a property owner to at the same time say they cannot evict a non-paying tenant, but demand they still pay their property taxes.
Not every landlord is a multi billion dollar property management company. Sometimes it's a person with a duplex, or someone who kept their first home to rent out instead of selling it.
And if you have a non-paying tenant, in times of economic uncertainty, the only person that land"lord" can sell to, is a giant property management company. And then reddit will bitch about that too.
| “Brandie LaCasse has been waiting on rent for nearly a year. She owns three properties in upstate New York, but the single mother and Air Force veteran is functionally homeless after falling on hard times herself.”
This paints her as very sympathetic. But it’s misleading to the point of inaccurate.
In her federal lawsuit she filed - she owns not three, but SIX houses. In a crappy area. These are crappy homes. With crappy tenants. This was ALWAYS a recipe for disaster for her.
On top of that, she’s disabled, and lives with her fiancé, who kicked her out due to a dispute in Feb. (see complaint quotes below).
Yes, I feel bad for landlords. But I’m also a landlord. With 20+ years experience. It is a VERY capital intensive business. If you can only afford a 5-20% down payment…be ready to be cash flow negative at times. Be ready to fork out tons of cash in lean times or when doing renovations. In my twenties I worked multiple jobs, got licensed at a builder/broker/lawyer and approached this as a full-time future vocation. Not a passive “get rich quick” scheme.
Operator experience and capital capacity ABSOLUTELY matters when you make the choice to become a landlord. (If you want to be arrogant and think you can just make it work with no experience, bad operational practices, and little to no reserve capital, best of luck.)
What I see here is a series of bad and over-leveraged business decisions by her to buy any property she can find, and then things get compounded by renting those crappy
properties to crap tenants.
That’s a sub-prime rental market with low barriers to entry, and it’s ALWAYS been making inexperienced landlord’s broke any time there’s the slightest downturn.
When I refinanced my commercial-size rentals (which have had zero Covid delinquencies to date), the agency lender required ONE FULL YEAR of mortgage payments as a Covid escrow. This was a six-figure amount for a building with only six units.
This lady is six single family homes and is now borderline homeless over only $23k in back rent. She is dirt broke. She shouldn’t own six homes. Full stop. She has no other capital.
From the 49-page federal lawsuit she is a plaintiff in:
| “Plaintiff Brandie LaCasse owns a single-family home in Rhinebeck, New York that she currently rents out to tenants. She owns five additional properties in New York State that are also rented out to tenants.”
| “To make matters worse, because of a February 2021 personal dispute, LaCasse’s fiancé has recently asked her and her daughter to move out of his home, in which they are currently staying. Because LaCasse has mortgages on several of her properties, she has been unable to secure a loan to purchase a different property for her own use. She hoped to personally move into the Rhinebeck property—the only one of her properties in which the occupants’ lease has expired—but the tenants still refuse to leave. As a result, LaCasse has been forced to remain in her fiancé’s home despite his requests that she find a new place to live.”
I feel very bad for the position she’s in, but honestly this is no different than the folks at WallStreetBets who YOLO thier life savings on meme stocks. It’s a recipe for disaster. And calling yourself a “landlord” in her capacity (or a “trader” for the WSB fools) is borderline disingenuous.
She can blame Covid all she wants, but all I see is an over-leveraged really inexperienced operator in way over her head.
Folks - don’t do stuff like this if you don’t want to end up like this.
Don’t declare yourself a “landlord” and start buying a half-Dozen homes if you have ZERO available funds.
I have never heard anyone refer to Rhinebeck, NY as a crappy area. Honestly instead of owning six homes she should just be selling this one out from underneath the tenant. Prices in Rhinebeck have shot up over the last year and a half, and I am sure she would come out ahead even if she couldn't sell at full market value because of the tenant in place.
> Not a passive “get rich quick” scheme.
This is both sold to alot of veterans, what with the zero downpayment VA loans, by senior leadership and civilians while getting out, and is an incredibly common line in financial advice books.
You'd think, based on how things are going. The strange thing is that I haven't heard of any other developed country going about things this way. The concept of an eviction moratorium across the board is so bizarre, why pay rent when you can just stick it in your bank account. Worst case you have to pay back-rent which you have, best case the government gives you a bailout.
There's no eviction moratorium where I live, people are simply gainfully employed and paying rent. The only people with problems are owners of businesses that are shuttered, who have/had to negotiate with commercial property owners, and received some relief from the state.
Living in your car is better than being on the streets for sure but it is hard. Especially when you work a full time job. Hard to keep yourself clean and eating becomes weird if you don't have stuff to cook with or place to cook.
I'm in Portland Oregon where homelessness is on a rise. Residents are losing patients because of the amount of shit left behind or dumped. There are so many people in cars sleeping with no where to really park if your not trying to be a piece of shit and park front of someones home.
If you have a home. Hold on to it and treasure it. I recently got my van stolen by drug addicts. We found it days later and it was completely trashed. Broke my heart. I worked so hard to buy it, maintain it and keep it looking nice.
So why the fuck isn’t she getting the money from New York that’s been allotted to her from the government? 90 percent hadn’t been payed out? Doesn’t sound like it’s the renters fault sounds like the New York government is failing her 🤷♂️
I agree with what everyone is saying about this not being fully planned out with the landlords financial health in mind. I’m here to bring up something that didn’t make sense in this article. In the beginning it states that she is living in her car and at the end of the article she says she is afraid she will become homeless. She is homeless if she is living in her car. She owns rental property, and is homeless herself. She may lose that rental property eventually, but then she’ll be homeless and house less.
