There are more protests taking place in Los Angeles this month, but for once they don’t have anything to do with racism, high gas prices, or any other common complaints coming from the public these days. The people doing the protesting are landlords who are facing bankruptcy and the loss of their properties because tenants are still not paying their rent. They’re getting away with this because the city of Los Angeles extended its eviction moratorium for another full year until August of 2023, despite the state’s moratorium having expired in June. And the landlords are placing the blame on the City Council and Mayor Garcetti rather than the delinquent renters. (CBS News)
At a news conference at City Hall, landlords say the moratorium could push some of them into bankruptcy and foreclosure because it doesn’t allow them to collect rent and some of their tenants are taking advantage of the situation.
“Our home has been stolen from us so that tenants, one of whom owns a DeLorean, can go to Burning Man and rent yachts for birthday parties and sail up in hot air balloons,” property owner Liz Reckart said. “Our home has been stolen from us, not by our tenants, but by the overly broad policies created under Mayor Eric Garcetti and upheld by the majority of our City Council.”
I’m sure that not all of the delinquent tenants fall into the same category as Liz Reckart’s renter who drives a DeLorean to Burning Man so they can go on hot air balloon rides. But the majority of them really should have started paying their rent again long before now.
I’ve been writing about the coming eviction crisis since 2020 because everyone who studies these situations knew this was on the horizon. Now it’s here. The economic restrictions associated with the pandemic are almost entirely over in Los Angeles, just as they are in the rest of the nation. Businesses have reopened, the schools are open, and people are out and about largely as they were before the virus arrived in America. Los Angeles even backed down on imposing a renewed mask mandate recently.
The federal aid for housing during the pandemic is largely gone. And that aid was supposed to benefit landlords as well as tenants so they wouldn’t lose their property. In other words, all of those tenants should, by now, have been able to start making regular rent payments and begin paying back what they owe in back rent. But it’s an unfortunate reality that there will always be a certain percentage of people who will take advantage of a situation if they can. With the city extending the moratorium for another year, some people are clearly just viewing this as another year of “free rent” before they wind up having to move out and look for a new apartment.
This is likely just another example of the typical thinking of liberal politicians. They love giving away “free money” and “free stuff.” They believe it makes voters more eager to reelect them, and in some cases, they are probably right. But now they are crushing the ability of landlords, many of whom are of the “mom and pop” type with only one or two properties, to continue to do business. It was the government that shut the state and the country down and it was the government that had to be responsible for cleaning up the mess that was caused. But Los Angeles isn’t supposed to be shut down now. It’s supposed to be back to business. And business includes having people pay their rent or risk being removed from their rental property.
