This is apparently necessary.
It’s not clear how it does anything other than slow the inevitable.
The economy has collapsed; all of these measures they’re implementing just cover that up or push it back for a little while.
Relying on a public health law intended to prevent the spread of an illness, the Trump administration said Tuesday it is implementing a national four-month moratorium on residential evictions.
The moratorium, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was the latest measure by the administration to get a handle on the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic absent an agreement with Congress on a more far reaching package that would have the force of law.
To stop evictions, health officials are relying on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which gives the administration broad quarantine powers. The moratorium, which will run through Dec. 31, applies to individuals earning less than $99,000 a year and who are unable to make rent or housing payments.
“President Trump is committed to helping hard-working Americans stay in their homes and combating the spread of the coronavirus,” White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern told reporters Tuesday.
The move drew a mixed reaction from housing experts: praise that it would potentially keep tens of millions of Americans in their homes but concern that it only moves back a deadline, potentially setting people up for evictions next year because they would continue to accrue back payments during the pause in evictions.
It’s also not clear how the move affects landlords, who must continue to make their own payments.
“The very least the federal government ought to do is assure each of us that we won’t lose our homes in the middle of a global pandemic,” said National Low Income Housing Coalition president and CEO Diane Yentel. “But while an eviction moratorium is an essential step, it is a half-measure that extends a financial cliff for renters to fall off of when the moratorium expires and back rent is owed.”
As we’ve predicted from the start of the shutdown, mass homelessness is simply an inevitable reality, and the only likely long-term solution is to build massive government housing complexes, like in a communist country, for people to live for free. These will obviously be riddled with crime and drugs, but it’s just not clear that there is any other option. They aren’t likely to do that anyway. They will announce it and build a few places in certain cities, but most people are just going to have to learn to deal with homelessness.
Eviction moratoriums effectively make it so it is impossible for a normal person to rent a new place, while also obviously stealing however many thousands from the landlord himself. It’s not a sustainable plan, and if it is used long-term, it amounts to government seizure of private property.
Likely, it will be used long term, because this is all planned out from the start. It will slow the trickle of people who become homeless, presumably. But what you’re going to see is landlords who can’t make their own payments because the rent isn’t coming in forced to forfeit the properties to the bank. One would suspect that it will be much easier for the bank to evict people.
After bank seizures, this property will then be transferred to the billionaire class, who will effectively take over ownership of all private property through various networks of holding companies. Which is of course the goal – to strip the public of the right to property ownership.