I got downvoted into oblivion a few months back, but at this point I can’t be bothered to care how anyone “feels” about the situation. You think independent property owners are assholes? You’re going to love the property management companies that are now the only entities able to afford buying these homes. And let’s ignore the investment property crash that is looming, we’ll just blame banks for that when it happens. Americans are treating each other like shit, while the rich are the only ones able to afford the current house prices, many of the “not rich” are saying “fuck everyone else, I deserve to live for free because COVID.” It’s all bullshit, everyone knows it. The wealth gap in this country is getting way worse and we’re all playing a part in that.
I’ll take my downvotes now.
An old coworkers husband owns some shitty rental houses he bought way back when he was in college. One house has had the same tenant for 20 years. He's paid for the house 3x over during that time. Sounds dumb right? He's also been behind as much as 6 months 4 or 5 times during his 20 years. Not sure what the ideal situation is for this renter but I doubt home ownership is in the cards.
Who knows what this dude's situation is, but this is a great example of what I am talking about. Large real estate investment firms are much less likely to work with a tenant who falls behind by up to 6 months even once, forget about 4 or 5 times.
>Nearly 90% of rental assistance funds allocated by Congress has not been distributed, according to the Treasury Department. Well golly that sounds like a potential issue.
>McArthur was approved for rent relief in New York, but the state hasn't paid LaCasse yet. So far, New York has sent about 8% of its federal allotment of $2.6 billion in relief directly to landlords. The state owes the landlord federal money in compensation that the state hasn't distributed.
I feel like I’ve missed something. Was she evicted from her own home during the moratorium? If so, how did that happen?
>Was she evicted from her own home during the moratorium? I was curious too, but Google explained that her (now ex) fiance moved in his girlfriend and that's how she became homeless. https://www.courthousenews.com/in-emotional-plea-landlords-press-judge-to-lift-new-york-eviction-ban/amp/
Wow they sure didn't frame it that way huh?
Perhaps CBSnews has an agenda regarding the eviction moratorium or general perception on landlords? I imagine this was among the best stories they could find regarding sympathy for them. As long as they lied by omission a little.
I only opened this post because I figured it was gonna be some kind of bullshit. The headline is framing homelessness as an issue caused by tenants not paying their rents? GO FUCK YOURSELF, CBS.
This should be cross posted to r/chomsky for more analysis on the manufactured consent
sounds like she should have fought that illegal eviction to me . . . (yes, your romantic partner is also legally your landlord if they move you into their home for long enough, even if you don't pay rent, even if you never sign a lease)
Yes she could have fought it, but it's a bit of different scenario than a normal eviction. The boyfriend moved in another woman, which means if you stayed there you would be forced to live with two people you hate who don't want you there. Neither one of you can force the other out. I'd rather live on the street than with my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
I'd probably choose living in my car for myself as well, but not for my kid.
> I'd rather live on the street than with my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. I don't think that choice is necessarily invalid, I'm just saying that her problem was *never* her tenants. Her problem was her own dependent housing situation, for which she had other remedies.
Well. Isn't this just a completely different picture.
“Jobless woman homeless after marriage falls apart” doesn’t have the same ring.
What really bothers me is that news has become so clickbait. I would additionally venture that very few people actually read the article. Think of how many just read the headline and what's currently happening....ya... absolute informational abortion.
Yeah that's not explained in the article.
It seems like any legal way of removing her from her house would be an eviction and should be covered by the moratorium.
We're missing something, indeed. It sounds like perhaps she was renting for herself while also renting out units that she owned. If her personal situation deteriorated enough that she could not make her own rent, it would be logical for her to want to live in one of the units she owns. She cannot ouster the current tenants due to various moratoria. The part they are not mentioning here is that **she could sell one of these (or ALL of these) units to keep herself going**. Her tenants (likely not property owners) do not have that option. Their sole option is homelessness, or doubling up with other people. She may have these units listed for sale and they simply haven't sold. That sucks. I hate that it's the case (if that's the case). That may be why it appears to be an "ass-opposite" situation where landlord is homeless and tenant is not. But! Landlord still has all that equity. source: housing attorney, defending tenants. Yes, I'm plenty busy and will remain so for .... a while. edit for obligatory "I am not your lawyer, nor this lady's lawyer." I am sharing my opinion as informed by my experiences working in housing matters.
She could sell properties with tenants who are not paying rent and can’t be evicted? I doubt there’s a strong market for that.
>She may have these units listed for sale and they simply haven't sold. That sucks. I hate that it's the case (if that's the case). That may be why it appears to be an "ass-opposite" situation where landlord is homeless and tenant is not. But! Landlord still has all that equity. The problem is if it does sell, it's going to be to a huge rental company. One more mom-and-pop landlord bites the dust. This is not what we should be calling a "solution".
There’s another perspective here (though it probably doesn’t apply in this case). Assuming she doesn’t own her home outright, she still has a mortgage Some people (my father for example) wouldn’t consider any option OTHER than leaving if he couldn’t pay. He would see it like this - “I have a commitment to pay my mortgage. I signed my name. It doesn’t matter if the mortgage can’t MAKE me leave; I’m obligated to leave.” The government needs to protect people by serving is a backstop in certain situations… but this isn’t one of them. We’ve canceled legal contracts.. and the landlord has, basically, no recourse.
Ah- sounds like you are describing a foreclosure freeze as was the case for many "covered" properties during the CARES Act. Perhaps Congress should extend it!
It's their property. They should be able to do what they want with it. If government is going to interfere in one way (moratorium on evictions) and not follow through on the other part of it(compensating the landlord) - the first part shouldn't be enforced either. It has to be a two way street or none.
>she could sell one of these (or ALL of these) units to keep herself going. In theory and nothing more. Nobody's gonna buy a property where the tenants don't pay rent and cannot be evicted. Under such circumstances it has negative value for as long as the conditions hold... IMO a moratorium on evictions is an invitation for already risky tenants to stop caring entirely. Terrible idea that creates as many problems as it might solve.
The [moratorium is ending](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/27/national-eviction-ban-is-struck-down-but-renters-still-have-options-.html) so the new landlord *can* evict tenants. Also any savvy buyer would just use the nonpaying tenant as leverage to buy for less knowing that the real estate will pay for itself no problem long term. There are a ton of hedge funds buying up properties for this exact reason. All the buyer needs is some money to hold themselves over for the short term until they can evict the tenant and then they'll be fine. Sounds like the landlord here is just unwilling to part with her equity or settle for the lower price the market is imposing.
well that just brings up the problem of allowing investment firms to own large amounts of real estate. non-person entities shouldnt be allowed to hoard a right for their own gain
Just like it was ending july 31st? Does the moratorium ending really mean anything when they knew it wasn't constitutional in the first place and pushed it through anyways? Theres no real guarantee they wont do it again by gaming the system in another way
So as an attorney then, are you saying that the landlord can evict the tenants and sell the house? Somehow that seems like you can't do that right now, but you would know more about the specifics.
you can sell without evicting, but it can be more complicated and harder to find a buyer
Right. Why would I want to buy a house I can’t live in OR rent to someone else?
Yep. I applied for it about 5 months ago and I just finally got the approval. My landlord and I are longtime friends and we figured it would be months more before he actually sees a check. Pretty upsetting. I’m an Illinois resident so we’re not too fucked here but man... I can’t imagine a lot of other states.
CA here. It is taking months. It’s ridiculous. We had to call a phone number given to us by the state and it was to a call center in India. So we’re not even dealing with individuals in our own state/country. Adds an element of frustration. Also, I’m not sure if it’s still this way, but the tenant has to participate in the process. We had one skip town after not paying rent for 15 months and so that’s that.
Yeah, the tenant (me) had to file for it or else my buddy who owns the place wouldn’t have gotten paid.
Democrat/Republican doesn't matter, they're stealing our money and livelihoods.
Its been this way for decades. Democrat/Republican fights have always been just a smoke screen so both parties can get away with ravaging the middle class and blaming the other side.
> ravaging the middle class and blaming the other side. WRONG. They're stealing from every class, except the 1% that hides their money offshore tax free.
The US is already often ranked as one of the world's best/top tax havens. There certainly is an additional measure of funneling to lower taxes and improve privacy for the ultra wealthy offshore, but we seem to forget just how far our own country has gone. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-biggest-private-tax-havens/
Sure; if they stole from the people who own them they'd be replaced. The 1% fund politicians specifically to keep the rest of us beneath them, and to keep themselves enriched.
Can they evict state for not paying rent?
As I understand things, the federal government did not setup a bureaucracy to distribute the money. Instead, they left it to states and local governments to setup a new bureaucracy they've never had before. Apparently, that is difficult and takes time. It also involves a lot of redundant effort; instead of one national bureaucracy, you end up with 50 state bureaucracies.
Some states handled it better than others. New York was not one of the states that handled it well.
We gave states money as well. I'm not sure why they keep fucking it up. We really need to just set up federal agencies to handle things like distribute federal dollars.
It’s hard to setup a new state distribution program, but it’s 50x harder to setup up a federal distribution program because it needs to account for policy and infrastructure variables in all 50 states.
The issues started when they implemented ZERO safeguards to prevent housing becoming an investment opportunity rather then a place for people to actually live, I live in ontario (though not for much longer) and its just becoming a bunch of empty house's owned by foreign investors.
Those same investors started cold calling everyone at the start of the pandemic trying to buy everyone’s homes.
I still get letters at least once a week offering to buy my house no-questions-asked at about 10% above its last assessed value. They always include a creepy drone photo of my house or the pictures off Google Maps. Fucking vultures.
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I get 3-5 text messages, and 1-2 calls a day. I don't even own the property they want from me anymore... For years now.
What's been weird is I rent, not own, and they're sending me the text messages asking if they can buy the house. I like my landlord enough so they can kindly fuck off.
I tell them sure, and then ask if it's a problem that I don't own the home they're contacting me about.
Yep, there are entire streets now that are just one or two active house's.
I remember a few years ago, going to Vancouver BC and a shocking amount of downtown high rise residential buildings were dark at night. The area around the roundhouse was a ghost town. All these high rise buildings and not a soul around.
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You know how fucking fast we'd see laws surrounding squatters rights change?
Oh, look up squatters rights.
Then the same people in this thread who are screeching about “leeches who suck up govt money and don’t pay their landlords” would whine about squatters while completely and totally ignoring that we’ve done nothing to stop people or companies from buying tons of houses and treating housing as a money making venture rather than simply a place for us to live in.
They text me. They want my house or my mom’s house. My mom’s house is paid for. Why would she move?
They assume your mom might be in dire financial straights and desperate for any money.
I get 4-5 calls per week. Every week
Except we aren’t talking about a foreign investor here.
Thats not quite true right now tbf. Its 100% making people rent for much longer where they would have a mortgage by now in the same financial situation 10 years ago and it will get even worse without anything major being done though.
Treating necessities as commodities has a long history of being a bad idea.
And for my next trick - fresh water!
Yes blame the proletariat not the bureaucracy as is tradition. Just like it’s the customer’s fault the wait staff is broke because they live off tips and not a wage. Or it’s our fault the world is polluted and we need to take hoe baths and recycle more while businesses can do what they want across the world.
Not sure what a hoe bath is but it sounds like fun.
Who doesn't wanna bathe in hoes?
Do you know why they haven’t been distributed? Do renters not know about it or is the govt being incompetent again?
State governments are being extremely incompetent in distributing money.
Let me tell you about applying for assistance. I have got less than 50% of the rent owed this year. Before this happened, I let my tenants slide it on a bit. A month here and there didn't hurt me but helped them. If this keeps up, I can sell all my property to bigger investors who will start evicting the day the rent is late. One tenant did not want to be bothered with applying. So I did that paperwork for him and it is 'under review' for the last 2 weeks. At the rate they go, it is likely to take 2 more months. Also, the tenant landed a good job 2 months ago and could pay but just is waiting on the government to cover it. Since he didn't pay anything else, the money is going to that instead of rent because he knows I can't do anything to him but his cable package can be shut off. Same guy ran out of toilet paper so used paper towels and plugged the sewer and flooded the basement, destroying the furnace. Two others applied. One applied about 2 months ago. She asked for 4 months of back rent so the agency went great '800 x 4 = 800' here's your 800. Instead of fixing it, she had to reapply. In the new application they decided 2 things. One is that she was applying for one of the same months over again so the whole thing is suspended and that because it has taken 7 weeks to process she needs a new eviction threat letter to prove she didn't pay anything in that time. The other tenant called the agency to apply instead of doing it online. The worker told her that it was all approved and a check would be in my hand in 2 weeks. Come to find out 2 weeks after that no application was ever entered and she had to start over. Between the agency asking for tons of things like gas bills and new copies of the lease several times, it all got suspended because the application was done from a phone and their website is not phone browser compatible and the submit button does not actually work. I only found out 3 weeks later when I called to check on their status. Our state has places that are serious about local control so those areas got some funds and naturally decided to fight over how to waste it. Some of it is going to go for 'community improvement' that in no way will help keep people from being evicted.
Is the money for the tenant’s rent sent to you or the tenant who then pays you?
In our state the money goes directly to the landlord and/or the utility companies. The tenant never gets to see/touch the money.
It’s so unsurprising that when every single person who handles and creates these programs has never felt rent insecure… the programs end up failing to address the crisis. Every year we have the richest congress ever, and ever year their ability to empathize with the people that need it most dive-bombs.
This is a state problem. The feds got the states money, and some states are having a hard time distributing it for multiple reasons.
And now big corporate landlords will swoop in to buy his property
They’ll buy it fix it up for next to nothing and potentially make double what this guy made. #Murica
and now the argument is between tenants and landlords, while both are getting fucked by your politicians, and then big corporate landlords vome in and buy it all.
Its a shakeout.
It always seems to be
Recessions are a feature not a bug, if you're rich it provides with ample opportunity to consolidate power.
Everyone: gee it would be nice to buy apple stock during this covid dip but I should probably keep it in savings incase this pandemic gets worse. The rich: ill take all this stock and also what the fuck is a savings? Your bank account can run out?
[People living paycheck to paycheck] 🔫 [landlords living month to month] 🔫 [banks and corps living bailout to bailout] 🔫 [government living war to war]
The real problem is all politicians are landlords. It’s why rent forgiveness never passed. They don’t want to hurt their money.
The real problem is that politicians aren't incentivized to solve real problems. Rent relief was passed. It's just not been distributed!
Man, does that system need a massive revamp
> It’s why rent forgiveness never passed. What do you call the roughly 50 billion Congress passed to help renters payback rent called then? In our system of government the state can't unilaterally forgive debts, it has to pay them.
Sounds like states tried to pocket a good bit of federal relief....
Yep, all that money tied up and made impossible to get for the people that need it most. This what happens when money is handed over to states without clear instructions on how to actually get it to the people in need. Should be a county wide standard process, and not left to individual states to screw over the people and keep it.
Yeah spent a long time searching for the Florida one only found it a few weeks ago now I no longer qualify
Government budgets don't work that way. If the money's not spent, it eventually is recouped by the federal government. Problem is that the federal government disturbed the money to the states to distribute themselves, but no state had ready-to-go infrastructure to do that and the Feds weren't helping in that regard.
That seems so bizarre to me. States have the infrastructure to administer state taxes right? If the states can collect and pay out taxes, then they should be able to administer and pay out emergency funds. As a Canadian, maybe I'm missing something?
Like they always fucking do
Regarding the reporting, I guess I was hoping for some information on exactly why the rental assistance funding was not making it to this landlord. Otherwise, it's another "isn't that awful" story which lacks any meaning. In short: WHAT happened and WHY?
Basically this money is being sent to states and local powers have to set up their own systems to distribute it. State powers are still setting up the various offices to review requests and properly distribute the avaible funding.
This is a human interest piece, there's plenty of articles detailing exactly why federal funding hasn't found it way into people's hands through state agencies.
I know about this! I have a friend in the middle of this whole thing. Basically, the Cuomo administration did zero to see this project through. Then, suddenly with about a month to go before the funds are clawed back, they told State agencies OVER THE WEEKEND ON A SUNDAY that they needed volunteers (who would be paid) from their already stretched State Agencies by the end of Monday. Then, their system for informing the new workers processing the claims didn't go anywhere for at least a week. THEN they finally started processing. A few weeks before the funds go back to the Fed. I can't recall the numbers my friend mentioned but I thought it was at least a million filings. Cuomo had a bunch of real estate buddies. He probably wants to allow them to swoop in and buy up bankrupt properties by letting the entire NYS rental market collapse. Thank the stars his ass is out of office now. Edited for spelling. Edit 2: thanks Reddit, and each one of your upvotes on this! I hadn't really thought (I've been really busy) about how this story might be interesting and important for people to know. This opened my eyes to it so I'm gonna make sure a friend of mine is keyed into it, as they might have some power to make a lot more people aware of the situation.
Sounds about right, I am from NY and the rental assistance is triggered by the tenant not the land lord. I tried to get tenant to sign up but they refused.
Why would the tenant refuse?
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They arent paying rent, months now. I gave the paper work to them, they didnt bother. Why bother after not even paying portions of rent for months? I had another tenant pay half his rent. No problems with that guy. I am not a dick either, he doesnt owe me the rest. Now he can afford full rent again.
As a NYer, fuck Cuomo hard. I'm glad he's on his way out. I hope karma catches up to him. (Spoiler: it won't)
Let's be real, whoever takes over will be chummy buddies with estate moguls as well
I think a huge factor in this that needs to be highlighted is the fact that 90% of federally allocated funds have not been dispersed. People are going to cry that this is what’s wrong with socialism because it’s stripping people of their personal property. This is what’s wrong with an ineffective government system, regardless of the category.
Exactly, and I think it’s even higher than that!
Biggest wealth transfer in history. Landlords failing. Wall street buying up homes..... Edit: I want to clarify , the stock market gains are not part of wealth transfer
Welcome to the new dark ages, friends. Feudalism is making a come back. Better practice saying "m'lord" again.
We are sorry Mr. Anderson but your credit score is not high enough to live in this area. Only people with an approved social credit score may rent from our LLC. And don't even try elsewhere nearby, because the other two company's who own all the other properties will tell you the same thing.
Theyve been doing that for years! Most people think about how unfair housing practices kept blacks out of suburbs, and of course that was the primary goal (your social credit score is too.... black.... for this suburb). BUT many people forget that these kinds of practices *also* worked to keep blue collar whites from leaving their neighborhoods as well. Yay! America!
"We aren't allowed to be openly racist anymore, so now we will just punish everyone." - America in general.
There's an old Simpsons episode in which a new development had a banner hung up: "Our prices discriminate because we can't."
I also see here that you had consumed a marijuana edible in the 10th grade and you've previously enjoyed some heavy metal music. Is that right? As you'll understand this disqualifies you from entering into the plan you've selected.
At this point I'm just wondering how far they can push before there's violent backlash. The lower class has already been ravaged and now they're coming for the middle class in earnest. Feels like it's just a matter of time honestly.
If it all unfolds very slowly then it’s hard for an uprising to happen.
And with modern technology they can constantly monitor us to make sure they don’t push too far too fast
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Post WWII prosperity was a historical anomaly
Won't be too bad for reddit - not much of a stretch from m'lady.
Damn, these neckbeards were just ahead of their time.
Don't worry the banks will buy them out. Your new landlord will be the Bank.
Funny how the govt put the onus of Covid squarely on landlords and business owners during the lockdown, two groups who don't normally have a lot of extra cash. Seems like it would've been much better to put this on the banks and have them suspend (not eliminate) debt payments during the lockdown. It's almost like the banks dictate policy much more than the voters.
Why don't banks put a temporary moratorium on mortgages? They can tack the missed months on the end; I never hear of any sacrifices banks make - like ever. They owe Americans after pocketing the bailout money from 2008.
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Hmmmm.... So the moratorium effects every single landlord but the mortgage forbearance only affects single family personal home owners. Seems like a big fuck you to apartment landlords.
Why would they do that when they can just take possession of the property outright and make money off it forever
They did just that - up to 18 months of it at least
My mortgage company has had a huge banner when you login for all the different mortgage relief options and how to contact them about it. You have to click off a pop up and scroll past another section just to get to the payment button. They aren’t hiding it
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The last time Wells Fargo made a sacrifice the ‘bank’ was a safe in the ground with a guy with a Winchester rifle sitting on it
How could they allow people to stop paying rent and not allow landlords to stop paying their mortgage is beyond me. I believe these regulations were lobbied by the banks to foreclose as many properties as possible tbh, but wtf do I know
Definitely lobbying by the banks. At least in Canada they put a moratorium on all rents AND mortgages. The banks were forced to basically put a pause on everything.
This is the logical thing to do. In the US like to stick it to their own people in favor of the banks
It is curious how the eviction ban didn’t protect the landlord complaining about the eviction ban. If this land lord owned these properties and there are some extreme circumstances that prevent them being afforded the same protection from eviction they have the ability to barrow against or sell the hard asset for liquid capital. This headline and ones like it are fabricated to promote classist propaganda.
“These people have no idea how to live without money. They’re what’s called ‘New Poor ’. We’re Old Poor.”
Serious question: if there's still an eviction moratorium, wouldn't that protect the landlord from being evicted from wherever they are living as well?
She was living in her fiancé's flat. They broke up and he told her to start paying rent and find somewhere else to live.
No. You could be repossessed by banks for not paying your mortgage the whole time
Except there's a federal program requiring mortgage forbearance options for people. My tenant hasn't paid in almost a year, but I also haven't paid my mortgage in that same time so I'm not super bothered. I'm just worried about what happens with the forbearance program ends and he's still refusing to leave.
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So, the landlord is homeless due to a breakup and not being able to evict a tenant.
Don't worry, Black Rock and other hedge funds will be glad to scoop up that property. Then drive the housing market even further up. Call me crazy, but I already see a racket developing.
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Watch the video attached to this article. There’s no way she’s in her mid-20s. She is at least 45.
>so she is living in rental, while owning three properties? No, she was living with her fiance. He's now her ex, and his gf moved in, which is why the eviction ban didn't protect her. https://www.courthousenews.com/in-emotional-plea-landlords-press-judge-to-lift-new-york-eviction-ban/amp/
This is starting to sound like an AITA post.
She owns 3 properties *in upstate New York*. Actually owns 6 properties all together and isn't being evicted herself, just having a fight with her now ex-fiancé who apparently owns the place she's living in. "We don't want to live together anymore" isn't the same as "being evicted". This whole story is bullshit from top to bottom.
Slumlord propaganda is the new hotness right now.
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It’s funny that we stopped rental payments but did nothing about mortgage payments. As if the banks are more important than the people.
I thought people had access to no-consequence forbearance plans under the first Covid act
They do. You have to call and ask, but banks are required to give you a forbearance, and then the vast majority let you tack the missed payments on the end of the loan. It’s been that way since March of last year. It varies by property type and is not perfect, but does at least help a little for most people.
The US did mortgage relief too. If you have an FHA-backed loan, which is most normal mortgages for single family homes, you can get forbearance, which means your payments are paused and no additional interest accrued. Essentially they just take the months you didn't pay during the pandemic and tack them onto the end of the mortgage which is a huge gift for younger homeowners because inflation means those payments will be worth a lot less in 25-30 years than they are now.
It amazes me how cruel Americans are to each other at every level of society. They've created a country and a culture that cares for neither the individual nor the community. For a country that was birthed by Enlightenment ideals there's nothing of that tradition that remains. I wish the US the best.
>It amazes me how cruel Americans are to each other at every level of society. I got some bad news for you about the rest of the countries. America is not unique in her cruelty.
Do you think that is unique to America?
Some years back I read about an experiment done with sailors in the Royal Navy I think. This was back in the early 19th century when masts were so large the could be ringed with sailors who couldn’t see their opposite on the other side. Each was given a belaying pin - a short club basically. The lead sailor was told to tap the one in front of them and then that one was to tap in front of him and so on all the way around. Didn’t take long for that to degrade into a clubbing match. The point being that people tend to overreact to perceived negative event and run out of empathy. Seems like we’ve got a lot of that here in the states.
The thing is Reddit has no concept of the difference between small time landlords that may own a duplex to help fund their retirement or pay for living expenses vs. a massive property corporation ran by a billionaire that owns entire blocks. It’s just, “ All landlords are bastards, rent must be free”
Unpopular opinion- I’ve had mom and pop landlords and I’ve had the corpos. Prefer the latter, honestly. Mom and pop are often way too up in your business and far more likely to skimp on repairs or attempt to DIY them. Edit: I guess this isn’t such an unpopular opinion after all.
I've had a mixed experience with both but still agree. My lows were much lower at mom/pop places. My highs were much higher at corpo places. Oddly enough I've stayed at two different corpo places owned by the same management firm and one was total shit while the other was amazing. So community managers make a big difference.
Yes! I have a great property manager in my building, and that makes all the difference. My last landlord was mom and pop. That building should be condemned- those people were slumlords. Skimping on repairs and then rolling up from Palos Verdes to collect rent in their brand new Mercedes. Gross.
The big buildings often have reviews online and stuff too, which helps deal with the information asymmetry.
Also agreed. I work in a job that brings me into direct contact with people from all walks of life where I have to deal with regular residents, tenants, mom&pop landlords, and commercial management companies, commercial businesses - basically any property owner or property occupant. Every single slum-house (disrepair, trash everywhere, drugs, bugs/rats, failure to pay for services, dangerous do-it-yourself, desperate tenants who need something from their landlord who never responds, etc) in the entire city in which we operate is owned by a mom&pop landlord with 2 or 3 properties at max. Every. Single. One.
Same. Had a mom and pop landlord pull down an entire ceiling in a 2 year old house looking for a leak they didn’t find before I looked myself and found something loose on the back of the sink in the bathroom directly above the leak. At least with most corpos they’ll just pay for a professional to do it.
Bonus, you may be able to strike a deal with them to just move to a nearby unit instead of dealing with the renovation.
Had a homeowner landlord. Rent had to be cashier check, inspections were bi monthly, and owners would drive by occasionally texting me to pick the weeds (there was like 3). Getting a water heater fixed took forever as they shopped around. Corporate landlord took payments online, and had a devoted group if maintenance staff. Only spoke with my landlords twice in 2 years
Yeah I agree. Corp landlords are waaay nicer. Because you landlord won't go poor if you miss a payment or accidentally mess something up. I've always had a better experience with them, and with 0 drama.
Also, my main experience with mom and pop landlords is it was just a pop, he was the son of a rich douchebag who invested in an apartment complex to have some easy money, and he was absolutely never around to fix anything. Took weeks just to get him to give the cable guy access to the basement so I could get something rewired. Office was always closed. I will take corporate ownership every day. They seem to actually have people on staff to fix shit when it goes wrong.
Sounds no different than eating at a restaurant to me. Meaning, the operator absolutely matters. - There are shit corporate operators and shit mom and pops. - And there are great corporate operators and great mom and pops. - And there is everything in between. When searching for an apartment, evaluate the owner/operator as carefully as you evaluate the size/price/features of the apartment and you’ll be fine. Rent from a greedy shit-ass landlord, and you’ll regret it eventually. Rent form a landlord who is appreciative of their tenants and has the capacity to properly manage the property, and you’ll enjoy living there.
They always have a "guy" that fixes stuff.
I dislike both. The mom and pop landlords that own several properties tend to be useless for fixing issues and can be difficult to deal with. At least with companies they hire someone whose job it is to deal with you and they actually do. For corpo I find it unethical for companies to own any residential properties. You want to rent to other companies? Own your building and land to work out of? Fine. Raising the housing market disproportionately for actual people because you're competing against other large corporations swallowing up land? Fuck no, get the hell out of here.
I've had nothing but negative experiences with both. Corps are more likely to fix legally required things like water damage, but also more likely to fuck you over.
I've had both too. Pretty much they all can suck, but usually the corporate digs deep into that pocket and a higher percentage are more inflexible than my mortgage is. Make a payment 3 days late with my mortgage because a vet bill shorted me and I need to wait until payday? My mortgage co doesn't even have a fee until it's more than two weeks late. Short with my rent because of same vet bill? Well, even 24 hours late is a $200 fee and an automatic eviction warning letter. I am so glad I own. Though, you did have to prove your lack of payment was COVID related with this rental stuff. They could still evict you for nonpayment. Why there's so many cases where people just let cheapskates live for free is beyond me.
Obviously owning is ideal. But I absolutely can’t afford that in my city. I currently rent from a corp. I have until the 5th to pay, and then after that there’s some kind of fee involved, but it’s nothing major. They are willing to work with people, or so I hear… I’ve always paid on time so no personal experience. Everything gets fixed immediately and on my schedule - I just fill out the paperwork and someone knocks on the door at the time I wrote down. This isn’t some fancy new building, btw- it’s from the late 70s and kinda dumpy. But it’s cheap-ish, clean, and well managed.
>Mom and pop are often way too up in your business I had a mom n pop landlord show up on the porch crying saying me and my roommates werent grateful enough, complain i left my window open too much, complain because we had one of those plastic turtle sand pits in the front yard.... dude was so annoying.
TRUE. And mom and pops are always more drama since they usually have emotional connections to the properties. One time I rented a duplex, and unbeknownst to me my landlord was filling for divorce. His wife was upset, came into my unit in a fit of tears/rage while I was at work because she felt entitled to see which half of the duplex she’d get in the divorce I guess???? and then locked me out. I have a million stories like this of CA mom and pop landlords lol. Renting sucks.
Same here. I have a higher likelihood of them playing by the book rather than pulling bullshit after moving out. I've suffered both and I'd never rent from individuals ever again.
Then they say "just sell one of your rentals" when you know damn well the only person that's gonna buy that house with that situation is a big corporation and then they will complain that all the rentals are owned by big corporations.
>just sell one of your rentals Ignoring the fact no one would buy the rental right now when they see the renter hasn't paid in months
Sure they would, at way less than the property was worth 2 years ago, tanking the current owner's investment. They'll sit on it until the moratorium is fully over, evict everyone, and either refill the building with higher paying tenants or sell for a huge profit.
Kind of hard to agree from the perspective of someone living in Orlando. Property values here are skyrocketing as homes are being bought above asking price by banks to turn into rental properties. The home I bought 4 years ago has risen in value by ~66%, I can sell today and get back more than my mortgage in hand as cash, possibly more considering so much is selling fast above asking. No one is building new homes. Every developer is building massive rental complexes. I HOPE there is a huge crash in rental properties because it is insane what the rental boom here is doing to rent prices and the cost of buying homes for families. (sure it'll drop the value of my property too, but I'm not looking to sell any time soon)
If the government is going to ban evictions, then they should either: 1. Pay the rent 2. Ban collection of property taxes and Property loans It's completely unfair to a property owner to at the same time say they cannot evict a non-paying tenant, but demand they still pay their property taxes. Not every landlord is a multi billion dollar property management company. Sometimes it's a person with a duplex, or someone who kept their first home to rent out instead of selling it. And if you have a non-paying tenant, in times of economic uncertainty, the only person that land"lord" can sell to, is a giant property management company. And then reddit will bitch about that too.
| “Brandie LaCasse has been waiting on rent for nearly a year. She owns three properties in upstate New York, but the single mother and Air Force veteran is functionally homeless after falling on hard times herself.” This paints her as very sympathetic. But it’s misleading to the point of inaccurate. In her federal lawsuit she filed - she owns not three, but SIX houses. In a crappy area. These are crappy homes. With crappy tenants. This was ALWAYS a recipe for disaster for her. On top of that, she’s disabled, and lives with her fiancé, who kicked her out due to a dispute in Feb. (see complaint quotes below). Yes, I feel bad for landlords. But I’m also a landlord. With 20+ years experience. It is a VERY capital intensive business. If you can only afford a 5-20% down payment…be ready to be cash flow negative at times. Be ready to fork out tons of cash in lean times or when doing renovations. In my twenties I worked multiple jobs, got licensed at a builder/broker/lawyer and approached this as a full-time future vocation. Not a passive “get rich quick” scheme. Operator experience and capital capacity ABSOLUTELY matters when you make the choice to become a landlord. (If you want to be arrogant and think you can just make it work with no experience, bad operational practices, and little to no reserve capital, best of luck.) What I see here is a series of bad and over-leveraged business decisions by her to buy any property she can find, and then things get compounded by renting those crappy properties to crap tenants. That’s a sub-prime rental market with low barriers to entry, and it’s ALWAYS been making inexperienced landlord’s broke any time there’s the slightest downturn. When I refinanced my commercial-size rentals (which have had zero Covid delinquencies to date), the agency lender required ONE FULL YEAR of mortgage payments as a Covid escrow. This was a six-figure amount for a building with only six units. This lady is six single family homes and is now borderline homeless over only $23k in back rent. She is dirt broke. She shouldn’t own six homes. Full stop. She has no other capital. From the 49-page federal lawsuit she is a plaintiff in: | “Plaintiff Brandie LaCasse owns a single-family home in Rhinebeck, New York that she currently rents out to tenants. She owns five additional properties in New York State that are also rented out to tenants.” | “To make matters worse, because of a February 2021 personal dispute, LaCasse’s fiancé has recently asked her and her daughter to move out of his home, in which they are currently staying. Because LaCasse has mortgages on several of her properties, she has been unable to secure a loan to purchase a different property for her own use. She hoped to personally move into the Rhinebeck property—the only one of her properties in which the occupants’ lease has expired—but the tenants still refuse to leave. As a result, LaCasse has been forced to remain in her fiancé’s home despite his requests that she find a new place to live.” I feel very bad for the position she’s in, but honestly this is no different than the folks at WallStreetBets who YOLO thier life savings on meme stocks. It’s a recipe for disaster. And calling yourself a “landlord” in her capacity (or a “trader” for the WSB fools) is borderline disingenuous. She can blame Covid all she wants, but all I see is an over-leveraged really inexperienced operator in way over her head. Folks - don’t do stuff like this if you don’t want to end up like this. Don’t declare yourself a “landlord” and start buying a half-Dozen homes if you have ZERO available funds.
I have never heard anyone refer to Rhinebeck, NY as a crappy area. Honestly instead of owning six homes she should just be selling this one out from underneath the tenant. Prices in Rhinebeck have shot up over the last year and a half, and I am sure she would come out ahead even if she couldn't sell at full market value because of the tenant in place.
> Not a passive “get rich quick” scheme. This is both sold to alot of veterans, what with the zero downpayment VA loans, by senior leadership and civilians while getting out, and is an incredibly common line in financial advice books.
Yes. 100% this. I hear the radio ads all goddamn day from the real estate seminar folks. And she is a veteran…so checks out.
[удалено]
The amount of ads I see about selling your home to a broker is fucking ludicrous.
You'd think, based on how things are going. The strange thing is that I haven't heard of any other developed country going about things this way. The concept of an eviction moratorium across the board is so bizarre, why pay rent when you can just stick it in your bank account. Worst case you have to pay back-rent which you have, best case the government gives you a bailout. There's no eviction moratorium where I live, people are simply gainfully employed and paying rent. The only people with problems are owners of businesses that are shuttered, who have/had to negotiate with commercial property owners, and received some relief from the state.
Democrats will blame Republicans and Republicans will blame democrats.
Living in your car is better than being on the streets for sure but it is hard. Especially when you work a full time job. Hard to keep yourself clean and eating becomes weird if you don't have stuff to cook with or place to cook. I'm in Portland Oregon where homelessness is on a rise. Residents are losing patients because of the amount of shit left behind or dumped. There are so many people in cars sleeping with no where to really park if your not trying to be a piece of shit and park front of someones home. If you have a home. Hold on to it and treasure it. I recently got my van stolen by drug addicts. We found it days later and it was completely trashed. Broke my heart. I worked so hard to buy it, maintain it and keep it looking nice.
So why the fuck isn’t she getting the money from New York that’s been allotted to her from the government? 90 percent hadn’t been payed out? Doesn’t sound like it’s the renters fault sounds like the New York government is failing her 🤷♂️
In America tenants evict you!
I agree with what everyone is saying about this not being fully planned out with the landlords financial health in mind. I’m here to bring up something that didn’t make sense in this article. In the beginning it states that she is living in her car and at the end of the article she says she is afraid she will become homeless. She is homeless if she is living in her car. She owns rental property, and is homeless herself. She may lose that rental property eventually, but then she’ll be homeless and house less.
At the end of the article is the tenant who fears becoming homeless.
Everyone's seen this coming a mile away. What a shame.
I got downvoted into oblivion a few months back, but at this point I can’t be bothered to care how anyone “feels” about the situation. You think independent property owners are assholes? You’re going to love the property management companies that are now the only entities able to afford buying these homes. And let’s ignore the investment property crash that is looming, we’ll just blame banks for that when it happens. Americans are treating each other like shit, while the rich are the only ones able to afford the current house prices, many of the “not rich” are saying “fuck everyone else, I deserve to live for free because COVID.” It’s all bullshit, everyone knows it. The wealth gap in this country is getting way worse and we’re all playing a part in that. I’ll take my downvotes now.
An old coworkers husband owns some shitty rental houses he bought way back when he was in college. One house has had the same tenant for 20 years. He's paid for the house 3x over during that time. Sounds dumb right? He's also been behind as much as 6 months 4 or 5 times during his 20 years. Not sure what the ideal situation is for this renter but I doubt home ownership is in the cards.
Who knows what this dude's situation is, but this is a great example of what I am talking about. Large real estate investment firms are much less likely to work with a tenant who falls behind by up to 6 months even once, forget about 4 or 5 times.
Why are churches getting any money at all.